Abstract: As a metaphor of modernity， automobiles have profoundly changed our everyday life； however， sociology has generally neglected them in its past studies. As a new research field， sociology of auto-consumption has recently attracted extensive attention in foreign countries. In this paper， autoresearch literature is classified systematically into five parts： cultural logics of cars， symbolic critique of cars， cars and urban space， cars and everydaylife practice， and public transportation and private transportation. The paper also reviews the discussions on automobiles by Bourdieu， the Frankfurt school， Barthes， Baudrillard， Lefebvre， Jacobs， Kitamula （北村隆一）， Urry， Featherstone， Miller， and other postmodern theorists. Lastly， this paper presents some opinions about the future of the sociological research on autoconsumption and discusses its implications to our studies in China.

Key words: automobiles, auto-culture, everyday-life practice, sociology of automobile consumption, urban space