Blogroll
- Critical Logistics
- Fabulous and weird website full of all sorts of info
- Geographical Imaginations
- International Transport Workers' Federation
- Middle East Report
- Object Lessons (on containers)
- Oceans Beyond Piracy
- Paleofutures – good tech stuff
- Port to port
- Progressive Geographies
- Sapping Attention
- STS Blog at Oxford
- The Funambulist
- Visual Complexity
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Archives
Author Archives: Laleh Khalili
Factory Ships
Stories about enslaved fishermen on factory ships occasionally appear on BBC and other news sources. A recent one tells us about the interdiction of one such ship by Thai police, which then lets the ship go. Apparently Thai fishing … Continue reading
Posted in labour, literature, political economy, shipping conditions, ships, the sea
Tagged factory ships, Kobayashi Takiji, Martin Cruz Smith
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LA/LB
There is an amazing bit in Alan Sekula‘s magisterial Forgotten Space where Angelenos of Latino origin sit at an outdoor space drinking beers and watching enormous container ships glide towards the unloading docks and cranes. Ever since watching that, I really wanted … Continue reading
Posted in Allan Sekula, infrastructure, logistics, militaries, political economy, ports, transport
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Piracy and Counter-piracy
There is a kind of romance around piracy. It is the romance of anti-authority figures and of a life lived not just in the margins but outside the boundaries. Just think about the masses of novels and films about piracy … Continue reading
Posted in finance and insurance, logistics, piracy, political economy, ports, readings, shipping conditions, ships, transport
Tagged Abdulaziz Al-Mahmoud, Erik Prince, Rose George, Simon Ings
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Sailing on dhows and working in the auto industry
A facebook friend sent me a URL to a blogpost which introduced Sons of Sinbad by Alan Villiers… What struck me was the contention that the book was “probably the only work of western travel literature that focuses on the seafarers of … Continue reading
Robot ships
This Wired piece (which reads a bit like a PR statement from Rolls Royce) tells us that autonomous systems [i.e. personless] are going to make their way into large vessels in the near future, and VTT and Rolls-Royce are already working … Continue reading
Posted in capital accumulation, ships, transport
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Poems about ships
The poem has a whiff (or more than a whiff) of orientalism about it – but I love the last verse: ‘Cargoes’ Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir, Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, With a cargo of ivory, … Continue reading
Posted in readings, seafaring, ships
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Beirut
Sitting on a rooftop overlooking container ships leaving the port of Beirut and sailing into the haze of the Mediterranean and other container ships powering towards the port from the west makes me VERY VERY happy I am going to … Continue reading
Posted in Middle East, ports, ships, the sea
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Seafaring Diasporas
Turner, South Shields, 1823 My friend Isabelle mentioned the Yemeni community of South Shields to me (she also sent me that amazing Turner posted above). Significant numbers of Yemeni seafarers, who used to work on British merchant vessels, settled … Continue reading
London comes closer to the sea
Dubai Ports World runs London Gateway which will be competing against Felixstowe and Southampton to be the top container port in the UK. Like many other DPW concerns, there seems to be an iron (or ham-) fisted determination to not let workers unionise – although … Continue reading
Posted in capital accumulation, infrastructure, labour, logistics, political economy, ports, shipping conditions, ships, transport
Tagged Gravesend, Iain Sinclair, Thames Gateway
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Interconnections
Dead Water by Simon Ings is the most fabulously dystopian novel about shipping, containers, ships, airships, tsunami, shipping, and dastardly deed that can happen when vast numbers of ships are circumnavigating the globes with vast numbers of containers on board. One … Continue reading
Posted in capital accumulation, infrastructure, labour, literature, logistics, political economy, readings, ships, transport
Tagged Simon Ings
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The Gamming 