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A Dearth of Research: Does anyone really know anything about hitch-hiking?

© Bernd Wechner

The simple, unplanned and spontaneous act of sharing transport has been with us as long there has been transport to share. Still, with all of the electronic resources of the twenty first century at hand, the first academic effort to describe hitch-hiking that I have identified was published in 1958. Even then, its author, Schlebecker observed with some bemusement:

Begging rides from passing motorists, or hitchhiking, is an American contribution to world civilization which has been largely unexamined by historians. And this is strange because hitchhikers first became familiar figures on the American scene in the middle 1920’s, and have been more or less ubiquitous ever since. (Schlebecker, 1958, p. 305)

Schlebecker understated the matter some. It is more than strange, it is bewildering. Post-Schlebecker the story that unfolds is no less perplexing.

Academia would flatter the phenomenon with only three traceable mentions in the 13 years to follow – a short mention in Brilliant’s excellent 1963 doctoral dissertation on automobiles, DiMaggio’s significant 1971 honours dissertation on sociology and White’s mediocre 1971 masters dissertation on culture. None of these three researchers displayed any awareness of Schlebecker’s writing, in spite of its salient relevance to their work. Granted, they weren’t equipped with the power of electronic search engines, but the fading of Schlebecker’s ground breaking work was lasting, not a single academic work citing it has been published since!

DiMaggio, unaware of Schlebecker’s voice, would second it soundly all the same:

Given the ubiquity of hitchhikers, it is surprising how little has been printed about it. To our knowledge no social scientist has addressed the question, and the popular literature is minimal. (DiMaggio, 1971, p22)

The 1970’s would however, emerge as a golden era of sorts, in hitch-hiking research. A modest flurry of papers and dissertations appeared. But the research was still very meagre and there was very little cross awareness, between researchers. Hitch-hiking was variously studied as a significant social phenomenon itself or a useful context for specific sociological or psychological research. Unaware of Schlebecker’s empathy, or as often as not one another’s, these researchers would, one after the other, continue to echo the same concern.

Referring to a scant few anecdotal articles that had appeared over the decades, Crassweller wrote:

There are many areas of social concern in which theorizing has been done primarily on the basis of personal experience rather than systematic investigation. Hitchhiking is such an area. (Crassweller et. al., 1972, p. 43)

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