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
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Archives
Category Archives: political economy
A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes: The factory at sea
9 February 2015 20.00 “Going forward and glancing over the weather bow, [… the] prospect was unlimited, but exceedingly monotonous and forbidding; not the slightest variety that I could see.” Herman Melville, Moby Dick For the next few days, we … Continue reading
Reading Capital 2 on a containership
8 February 2015 You begin to realise how much Marx actually crafted his writing when you compare Capital I to Capital II. The former is beautifully edited, funny, extensively footnoted, erudite, and with a gorgeous narrative structure that inexorably push … Continue reading
Grace: Departing Marsaxlokk
Marsaxlokk-Jabal Ali: At last at sea 5 February 2015 11.00 Occasionally in the night, the ship bumps against the berth and that is when one remembers that one is not on solid ground. I can’t wait for our ship to … Continue reading
Posted in 2015 Trip, labour, political economy, ports, readings, shipping conditions, transport, Travels
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On Battleship Hill
Marsaxlokk-Jabal Ali; On Military Logistics in the Age of Philip II 4 February 2015 What becomes clear in reading Braudel’s vol II about war-making is the extent to which your martial power really depends on your economic ability to supply … Continue reading
Posted in 2015 Trip, militaries, political economy, readings, war
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Marsaxlokk-Jabal Ali: Surmises
How will I ever be able to return to life, “circumspect life” in Melville’s words, after that, the “delirious throb” of this research adventure? In his gorgeous opening to Moby Dick, Melville writes, “whenever it is a damp, drizzly November … Continue reading
Posted in 2015 Trip, Allan Sekula, logistics, Melville, political economy, the sea, transport, Travels
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Stand-Up Beer Hall
Stand-Up Beer Hall Walter Benjamin Sailors seldom come ashore ; service on the high seas is a holiday by comparison with the labour in harbours, where loading and unloading must often be done day and night. When a gang is then given a … Continue reading
More on London canals
I have written lovingly of London’s canals before. I just want to briefly write out something else I have discovered which ties in nicely with the whole infrastructure thing. Today I spent an hour or so in the London Canal … Continue reading
Posted in infrastructure, political economy, transport
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Dangers of crewing an oil tanker
Associated Press reports that jets belonging to the Libyan government bombed a Greek-owned tanker, killing two crew members: A military spokesman for Libya’s internationally recognised government says its fighter jets bombed a Greek-owned tanker ship because it had no prior … Continue reading
Posted in Middle East, militaries, oil, political economy, transport, war
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Ghost ships
In the last two weeks, two ships filled to the brim with hundreds of Syrian refugees have been brought in to Italian ports. The ships seem to have left Eastern Mediterranean, and sailed parallel to the Turkish coast, picking up … Continue reading
Train whistles and futures
I am reading two books simultaneously through both of which trains rattle and whistle and snake… But which in some ways are as different as they can be. Bill Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis is a panoramic history of the making of Chicago in the … Continue reading
The Gamming 