Manuel Moser

Of thingified drivers and disthingified trucks: Religion, resonances and rituals in the relationship networks of East German and West Bolivian long-haul trucking communities.

The dissertation project traces relationship patterns among long-distance trucker communities, focusing primarily on the relationship between human drivers and non-human trucks. Methodologically, field research triangulates techniques of autoethnography, participant observation, and semi-structured interviews. Since it was noted that the trucks themselves play a very important relational role in the communities studied, their agency is traced beyond driver changes and across cultural contexts: many East German long-distance trucks are replaced after four years of service and one million kilometres, and are often sold to non-European countries. As part of the dissertation project, the journey of decommissioned East German trucks to Andean Bolivia is mapped out and examined how new transatlantic relationships are formed with local drivers and a variety of human, non-human and more-than-human actors in the shared environment. In a transcultural comparison between western Bolivia and eastern Germany, the example of long-distance trucker communities serves to analyse how high-quality relationships with things arise in a late modernity characterised by mobility and what role socio-religious rituals such as vehicle blessings play in establishing and maintaining these relationships.

You can find personal information at this link.