Drift: Illicit Mobility and Uncertain Knowledge“This book was written late in the North American night, with the rumbling thuds and booming train horns of the nearby rail yard echoing through my windows, reminding me of the train hoppers and gutter punks out there rolling through the darkness.” In Drift, Jeff Ferrell shows how dislocation and disorientation can become phenomena in their own right. Examining the history of drifting, Ferrell situates the contemporary global phenomenon of drift within today’s economic, social, and cultural dynamics. He also highlights a distinctly North American form of drift—that of the train-hopping hobo—by tracing the hobo’s political history and by sharing his own immersion in the world of contemporary train-hoppers. Along the way, Ferrell sheds light on the ephemeral intensity of drifting communities and explores the contested politics of drift—the legal and political strategies designed to control drifters in the interest of economic development, the irony by which these strategies spawn further social and spatial exclusion, and the ways in which drifters and those who embrace drift create their own slippery strategies of resistance. With an eye toward the truth, Ferrell keenly argues that the lessons of drift can provide us with new models for knowing and engaging with the world around us. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
abandoned absence American amidst argues Bonus Marchers boxcar camps catch chapter collective contemporary Critical Mass cultural delinquent dislocation Dorothea Lange drift drifters and ghosts Dumpster Dumpster diving dynamics economic emerge enforced everyday experience Ferrell Ferrell-Drift.indd film flâneur fluid Food Not Bombs free speech fights freight hoppers freight train gang global graffiti groups gutter punks hobo jungles homeless human images in-between interstitial jail kids labor likewise lives method migrants mobility moral move movement Nels Anderson ongoing organization photographs police political precarity public space quoted rail yards railroad refugees residues ride road ruins says Scottsboro Boys sense sign-ins social order sociology sort spatial street subcultural Sykes and Matza tattoos Ted Conover tion tracks train hoppers train hopping tramp trash uncertainty understand urban space vagrancy waiting Walker Evans wandering West Wobblies workers young Zeke