Category Archives: labour

Brilliantly fun interview with Tank Magazine

Last month the brilliant Thomas Roueché interviewed me on Sinews for Tank magazine. The interview can be found here: https://tankmagazine.com/issue-84/features/the-sinews-of-war-and-trade/ I am not reposting the content, because the piece has such cool graphics on their website!

Posted in capital accumulation, empire, imperialism & colonialism, environment, finance and insurance, infrastructure, labour, logistics, Middle East, political economy, ports, shipping conditions | Leave a comment

An interview with Katy Fox-Hodess on Logistics, Labour and State Power

20 August 2020 I was honoured to be interviewed by my amazing colleague and comrade, Dr Katy Fox-Hodess (whose own work is also cited in my book and with whom I worked when we put together sinewswartrade.org. Below is the … Continue reading

Posted in bureacuracy, capital accumulation, empire, imperialism & colonialism, environment, finance and insurance, free ports/zones, infrastructure, labour, logistics, Middle East, militaries, seafaring, shipping conditions, transport, war | Leave a comment

Logistics after COVID

I wrote the below brief piece for the Foundry, an online publication of the The University of California Humanities Research Institute. Logistics by Laleh Khalili As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, the traffic in the ports of China reduced … Continue reading

Posted in capital accumulation, infrastructure, labour, logistics, political economy | Leave a comment

E-flux Oceans in Transformation series- Shipping Oil

This essay was originally published by e-Flux as part of their Oceans in Transformation series: https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/oceans/331863/shipping-oil/ Laleh Khalili Image from ship’s equipment during a journey in the Gulf of Oman. The cluster of triangles towards the bottom left are ships … Continue reading

Posted in capital accumulation, empire, imperialism & colonialism, environment, labour, oil, political economy, shipping conditions, transport | Leave a comment

Ports, ships and the human economy of global sea trade: an interview with Laleh Khalili

Little has been written about the sea trade in the Gulf. Laleh Khalili’s latest book explores the complex realities that drive this massive economy.Tugrul Mende30 June 2020 During the COVID-19 pandemic many workers in ports and on ships have either … Continue reading

Posted in capital accumulation, empire, empire, imperialism & colonialism, free ports/zones, imperialism & colonialism, infrastructure, labour, logistics, media, Middle East, political economy, ports, seafaring, shipping conditions, transport | Leave a comment

SSRC: A Time Capsule for Future Social Researchers

On 15 May 2020 I had a really great conversation with Indian Ocean historian Dr Saarah Jappie about a visual artefact that should be included in an SSRC time capsule on COVID-19. Here is the result of the conversation: Inspired … Continue reading

Posted in labour, logistics, media, shipping conditions, ships, the sea, transport | Leave a comment

Why shipping is central to the very fabric of global capitalism

Some of the images in this Verso video may be familiar from my previous posts about my containership trips. Here is choose 5 photographs and talk about them: The photos are the following (not in the order below):

Posted in capital accumulation, labour, logistics, Middle East, transport, Travels | Leave a comment

Interview with Diepgang magazine

In January I gave a talk at the Erasmus university in Rotterdam. I was incredibly pleased that a lot of seafarers and people working with seafarers came to see it (and some were also critical of the talk – they … Continue reading

Posted in labour, media, ports, seafaring, shipping conditions, ships, transport | Leave a comment

Interstitial Podcast

I spoke with the brilliant David Huber of the Interstitial podcast, which you can listen to here: https://thinkbelt.org/shows/interstitial/sinews-of-war-and-trade-laleh-khalili He asked me to suggest 4 books and I had to think on my feet, so of course I suggested the following: … Continue reading

Posted in capital accumulation, empire, imperialism & colonialism, labour, literature, Middle East, political economy, ports, seafaring, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Abandoned Seafarers

Abandoned at Sea: Sailors and COVID-19   The stranded Indian crew members on board MSC Grandiosa, docked in Italy at present (Al Jazeera) On the list of COVID-19 afflicted countries tallied by the Johns Hopkins University Corona Resource Centre there … Continue reading

Posted in labour, logistics, political economy, ports, seafaring, shipping conditions | 1 Comment