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: political economy
BBC 3 Free Thinking interview with Matthew Sweet
Matthew Sweet of BBC Free Thinking was a brilliant reader of the book, having read closely and with an eye for fetching detail. We talked for about half an hour, and the interview can be heard here (my part of … Continue reading
Recent lecture: Tankers and Tycoons
Here is a link to a talk I have given a few times, most recently at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. It is a talk I am hoping to turn into an article, but which requires a bit more … Continue reading
Publication: The infrastructural power of the military
Drawing on extensive research in the archives of the US Army Corps of Engineers, this article again draws on my concomitant interest in militaries and infrastructure. “The infrastructural power of the military: The geoeconomic role of the US Army Corps … Continue reading
Offshore
In one of the most significant environmental decisions the Trump administration has taken, a ban on offshore drilling was lifted on 4 January 2018. The New York Times reported: While the plan puts the administration squarely on the side of … Continue reading
Posted in environment, infrastructure, oil, political economy
1 Comment
Of Ballast and Land Reclamation
That extraordinary image is from some time in the 1970s, and the container-ship steaming so serenely in Hudson River is a Jugolinija ship belonging to the Yugoslav national shipping line. What is of course poignant about the image is that … Continue reading
Somali Piracy
This really is the best journalism about Somali piracy I have read. It is immensely sympathetic to the ordinary crewmen, many often belonging to the global South, who are the victims of the piracy. But it also shows the extent to … Continue reading
Playing with trains in the sand: reflections on the MENA Cargo show
GUEST POST BY R.Z. Having spent the last couple of years researching Private Military and Security Companies (PMSCs), attending their industry gatherings and military expos, I was very excited to shift gears to a new project and curious what differences … Continue reading
Arrival
15 February 2015 16.00 We have arrived too soon, because of steaming at high speed through the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, in order for the ship to make it to Ningbo for an earlier … Continue reading
Fouq El-Nakhl: Masaculinities aboard the ship
“and in everything imposingly beautiful, strength has much to do with the magic.” Herman Melville, Moby Dick The first incident of its kind happened last night. Hopefully, also the last. I was in the wheelroom in the dark, keeping easy … Continue reading
Posted in 2015 Trip, infrastructure, labour, Middle East, political economy, ports, seafaring, shipping conditions, transport
1 Comment
Machineries of Joy: Wrestling with the technological sublime
This one is for my friends Rachel Shabi and Waleed Hazbun, who might recognise something of the pathos of our common paternal utopias in it… 11 February 2015 “Hyperbole is the main stock in trade of publicists, boosters and even … Continue reading
The Gamming 