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Cargo Cult: Logistics, Labor, and the Secret Life of Supply Chains
Cargo Cult: Logistics, Labor, and the Secret Life of Supply Chains
상세정보
- 자료유형
- 학위논문 서양
- 최종처리일시
- 20260202105059
- ISBN
- 9798293893355
- DDC
- 910
- 서명/저자
- Cargo Cult: Logistics, Labor, and the Secret Life of Supply Chains
- 발행사항
- [Sl] : University of California, Berkeley, 2025
- 발행사항
- Ann Arbor : ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2025
- 형태사항
- 141 p
- 주기사항
- Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-04, Section: B.
- 주기사항
- Advisor: Kosek, Jake.
- 학위논문주기
- Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 2025.
- 초록/해제
- 요약This dissertation examines the contemporary labor politics and colonial history of the global logistics industry, focusing primarily on the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. It argues that logistics is not a recent technical innovation born of midcentury containerization, but rather a global political project with roots in early modern empire, whose material and conceptual infrastructure emerged through centuries of maritime conquest, racialized labor regimes, and territorial expansion. Moreover, it contends that logistics should not be understood as a neutral or purely economic system for the movement of goods, but rather as a mode of governance-a way of doing politics with technics-aimed at organizing space, time, and subjectivity in service to capital accumulation. Drawing on 14 months of collaborative ethnographic fieldwork with longshore workers at L.A./Long Beach, interviews with key industry actors, and archival research spanning three continents, the dissertation brings together empirical investigation with historical and theoretical analysis to suggest that today's logistics industry functions as a kind of cargo cult: an ideological formation obsessed with optimization, fixated on the commodity form, and haunted by the colonial past it seeks to obscure. In framing logistics this way, I aim to unsettle dominant narratives of technological progress and economic rationality, and to foreground instead the hidden histories, violences, and contestations that continue to shape global supply chains in the present.The dissertation consists of an introduction, three chapters, and a brief coda. Chapter one examines a conflict between L.A./Long Beach dockworkers and the shipping company Maersk over automating Pier 400, the largest container terminal in the Western Hemisphere. It argues that rather than replacing longshore labor outright, port automation displaces and conceals labor, and thus functions as a ruse. Chapter two offers a material genealogy of containership design to show how imperial logics are embedded in logistical infrastructures. Through archival work tracing the bulkhead from ancient China to the British Empire to South Korean shipyards, the chapter theorizes logistics as a colonial formation. Chapter three explores how automation transforms the sensory experience of longshore work. Drawing on Jacques Ranciere's notion of the "distribution of the sensible," it argues that logistical technics discipline perception in ways that produce both disorientation and new forms of political subjectivity, including worker paranoia. The coda speculates on these findings, outlines some lacunae, and describes directions for future research.
- 일반주제명
- Geography
- 일반주제명
- Industrial engineering
- 키워드
- Automation
- 키워드
- Containerization
- 키워드
- Empire
- 키워드
- Labor
- 키워드
- Logistics
- 키워드
- Technology
- 기타저자
- University of California, Berkeley Geography
- 기본자료저록
- Dissertations Abstracts International. 87-04B.
- 전자적 위치 및 접속
- 로그인 후 원문을 볼 수 있습니다.
MARC
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■00520260202105059
■006m o d
■007cr#unu||||||||
■020 ▼a9798293893355
■035 ▼a(MiAaPQ)AAI32235915
■040 ▼aMiAaPQ▼cMiAaPQ
■0820 ▼a910
■1001 ▼aAnderman, Nicholas Paul.
■24510▼aCargo Cult: Logistics, Labor, and the Secret Life of Supply Chains
■260 ▼a[Sl]▼bUniversity of California, Berkeley▼c2025
■260 1▼aAnn Arbor▼bProQuest Dissertations & Theses▼c2025
■300 ▼a141 p
■500 ▼aSource: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 87-04, Section: B.
■500 ▼aAdvisor: Kosek, Jake.
■5021 ▼aThesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 2025.
■520 ▼aThis dissertation examines the contemporary labor politics and colonial history of the global logistics industry, focusing primarily on the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. It argues that logistics is not a recent technical innovation born of midcentury containerization, but rather a global political project with roots in early modern empire, whose material and conceptual infrastructure emerged through centuries of maritime conquest, racialized labor regimes, and territorial expansion. Moreover, it contends that logistics should not be understood as a neutral or purely economic system for the movement of goods, but rather as a mode of governance-a way of doing politics with technics-aimed at organizing space, time, and subjectivity in service to capital accumulation. Drawing on 14 months of collaborative ethnographic fieldwork with longshore workers at L.A./Long Beach, interviews with key industry actors, and archival research spanning three continents, the dissertation brings together empirical investigation with historical and theoretical analysis to suggest that today's logistics industry functions as a kind of cargo cult: an ideological formation obsessed with optimization, fixated on the commodity form, and haunted by the colonial past it seeks to obscure. In framing logistics this way, I aim to unsettle dominant narratives of technological progress and economic rationality, and to foreground instead the hidden histories, violences, and contestations that continue to shape global supply chains in the present.The dissertation consists of an introduction, three chapters, and a brief coda. Chapter one examines a conflict between L.A./Long Beach dockworkers and the shipping company Maersk over automating Pier 400, the largest container terminal in the Western Hemisphere. It argues that rather than replacing longshore labor outright, port automation displaces and conceals labor, and thus functions as a ruse. Chapter two offers a material genealogy of containership design to show how imperial logics are embedded in logistical infrastructures. Through archival work tracing the bulkhead from ancient China to the British Empire to South Korean shipyards, the chapter theorizes logistics as a colonial formation. Chapter three explores how automation transforms the sensory experience of longshore work. Drawing on Jacques Ranciere's notion of the "distribution of the sensible," it argues that logistical technics discipline perception in ways that produce both disorientation and new forms of political subjectivity, including worker paranoia. The coda speculates on these findings, outlines some lacunae, and describes directions for future research.
■590 ▼aSchool code: 0028.
■650 4▼aGeography
■650 4▼aIndustrial engineering
■653 ▼aAutomation
■653 ▼aContainerization
■653 ▼aEmpire
■653 ▼aLabor
■653 ▼aLogistics
■653 ▼aTechnology
■690 ▼a0366
■690 ▼a0510
■690 ▼a0454
■690 ▼a0546
■71020▼aUniversity of California, Berkeley▼bGeography.
■7730 ▼tDissertations Abstracts International▼g87-04B.
■790 ▼a0028
■791 ▼aPh.D.
■792 ▼a2025
■793 ▼aEnglish
■85640▼uhttp://www.riss.kr/pdu/ddodLink.do?id=T17359314▼nKERIS▼z이 자료의 원문은 한국교육학술정보원에서 제공합니다.


