Category Archives: political economy

How the (closure of the) Suez Canal changed the world

Posted on 31 August 2014 by Laleh Khalili

The segment of my January/February container-ship journey I am most anticipating is passing through the Suez Canal.  Here is what Horatio Clare writes about his passage through Suez: Unfinished wars lie under all our horizons.  The chart on which Chris plotted our … Continue reading →

Posted in infrastructure, Middle East, militaries, political economy, ports, shipping conditions, ships, transport, war | 4 Comments

The Uses of Shipping Containers

Posted on 24 August 2014 by Laleh Khalili

There is a deep fascination with shipping containers… The best reading on all of this is of course the classic The Box  by Marc Levinson – but recently there are a lot more links.  Here are a few more: This piece … Continue reading →

Posted in infrastructure, political economy, shipping conditions, transport | 1 Comment

Rime of mariners ancient or modern

Posted on 26 July 2014 by Laleh Khalili

I think I read the Rime of the Ancient Mariner some years ago when i was young, but like a great many great works of literature, it is a poem that is wasted on the youth.  Its sense of regret, loss, … Continue reading →

Posted in capital accumulation, infrastructure, labour, logistics, political economy, readings, seafaring, shipping conditions, transport | Leave a comment

The Cargo Cults of USA – Part II

Posted on 16 July 2014 by Laleh Khalili

In an extraordinary essay titled “The Smell of Infrastructure,” Bruce Robbins argues that the scaffolding of our lives, the infrastructure that carries shit and coal and lobsters and water and electricity is often made invisible. He has a rousing call … Continue reading →

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

Jayaben Desai

Posted on 13 July 2014 by Laleh Khalili

In this moving obituary of an extraordinary woman, Jayaben Desai, this passage stood out: Desperate for work, the newly arrived accepted long hours and low wages, though the need to do so, Desai said, “nagged away like a sore on … Continue reading →

Posted in labour, political economy, ports | Leave a comment

The Cargo Cults of USA – Part I

Posted on 13 July 2014 by Laleh Khalili

John McPhee has taught David Remnick and Richard Stengel and a few other famous journalists to write, and apparently he is a fixture of The New Yorker, but his work is so much more interesting that those of his proteges, and … Continue reading →

Posted in capital accumulation, infrastructure, labour, logistics, political economy, readings, shipping conditions, ships, transport | Leave a comment

The Port of Beirut

Posted on 20 June 2014 by Laleh Khalili

This gallery contains 23 photos.

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The Lottery of the Sea

Posted on 4 June 2014 by Laleh Khalili

With thanks to Michelle Woordward whose 2007 blogpost on Allan Sekula’s Lottery of the Sea brought me here, it seems that Adam Smith has a wonderful passage about the sea which does the familiar two discursive manoeuvres -speaking of the sea … Continue reading →

Posted in labour, political economy, ports, quotations, the sea | Tagged | Leave a comment

The ship as the heterotopia par excellence

Posted on 4 June 2014 by Laleh Khalili

How wonderful is it that Foucault considers the ship the perfect heterotopia: Brothels and colonies are two extreme types of heterotopia, and if we think, after all, that the boat is a floating piece of space, a place without a place, that … Continue reading →

Posted in empire, imperialism & colonialism, political economy, seafaring, ships, the sea | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Transport capital

Posted on 30 May 2014 by Laleh Khalili

There is a lot to chew on here, but this sentence really struck me: “As for finance, there’s been no tendency for its executives’ pay to outpace that of nonfinancial executives. On the contrary: even during the bubble years of the 2000s, … Continue reading →

Posted in capital accumulation, finance and insurance, logistics, political economy, transport | Leave a comment