Vehicles

<p> Metaphor as an act of human fancy combines ideas in improbable ways to sharpen meanings of life and experience. Theoretically this arises from an association between a sign-for example a cattle car-and its referent the Holocaust. These sign-vehicles serve as modes of semiotic transportation through conceptual space. Likewise on-the-ground vehicles can be rich metaphors for the moral imagination. Following on this insight <em>Vehicles </em>presents a collection of ethnographic essays on the metaphoric significance of vehicles in different cultures. Analyses include canoes in Papua New Guinea pedestrians and airplanes in North America lowriders among Mexican-Americans and cars in contemporary China Japan and Eastern Europe as well as among African-Americans in the South. Vehicles not only carry people around but also carry how they are understood in relation to the dynamics of culture politics and history.</p>