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
Categories
- 2015 Trip 2016 Trip capital accumulation construction empire empire, imperialism & colonialism environment finance and insurance free ports/zones imperialism & colonialism infrastructure labour literature logistics media Melville Middle East militaries oil political economy ports readings seafaring shipping conditions ships the sea transport Travels Uncategorized war
Archives
Category Archives: Middle East
“war, commerce, and transit”
“Let us have the courage to be crude: let us sweep the spirit of subtlety down the sewer along with the flags and the great warriors.” Paul Nizan Paul Nizan’s star burned bright and brief. He was a classmate of Jean-Paul Sartre‘s … Continue reading
Posted in empire, imperialism & colonialism, literature, Middle East, ports, readings, ships, war
Tagged Aden, Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Nizan
Leave a comment
Edward Said on Cavafy in Alexandria
In his Reflections on Exile, Edward Said has a lovely elegiac essay called Cairo and Alexandria, which is an ode to Cairo and a eulogy for Alexandria. I love the bits that follow (and especially sympathise with the fear of consulates … Continue reading
Posted in empire, imperialism & colonialism, Middle East, ports, quotations
Tagged Alexandria, Cavafy, Edward Said
Leave a comment
Muslim Pirates
Pirate Utopias is a strange little book – at once a bit disappointing and a portal to further discovery. The concept behind it is fabulous enough (about which more below) and the blurbs on the back -by Christopher Hill, Marcus … Continue reading
Posted in Middle East, piracy, ships, the sea, war
Tagged North Africa, Peter Lamborn Wilson
Leave a comment
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
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
Leave a comment
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
Regimes of land tenure
Regimes of land tenure and ownership must form significant elements in the development of ports. How quickly do these regimes change? What are the processes by which title deeds are issued, exchanged, bought, and sold? Are there demonstrable differences … Continue reading
Posted in capital accumulation, Middle East, political economy, ports
Leave a comment
The Gamming 