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THE POLITICS OF LOGISTICS AND THE GLOBAL

Giorgio Grappi (University of Bologna)

May 2-5 • 5.00-7.00 pm • Aula SPECOLA

From a discrete branch of transport and distribution activity, logistics has become a driver of global capitalism and a leading force behind institutional and political transformation.  Different forms of «protologistics» (Bologna, 2010) and assemblages of space and connectivity have been present in the past in the deployment of armies or economic activities, as well as in the imperial constellations of power. Nevertheless, critical literature has demonstrated that the so-called “logistical revolution” has lead to a complex transformation of the economic process with wider implications (Allen, 1994). By reshaping the relation between circulation and production, through the introduction of new technical instruments and protocols, and producing «infrastructural spaces» along globally connected supply chains, logistics has become a leading force in the constitution of the global (Easterling, 2015; Cowen, 2015; Mezzadra and Neilson, 2015). From performing specific tactical functions in order to implement decisions, logistics has increasingly become at the same time an organizational force and a political discourse that cut across political entities and institutions, with strong implications for an understanding of the transformations of sovereignty and the state form. Far from being restricted to the economic domain, this transformation implies a reorganization of territory and the formation of hybrid institutional settings cutting across the geopolitics of nation states along what we call the “politics of corridors” (Grappi, 2016). The course will introduce the students to the functioning and discourse of logistics, analysing its implications for a critical assessment of the transformations of political spaces against the global. Discussing the politics of corridors in relation with the “One Belt, One Road” strategy adopted by China, the infrastructural projects in India and the formation of transeuropean networks, the module will then offer an insight on globalization and contemporary global politics.

Lecture 1: Logistics: meanings and historical trajectories
Lecture 2: Logistics beyond logistics
Lecture 3: States, infrastructural spaces and the politics of logistics
Lecture 4: Corridors and the spectres of logistical institutions

References:

  • Allen W.B. (1997), The Logistics Revolution and Transportation, «Annals of the American Academy of Political and So- cial Science», vol. 553, Transport at the Millennium, pp. 106-116. 
  • Bologna S. (2010), Le multinazionali del mare. Letture sul sistema marittimo-portuale, Egea, Milano. 
  • Cowen D. (2014), The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. 
  • Easterling K. (2014), Exstrastatecraft. The Power of Infrastructure Space, Verso, London-Brooklyn.
  • Mezzadra S. and Neilson B., eds. (2015), Extraction, Logistics, and Finance, Special Issue, «South Atlantic Quarterly», vol. 114, n. 1, pp. 1-190.
  • Grappi G. (2016), Logistica, Ediesse, Roma.

Giorgio Grappi (PhD) is research fellow at the University of Bologna. His main research areas include logistics, the transformation of the State form and the political dimension of migrant labour. He has recently published the book Logistica (Ediesse, Roma, 2016)