Cargomobilities Moving Materials in a Global Age

Objects and materials are on the move like never before, often at astonishing speeds and along hidden routeways. This collection opens to social scientific scrutiny the various systems which move objects about the world, examining their fateful implications for many people and places. Offering texts from key thinkers, the book presents case studies from around the world which report on efforts to establish, maintain, disrupt or transform the cargo-mobility systems which have grown so dramatically in scale and significance in recent decades.

1. Moving cargos, Thomas Birtchnell, Satya Savitzky and John Urry 1.1. Taking Stock 1.2. The Smooth System 1.3. Forgotten Spaces 1.4. Friction and Insecurities in the Smooth System 1.5. Other Systems 1.6. Cargo and resources 1.7. Changing cargomobilities? 2. Distribution Centres as Distributed Places: Mobility, infrastructure, and truck traffic, Julie Cidell 2.1. Introduction 2.2. Space and Spatiality 2.3. Freight, Warehousing, and Distribution Centres 2.4. Distribution Centres as Distributed Places 2.5. Mobility within the Distribution Centre 2.6. Distributed Mobility 2.7. Distributed Labor 2.8. Distribution of Information 2.9. Distribution and Distributed Places 3. Maritime Cargomobilities: The impossibilities of representation, Philip E. Steinberg 3.1. Cartographies of Maritime Transport 3.2. The Forgotten Space 3.3. Enacting Cargomobilities 3.4. Conclusion 4. A City that Exports Air: Containers, traffic and logistics in Sydney’s intermodal network and beyond, Brett Neilson 4.1. The Container in Time 4.2. China-led Globalization 4.3. Sydney Traffic 4.4. Conclusion 5. Smuggling mobilities: Parasitic relations, and the aporetic openness of the shipping container, Craig Martin 5.1. Introduction 5.2. The Distributive Space of Cargomobilities 5.3. The Intermodal ISO Shipping Container 5.4. Unruly Cargomobilities 5.5. Parasitic Relations 5.6. Parasitic Entanglements of Legal and Illegal Cargomobilities 5.7. The Smuggler-Object: Nesting on the flow of parasitic relations 5.8. Conclusion 6. The New Zones of Circulation: On the production and securitisation of maritime frontiers in West Africa, Julian Stenmanns, Stefan Ouma 6.1. Introduction 6.2. Reframing West African Econom

Thomas Birtchnell is Lecturer in Geography and Sustainable Communities, University of Wollongong. Satya Savitzky is a PhD candidate in the Sociology Department at Lancaster University.John Urry is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University.