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Archaeologies of the Belt and Road Initiative
https://madeinchinajournal.com/2021/12/01/archaeologies-of-the-belt-and-road-initiative/
Since its announcement in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become the main lens through which both observers and stakeholders trace China’s global footprint. Whether cheered on as a new engine of economic development in a fraught and increasingly unequal world or frowned upon as a masterplan through which the Chinese authorities are attempting to establish global hegemony, the infrastructure component of the BRI has become such an important frame in discussions of Global China that less tangible aspects that are not in its purview tend to be lost or overlooked.
https://madeinchinajournal.com/2021/12/01/archaeologies-of-the-belt-and-road-initiative/
Since its announcement in 2013, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has become the main lens through which both observers and stakeholders trace China’s global footprint. Whether cheered on as a new engine of economic development in a fraught and increasingly unequal world or frowned upon as a masterplan through which the Chinese authorities are attempting to establish global hegemony, the infrastructure component of the BRI has become such an important frame in discussions of Global China that less tangible aspects that are not in its purview tend to be lost or overlooked.
Article, Ghost Ships
https://logicmag.io/pivot/ghost-ships/
Squinting against the sun, I tried to imagine the ships another way: as numbers on a screen, cells in a spreadsheet, dots on a grid. I’d been reading about the information transfer that accompanies the movement of these vessels, and I knew that the scale of this data is nearly as impressive as the ships’ sheer size. Ships like those docked at Long Beach are vital links in the global supply chain, but they’re also floating “data terminals,” as the global maritime industry consultancy Lloyd’s Register put it in 2015. Increasingly, these vessels receive and transmit an enormous amount of information: about their position, of course, but also about weather, traffic, temperature, maintenance, staffing, ocean conditions, and much more. The streams of information are so complex that they threaten to exceed humans’ ability to interpret them. That’s partly why many newer vessels—“smart ships,” in industry parlance—use complex algorithms (some of them devised by Google and Microsoft) to chart their courses. Within the next decade, carriers hope to launch fleets of automated or remote-controlled vessels—“ghost ships,” as they’re sometimes called.
https://logicmag.io/pivot/ghost-ships/
Squinting against the sun, I tried to imagine the ships another way: as numbers on a screen, cells in a spreadsheet, dots on a grid. I’d been reading about the information transfer that accompanies the movement of these vessels, and I knew that the scale of this data is nearly as impressive as the ships’ sheer size. Ships like those docked at Long Beach are vital links in the global supply chain, but they’re also floating “data terminals,” as the global maritime industry consultancy Lloyd’s Register put it in 2015. Increasingly, these vessels receive and transmit an enormous amount of information: about their position, of course, but also about weather, traffic, temperature, maintenance, staffing, ocean conditions, and much more. The streams of information are so complex that they threaten to exceed humans’ ability to interpret them. That’s partly why many newer vessels—“smart ships,” in industry parlance—use complex algorithms (some of them devised by Google and Microsoft) to chart their courses. Within the next decade, carriers hope to launch fleets of automated or remote-controlled vessels—“ghost ships,” as they’re sometimes called.
Website, Hamish van der Ven
https://hamishvanderven.com/research/
My research examines the role of businesses, NGOs, and standard setters in solving transboundary environmental challenges. This research program is inherently interdisciplinary and seeks to put elements of political science, environmental studies and business/management in conversation. In the absence of comprehensive state-led solutions, a host of innovative transnational governance initiatives have emerged that use market forces to address environmental problems. The rise of these new forms of governance raises a number of questions. Under what conditions are they likely to be effective? How do they interact with the traditional authority of governments and international organizations? And what negative externalities do the create? I address these questions across a number of related projects, reviewed below.
https://hamishvanderven.com/research/
My research examines the role of businesses, NGOs, and standard setters in solving transboundary environmental challenges. This research program is inherently interdisciplinary and seeks to put elements of political science, environmental studies and business/management in conversation. In the absence of comprehensive state-led solutions, a host of innovative transnational governance initiatives have emerged that use market forces to address environmental problems. The rise of these new forms of governance raises a number of questions. Under what conditions are they likely to be effective? How do they interact with the traditional authority of governments and international organizations? And what negative externalities do the create? I address these questions across a number of related projects, reviewed below.
Logistics, Video installation tracking the global flow of products
https://logisticsartproject.com/
Is it possible to get to the source of the things we consume? In 2008, we came up with the idea to follow the reverse journey of a product. Our case was a tiny plastic electronic product, a pedometer. The sort of anonymous clutter that everyday life is full of. Something that just is. We wanted to follow the pedometer from the store in Stockholm where it was bought to the factory in China where it was manufactured. But how? We started by googling the word “logistics”. Four years later we found ourselves on the largest container ship in the world on our way from Sweden to China. We had started the journey by truck to Middle Sweden, then by freight train to the port of Gothenburg, and after four weeks at sea, we filmed from a truck again, this time from the port of Shenzhen to a factory in Bao´an.
https://logisticsartproject.com/
Is it possible to get to the source of the things we consume? In 2008, we came up with the idea to follow the reverse journey of a product. Our case was a tiny plastic electronic product, a pedometer. The sort of anonymous clutter that everyday life is full of. Something that just is. We wanted to follow the pedometer from the store in Stockholm where it was bought to the factory in China where it was manufactured. But how? We started by googling the word “logistics”. Four years later we found ourselves on the largest container ship in the world on our way from Sweden to China. We had started the journey by truck to Middle Sweden, then by freight train to the port of Gothenburg, and after four weeks at sea, we filmed from a truck again, this time from the port of Shenzhen to a factory in Bao´an.
Book: Value Chains, The New Economic Imperialism
https://monthlyreview.org/product/value-chains/
Value Chains uncovers the concrete processes through which multinational corporations, located primarily in the Global North, capture value from the Global South. We are brought face to face with various state-of-the-art corporate strategies that enforce “economical” and “flexible” production, including labor management methods, aimed to reassert the imperial dominance of the North, while continuing the dependency of the Global South and polarizing the global economy. Case studies of Indonesian suppliers exemplify the growing burden borne by the workers of the Global South, whose labor creates the surplus value that enriches the capitalists of the North, as well as the secondary capitals of the South. Today, those who control the value chains and siphon off the profits are primarily financial interests with vast economic and political power—the power that must be broken if the global working class is to liberate itself.
https://monthlyreview.org/product/value-chains/
Value Chains uncovers the concrete processes through which multinational corporations, located primarily in the Global North, capture value from the Global South. We are brought face to face with various state-of-the-art corporate strategies that enforce “economical” and “flexible” production, including labor management methods, aimed to reassert the imperial dominance of the North, while continuing the dependency of the Global South and polarizing the global economy. Case studies of Indonesian suppliers exemplify the growing burden borne by the workers of the Global South, whose labor creates the surplus value that enriches the capitalists of the North, as well as the secondary capitals of the South. Today, those who control the value chains and siphon off the profits are primarily financial interests with vast economic and political power—the power that must be broken if the global working class is to liberate itself.
Article: Infrastructure and Logistics
https://www.societyandspace.org/topics/infrastructure-and-logistics
Foregrounds the built systems or networks that coordinate the circulation of things, people, money, and data into integrated wholes. Provides an analytical framework for critically interrogating the relation between built networks and their spatial mobilities, including attention to their institutional dimensions, political economies, and forms of life that interact with and reshape their geographies.
https://www.societyandspace.org/topics/infrastructure-and-logistics
Foregrounds the built systems or networks that coordinate the circulation of things, people, money, and data into integrated wholes. Provides an analytical framework for critically interrogating the relation between built networks and their spatial mobilities, including attention to their institutional dimensions, political economies, and forms of life that interact with and reshape their geographies.
Cabinet Magazine Special issue on Logistics (2012)
https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/47/index.php
Early example of Supply Studies
https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/47/index.php
Early example of Supply Studies
The Deadly Life Of Logistics
https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/the-deadly-life-of-logistics-by-deborah-cowen
Deborah Cowen’s The Deadly Life of Logistics is the first of its kind: an original, imaginative, and critical theorisation of the centrality of violence to the modern logistics business. The book beautifully illuminates the conjuncture between capital accumulation and practices of security and securitisation on a global scale, zooming down to specific places and moments to better illustrate the inner workings of this conjuncture.
https://www.societyandspace.org/articles/the-deadly-life-of-logistics-by-deborah-cowen
Deborah Cowen’s The Deadly Life of Logistics is the first of its kind: an original, imaginative, and critical theorisation of the centrality of violence to the modern logistics business. The book beautifully illuminates the conjuncture between capital accumulation and practices of security and securitisation on a global scale, zooming down to specific places and moments to better illustrate the inner workings of this conjuncture.
MANIFEST: Supply Chain Platform
https://manifest.supplystudies.com/
This is the digital (and physical) supply chain for Manifest itself. Manifest is, according to the about page: "an investigative toolkit intended for researchers, journalists, students, and scholars interested in visualizing, analyzing, and documenting supply chains, production lines, and trade networks."
https://manifest.supplystudies.com/
This is the digital (and physical) supply chain for Manifest itself. Manifest is, according to the about page: "an investigative toolkit intended for researchers, journalists, students, and scholars interested in visualizing, analyzing, and documenting supply chains, production lines, and trade networks."
Article: Studying Logistics
https://logicmag.io/scale/see-no-evil/
The thing that still confused me is how reliable supply chains are, or seem to be. The world is unpredictable—you’ve got earthquakes, labor strikes, mudslides, every conceivable tragedy—and yet as a consumer I can pretty much count on getting what I want whenever I want it. How can it be possible to predict a package’s arrival down to the hour, yet know almost nothing about the conditions of its manufacture?
In the supply-chain universe, there are large, tech-forward companies like Amazon and Apple, which write and maintain their own supply-chain software, and there's everyone else. And most everyone else uses SAP. SAP—the name stands for Systems, Applications, and Products—is a behemoth, less a single piece of software than a large, interlocking suite of applications, joined together through a shared database. Companies purchase SAP in "modules," and the supply-chain module interlocks with the rest of the suite. Among people who've used SAP, the reaction to hearing its name is often a pronounced sigh—like all large-scale enterprise software, SAP has a reputation for being frustrating.
https://logicmag.io/scale/see-no-evil/
The thing that still confused me is how reliable supply chains are, or seem to be. The world is unpredictable—you’ve got earthquakes, labor strikes, mudslides, every conceivable tragedy—and yet as a consumer I can pretty much count on getting what I want whenever I want it. How can it be possible to predict a package’s arrival down to the hour, yet know almost nothing about the conditions of its manufacture?
In the supply-chain universe, there are large, tech-forward companies like Amazon and Apple, which write and maintain their own supply-chain software, and there's everyone else. And most everyone else uses SAP. SAP—the name stands for Systems, Applications, and Products—is a behemoth, less a single piece of software than a large, interlocking suite of applications, joined together through a shared database. Companies purchase SAP in "modules," and the supply-chain module interlocks with the rest of the suite. Among people who've used SAP, the reaction to hearing its name is often a pronounced sigh—like all large-scale enterprise software, SAP has a reputation for being frustrating.
Article: Source Material, mining & devastation
https://reallifemag.com/source-material/
Over the last several years, a growing number of studies have tried to trace the vast networks of human labor, data, and natural resources that fuel our digital lives. From Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler’s “Anatomy of an AI System” to David Abraham’s The Elements of Power, these investigations cast new light on the exploitative practices masked by the staggering complexity of global supply chains.
https://reallifemag.com/source-material/
Over the last several years, a growing number of studies have tried to trace the vast networks of human labor, data, and natural resources that fuel our digital lives. From Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler’s “Anatomy of an AI System” to David Abraham’s The Elements of Power, these investigations cast new light on the exploitative practices masked by the staggering complexity of global supply chains.
From Hype to Hyperlinked: The Supply Chain of Tomorrow
https://techdetector.de/stories/from-hype-to-hyperlinked-the-supply-chain-of-tomorrow
This future scenario explores the role of technology in providing mechanisms for transparency, traceability, and accountability to support sustainable economic development. We consider the hyperlinked supply chain: a symbiotic articulation of digital technologies and tools across a ubiquitous, automated, and predominantly circular supply chain.
https://techdetector.de/stories/from-hype-to-hyperlinked-the-supply-chain-of-tomorrow
This future scenario explores the role of technology in providing mechanisms for transparency, traceability, and accountability to support sustainable economic development. We consider the hyperlinked supply chain: a symbiotic articulation of digital technologies and tools across a ubiquitous, automated, and predominantly circular supply chain.
Supply Studies Syllabus
https://supplystudies.com/syllabus/
The calamitous reach of the global commodity chain stands as a monument to modernity’s practice of production. As contemporary critiques consider its mounting intractability, they reveal the worldwide pattern of logistical machinery given by the media forms and historic technologies that govern its flow. In their conceptual simplicity and historical transigence lies an opportunity for transformation, for innovation, and for interruption. While the vocabulary it draws on might seem familiar, the language of logistics is not fixed. It must be made–and so can be re-made–by the tools and techniques assembled every day in service to supply.
https://supplystudies.com/syllabus/
The calamitous reach of the global commodity chain stands as a monument to modernity’s practice of production. As contemporary critiques consider its mounting intractability, they reveal the worldwide pattern of logistical machinery given by the media forms and historic technologies that govern its flow. In their conceptual simplicity and historical transigence lies an opportunity for transformation, for innovation, and for interruption. While the vocabulary it draws on might seem familiar, the language of logistics is not fixed. It must be made–and so can be re-made–by the tools and techniques assembled every day in service to supply.
Raodsides journal 7: #Logistics
https://roadsides.net/collection-no-007/
With this issue of Roadsides, we will take a closer look at the various disappearing acts and occasional spectacles of logistics. Typically, logistics figures only as a secondary dimension of infrastructure in its mundane register as “the study of boring things” (Star 1999). As a managerial science for designing the operative logics of “flow” through various infrastructures (e.g., trade, migration, data), logistics also appears as the handmaiden to the distinct movements it mediates. For instance, until recently, the logistics of commodity flows have been largely understudied in the social science of market economies, as most studies have focused either on production or consumption as an organizing economic trope. Similarly, research investigating the flows of migration or data infrastructures tend to sideline logistics as something not worthy of serious analysis, if they recognize it at all.
https://roadsides.net/collection-no-007/
With this issue of Roadsides, we will take a closer look at the various disappearing acts and occasional spectacles of logistics. Typically, logistics figures only as a secondary dimension of infrastructure in its mundane register as “the study of boring things” (Star 1999). As a managerial science for designing the operative logics of “flow” through various infrastructures (e.g., trade, migration, data), logistics also appears as the handmaiden to the distinct movements it mediates. For instance, until recently, the logistics of commodity flows have been largely understudied in the social science of market economies, as most studies have focused either on production or consumption as an organizing economic trope. Similarly, research investigating the flows of migration or data infrastructures tend to sideline logistics as something not worthy of serious analysis, if they recognize it at all.