‘Sir, it was my right of way!’ Examining cultural change and the contested entitlements of automobility

This qualitative study uses a frame of entitlements to explore how automobility reflects the complex tensions of cultural change, including shifting privileges within gendered and classed social relations. Through documenting the mobility of a cohort of middle-class women in Delhi, three regimes of entitlement are identified within the city’s ‘landscape[s] of power’: the car and its impact on the built environment; the constraints of gendered expectations; and middle class entitlement within a neo-liberal city. The findings highlight the capacity of competing entitlements to structure and contest cultural change, as well as the importance of contextualising mobility theory.