Laviolette
LAVIOLETTE, Patrick (PhD)
Anthropologist, author, hitchhiker.
Patrick teaches at Masaryk University in Brno, Czechia. He was Professor of Anthropology at Tallinn Univ. in Estonia from 2010 to 2018. Access to some of his written research can be found on his Research Gate page.
Having been the co-editor of EASA's journal Social Anthropology / Anthropologie Sociale from 2015 to 2019, he then became the co-editor of the Anthropological Journal of European Cultures (2019-23). This is an Open Access periodical published by Berghahn, the blog of which can be found here: AJEC BLOG.
In 2020, the same year that celebrated the 42nd anniversary of the release of the first book in Douglas Adams' famous four part trilogy the HHG2tG, Palgrave Macmillan published Laviolette's exhaustive study of hitchhiking in Europe entitled: Hitchhiking: Cultural Inroads. A more affordable paperback version will be available in 2021. The book has been reviewed by the environmental journalist Jen R. Smith in The Washington Post as well as by The Independent's world renowned columnist and hitchhiker Simon Calder, who has said the following of the book:
"For five decades I have hitchhiked far and wide. Only now, thanks to Dr Laviolette's thought-provoking study, can I place the practice of getting from A to B (often via C and D) in an anthropological context. The author recognises the role of hitching in blurring the boundaries between public and private spaces, and he praises drivers who "resist the culture of fear and propaganda that has turned the participants of this form of adventurous travel into frightful or even endangered Others". After a year in which hitchhiking itself has been endangered by restrictions on movement and car sharing, it is good to be reminded that thumbing – and offering – rides represents a "mutually reciprocal form of embodied trust between driver and passenger". In an age where person-to-person contact is more precious than ever, Dr Laviolette is to be congratulated on defining the unique status of hitchhiking".
Simon Calder, travel correspondent, The Independent.
