Saving the World? Western Volunteers and the Rise of the Humanitarian-Development Complex by Agnieszka Sobocinska (review)

Abstract

reliance on Anglophone sources, which Mom astutely acknowledges must inform how the sources represent automobility). On the other hand, the book is unwieldy. Each chapter runs more than one hundred and fifty pages. The big picture themes (layered mobility, synchronicity, class divisions, modal splits, and coordination crises) are connected somewhat haphazardly to the detailed narratives for each locale. It can be difficult to track the argument. In part this is becauseMom is so attentive to the major debates that inform each local or national history of automobility. That should be celebrated. But it does make for a challenging read. That being said, I would say that anyone writing and teaching the history of mobility in the twentieth century, especially automobility, should consult this volume as they think through their own materials. As historians, we are tempted to extol the uniqueness of our subjects, our periods, our concepts. For that reason, our claims to locality and specificity will be all the more rigorous if we rise to the challenge of Globalizing Automobilism’s panoptic perspective.