Culture on Two Wheels: An Essay

The following is some light reading--an essay I wrote for my first assignment in Cultural Anthropology. Perhaps I could break the ideas down into smaller chunks. Starting points for future posts? Here goes.

Culture on Two Wheels

My bike hindered a walkway in a storage unit more than 50 miles away from home at the time that I decided to shift my energy toward using that bike every day. As a newcomer to the City of Madison, I was experiencing the effects of enculturation. I began to contest learned behaviors that threatened my ability to adapt to a new environment. Biking – a supplement to driving and riding the bus – became my primary means of transportation around the city. The shift ultimately became an integrated lifestyle, significantly reducing my consumption and even affecting my diet. This new culture changed my life.

At sixteen, I could not conceive of getting a job without owning a car for transportation. I lived in a developing suburb, where residential and commercial zones are islands separated by a sea of paved roads. Bike lanes exist but are seldom traveled. Madison is strikingly different. City engineers have integrated hundreds of miles of designated bike paths, curb lanes, and routes into traffic infrastructure to accommodate a local demand for alternative transportation. Biking offers economic advantages to the city: increased demand for local business, decreased traffic congestion, and decreased air pollution in an already choking downtown, to name a few. Biking also yields economic advantages to the biker, including: free parking, easy and often time-saving navigation, decreased fuel consumption, and a general long-term decrease in health care costs. Individual agency allowed me to actively liberate myself from old cultural constraints and to acquire new culture to better suit my needs. Enculturation is a dynamic process beginning with, but not restricted to, childhood.

In coming of age, American teens challenge the boundaries set by their parents. This should be taken as no surprise given that we live within the economic constraints of market capitalism, which stresses rugged individualism. The most successful of us take advantage of the concept of agency, alone or in groups, to transform our cultural identities such that we may each achieve our unique set of goals. In this way, culture is contested. Groups whose members share common cultural experiences can usually accomplish more than a lone individual. Demonstrators and lobbyists are good examples of groups that struggle over whose agendas will prevail. Biking and the building of bicycle infrastructure are activities that generally go uncontested in Madison. However, budgeting to determine which projects will receive funding is always up for debate. Different groups want to see money allocated toward specific interests, and compromise is hard to come by in any democratic process. Our leaders serve to mitigate differences and to make the final decisions. Mayor Soglin, for example, is a strong supporter of bicycling and has called for “20 by 2020,” a goal he set for his constituents to encourage that one in five trips be made by bicycle. Many people will continue to drive, while others (myself included) will give up driving to enjoy the benefits of riding a bike in our already bicycle-friendly communities.

 The mayor’s goal is an effort to affect more than ridership itself. Culture is integrated in such a way that a change in one part leads to changes in other parts. Increases in the number of trips made by bicycle would produce the economic benefits noted above. It has also been shown that spending on bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure yields a greater return on investment than traditional road construction. These benefits are bestowed upon local residents, cyclists, and businesses at the time of construction. In addition, the recursive effect of such changes ripples back to the daily commuter, who may then feel more social and economic pressure to adjust to a biking lifestyle. I can attest to these claims. The first event that changed my life was the move to Madison. I chose an apartment close to work in order walk, or rather, to avoid driving. I started to notice the commuters taking advantage of the paths around my neighborhood and the curb lanes lining main roads. Before long, I turned to biking for my transportation and fitness needs. Less willing to travel long distances for simple necessities, I chose to pay premiums for local goods and services. No longer buying groceries from Wal-Mart, I became exposed to markets like the Williamson Street Grocery Cooperative. I now purchase fresh produce in greater quantities; most of it is fair trade and organically-grown. The list goes on.

And this has all come to be due to bike infrastructure, which was integrated into the City of Madison before I arrived, by people whom I will never know, whose ideas were affected by an earlier cultural era. The power of those individuals to contest culture, as it existed then, played an integral role in the way the City of Madison has progressed to this point in time. My own enculturation began passively. I absorbed ideas, values, beliefs, and goals from the surrounding community. I then actively contested my previous enculturation that I had hitherto taken for granted. Gandhi reminded us to “be the change” and to “live simply that others may simply live.” In a crowded world plagued by conflicting interests, it is crucial that individuals be aggressive agents for that change. In a message to the offices of Wisconsin Senators Johnson and Kohl regarding proposed cuts to the Transportations Enhancements program (federal funds for bike and pedestrian construction projects), I stressed the importance of the program by sharing my experiences (as detailed above) and by adding that the program promotes good decision making by enabling individuals to improve their physical and mental fitness. I support Mayor Soglin’s vision and look forward to another “Ride the Drive” event this Sunday, September 25, 2011. We should hope that the younger crowd catches on.