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.