I was invited by the lovely people of the Danish Institute for International Studies to give a talk on infrastructures. The abstract for the talk was:

Monday 19 October, 15.00-15.45
DIIS ∙ Danish Institute for International Studies
Online via Zoom

Accumulation of capital in the maritime industry – like so many other forms of capital accumulation- is predicated on elasticity, evasion, and cooptation. The very mobile and fragmentary nature of the business of shipping; its amphibian nature; its global expanse; and its private and family-owned ownership structures undergird its ability to escape even the most basic forms of scrutiny and demands for accountability. Among the technologies used as an infrastructure for accumulation are offshoring of ownership and offshoring of ship registries (or flags of convenience).

At this webinar, Laleh Khalili sketches these legal devices, invented, facilitated and supported by all the great political powers and the largest corporations involved in the maritime industry. She will explain how these legal infrastructures provide the modalities of accumulation where the boundaries between licit and illicit are blurred and capital evades forms of labour or environmental regulation.

Laleh Khalili is Professor of International Politics, Queen Mary University of London. Her research comprises infrastructures, political violence, war, the politics of gender and masculinities, and collective memory, amongst other issues.

The webinar is part of the Infrastructure as analytical approach series where we explore the potential and implications of infrastructure analysis through state-of-the art talks by leading scholars.

And the recording of the talk can be seen here: