On Wings of Diesel. Trucks, Identity and Culture in Pakistan

摘要

Jamal J. Elias provides a fascinating account of an understudied yet important and visible part of Pakistan's road transport industry with his book on truck decoration and the various factors shaping it. Trucking is indeed an important part of industrial and everyday social life throughout South Asia and vehicle decoration does appear in several places, but it is particularly pronounced and pervasive in Pakistan. Nearly every privately owned truck in the country is decorated in one way or another and the amount spent on them can reach several thousand dollars depending on the vehicle type. These investments are difficult to explain since they do not enhance the vehicle's capacity and function as an economic means of production. But Elias' account convincingly places the decorated truck in its specific setting defined by religious, political, social, and economic perspectives, and vividly describes how they mutually influence and interdepend on each other. The book evolved over a period of some fifteen years of occasional field research, especially in the environs of Karachi and Islamabad-Rawalpindi. During this time, Elias collected photographs (displayed throughout the book) and truck verses (which are compiled in a nine-page appendix) and conducted interviews with truck drivers, owners, professionals working on trucks and others involved in the transport industry; these make the basis of the book. It argues in particular that the concentration of earlier work on the formal significance of decorative motifs is misleading, and that the truck as a whole and, within it, both text and image need to be considered in conjunction. But the book also dwells on several other important features, such as the trucks' compartments and the kinds of artistic expressions found in them, and the existence of distinct regional styles of truck decoration.