Hitchhacking, Passenger Ethnography, and Four-Wheeled Hospitality

Abstract This article proposes hitch hacking as a way of problematising contemporary mobility and as a practice of what we call “passenger ethnography”. To this end, we review some of the literature on hitchhiking and hosting, offering empirical examples from artistic projects and field vignettes in Estonia, Russia, and Finland. We also reflect on how hitching can be experienced as a means of knowledge production. Accordingly, we discuss how travelling together by car provides a particular type of socialisation. Finally, we refer to hitchhiking as a form of gift-giving in which no direct reciprocation is required. The article's key contributions are thus threefold: (1) to rethink the transgressive and heuristic potential of hitchhiking in the present; (2) to reflect on the methodological implications of doing ethnographic research on/in vehicles; and (3) to reconsider mobility disruptions in a context of extensive digital technology usage and novel forms of datafication and accountability.