Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic data collected on the job with longshoremen at the Ports of Los Angeles/Long Beach, this paper provides a critical analysis of the struggle over Maersk’s ongoing efforts to automate Pier 400 at the Port of Los Angeles.

Paper long abstract:

Since 2018, the 16,000+ longshoremen whose labor powers the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have organized a series of protests aimed at forestalling a massive new port automation project currently being implemented by Maersk APL, which operates the port’s largest container terminal. Drawing on interviews and ethnographic data collected on the job with longshoremen at the Southern California port complex, this paper argues that port automation is a ruse––it is, in effect, a ploy to enable management to reduce labor costs and undermine longshore power. The paper plays out in three parts. Part one consists of an account of the debate at LA in conversation with recent scholarly work that deals critically with the politics of automation. In part two, I analyze two key pieces of automated port equipment, namely the driverless container cranes that Maersk has begun to install at Pier 400 and the automated container sorting yard at the nearby Long Beach Container Terminal, the latter of which is based on an optical AI system with backup human-in-the-loop operators. And finally, in part three I compare the experience of working on an automated terminal to the experience of working at a conventional terminal. Central here is the concept of “the audibles of labor,” a longshore term that refers to the ability of port workers to adjust their work plan on the fly by talking to one another on the job. Port automation, I argue, is an overt attack on the audibles of labor.

Paper short abstract:

Based on ethnographic research aboard a mixed nationality crewed gas tanker, this paper offers an alternative perspective of work in the globalised maritime industry by bringing attention to the organisational structures which make the everyday running of a ship possible.

Paper long abstract:

Increasing standardisation is a key feature of the shipping industry. In practical terms, standardisation practices facilitate movement across and between different segments of the shipping industry through fostering uniformity and implementing industry-wide technical standards.

This paper explores the ways that both low-and high-tech infrastructure influence everyday maritime work by examining the ways that seafarers use and understand them in their everyday work. What does it mean that work is standardised and in which ways are standards implemented in the everyday organisation of maritime work? Secondly, what kind of work practice emerge in this intersection between, on the one hand, formalised and standardised work arrangements and, on the other hand, its execution, and what are the different and adaptive ways that seafarers respond to working in an inflexible work environment? Understanding what these processes of standardisation entails and the tensions that arise from the challenging task of upholding and maintaining them, is the subject of this paper.

By bringing attention to the organisational structures which makes the everyday running of a ship possible and by examining the work that actually takes place on board i show how seafarers, despite their unequally distributed positions, power, and working conditions, manage to keep a vessel afloat. As an anthropological study of maritime work, it tells the story of the experiences that seafarers have of maritime labour by critically examining how highly racialised unequal social relations form an integral part of the maritime shipping industry today.

Paper short abstract:

This paper addresses the transformation of power relations in Khorgos, a logistical hub on the Sino-Kazakh border. Triggered by multiple crises, truckers expressed their dissatisfaction with the abuse of logistical power. Through protests they hoped to get reconnected to the cross-border trade.

Paper long abstract:

In the last decade Kazakhstan proved to be a stable logistical partner within China´s Belt and Road Initiative. In January 2022 an unprecedented upheaval, manifesting people´s frustration with hiking gas prices and political elites, swept across the country and damaged this image. The protests were preceded by nearly two years of a raging pandemic and followed by the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war.

However, the crises also had a consolidating impact: they revealed logisticians´ dissatisfaction with endemic corruption and the abuse of power associated with the clan of Kazakhstan´s former president Nursultan Nazarbaev. Notoriously long queues of trucks in Khorgos, a main logistical hub on the Sino-Kazakh border, were emblematic for the logistical power monopoly. Following the January upheaval were truckers´ protests in Khorgos pointing at their precarious situation: “We can't wait any longer!”

The truckers´ protests following Kazakhstan´s multiple crises furthered a reconfiguration of power in the realm of logistics. This transformation is shown by data based on 17 months of ethnographic field research between 2016 and 2021 in south-eastern Kazakhstan.

This paper aims to make three contributions. First, empirically: the truckers´ protests in Khorgos show how the monopolization of logistics by political elites in Kazakhstan is encountered; second, methodologically: transformation is studied at a border crossing, an infrastructural choke point, which blatantly exposes logistical power relations; third, conceptually: the crises are seen as connectors rather than ruptures by rendering visible inequalities and (re-)linking disconnected logisticians to the cross-border trade.

Paper short abstract:

This paper focus on socio-technical dimensions at stake in the logistic behind blood donation and transfusion. It is based on my current thesis work, which aims to retrace the “social life” of donated/collected blood. It will rely on fieldwork with drivers in charge of delivering blood to hospitals.

Paper long abstract:

In a context of constant need for blood products and a shrinking pool of potential donors, the Red Cross must be inventive to stimulate donations, while ensuring efficiency of the collection and redistribution system, as blood is valued and has a limited shelf life. Blood donations are first centralized, then re dispatched after treatments and analysis to hospitals in French-speaking Belgium. I will mobilize the concept of "vital mobilities" (Sodero 2018), to explain how daily events or crises challenge these mobilities in a Belgian context.

In this communication, I will explore some socio-technical questions raised by the transport of blood which is symbolically invested and essential for healthcare. How is the transfer of blood between people organized from a practical point of view? How does the aim to be nationally blood self-sufficient combine with the delivery of blood components from abroad and to industries elsewhere? How to articulate the altruistic rhetoric about blood donation with the monetary aspects of it? Indeed, the transport of blood raises specific socio-technical questions while being carried out by both professionals and volunteers. This association of actors at the very heart of this supply logistics may reveal the complex and ambivalent nature of the phenomenon.

This communication will be based on my thesis work in progress which aims to follow the blood between a donor and a recipient in Belgium. I will particularly mobilize my field materials developed with the drivers who deliver blood orders to hospitals, with whom I’ve shared the road.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores European truckers considerations of their place in the economy, their responsibilities and abilities to negotiate with or resist the forces of deregulation, fast technological change and public opinion that change, criticize and inform the role and status as truckers.

Paper long abstract:

Long-haul trucking is an essential component of the international capitalist economy, ensuring the transport of wares and goods. The sector is also fraught with controversial issues such as road- and traffic safety to smuggling and social dumping. Integral to these issues are The Long-Haul truckers themselves, often described in the court of public opinion as roadside cowboys and irresponsible actors, that are insufficiently regulated and controlled on one hand, and on the other as the initial essential workers in the progress of a modern Europe.

Based on fieldwork among European truckers this paper explores the lifeworld’s of the long-haul lifestyle as the truckers consider their places in the economy, their responsibilities as workers for both the safety of their cargo, but also the safety of the wider public. Further exploring their abilities to negotiate with or resist the forces of deregulation, fast technological change and public opinion that change, criticize and inform the role and status of the long-haul trucker as employee, icon, worker and moral people.