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: Uncategorized
Publication: A World Built on Sand and Oil
This is probably one of my favourite publications, in part because I was pushed and pushed by Lapham Quarterly‘s superb editors. The essay compares the trade in oil and sand today to think through maritime transportation, the building of infrastructures, the … 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
Publication: The Roads to Power: The Infrastructure of Counterinsurgency
It has been years since I posted here, but I am going to quickly provide some links to various publications related to the project here. The first is an article that conjugates my research on transport infrastructures with my counterinsurgency … Continue reading
Domination, Dispossession and Struggle in the Making of Infrastructure and Logistics
Last night (20 February), Deb Cowen (Toronto), Charmaine Chua (Oberlin), Rafeef Ziadah (SOAS) and I had a conversation about the politics of infrastructure and logistics. Here is the recording for the event:
Religious fable about infrastructure
Source: Siyar al-Muluk by Nizam al-Mulk (died, 1092). Translation by Navīd Zarrinnal: “”They say when Umar was about to leave this world, his son asked him: “When will I see you?” Umar replied: “In the next world.” His son said: “I … Continue reading
Posted in infrastructure, Uncategorized
Leave a comment
The use of free ports to stash arts
Interesting older item from New York Times on the use of free ports to stash away artworks (and other contraband): The drab free port zone near the Geneva city center, a compound of blocky gray and vanilla warehouses surrounded by train … Continue reading
The poetry of medieval maritime travel
I have been reading Arab navigation manuals and travelogues, and there is such poetry in the navigation manuals in particular. It is the liminality of the navigation texts in particular – between art and science, familiar and wholly other. I … Continue reading
Posted in Middle East, seafaring, the sea, Travels, Uncategorized
2 Comments
Medieval Arab Naviation
“More interesting is the testimony of Ibn al-Mujawir who reports that in 626 A.H./1228-9 A.D. a ship arrived in Aden from Qumr (Comoros or Madagascar); the art of navigation of the people of Qumr impressed him as superior to that … Continue reading
Posted in Middle East, ports, seafaring, the sea, Travels, Uncategorized
Leave a 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
The Multivalence of Infrastructures II – Rail
I am reading a fascinating article about colonial engineering. Canay Ozden’s fabulous “Pontifex Minimus” is about the British engineer of the Low (or old) Aswan Dam, and the article just drips with all sorts of wonderful quotable sections. For example, … Continue reading
The Gamming 