Book review: Göde Both (2020) Keeping Autonomous Driving Alive. An Ethnography of Visions, Masculinity and Fragility

Abstract

The review critiques Göde Both’s book Keeping Autonomous Driving Alive (2020). This book is an ethnographic exploration of a project in which roboticists and computer scientists attempt to make a technologically enhanced Volkswagen Passat drive without a human driver. Through an account grounded in actor-network theory, Both seeks to understand the actual work necessary to make the vehicle drive on its own, as well as the manner in which masculinity and futures are assembled and re-assembled around this emerging technology. The review assesses the merit of Both’s book as a self-contained account of a research project centred on self-driving vehicles, as well as the book’s contribution to the nascent social scientific literature on such vehicles.