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Long abstract:

Recent research in political economy and science and technology studies has emphasized the rising importance of intangible assets, particularly data, in capital accumulation. While existing literature suggests that firms accumulating significant intangible assets gain market dominance, this article challenges this narrative through an empirical case study of TradeLens, a former digital platform in maritime logistics. Our analysis reveals that the value of data hinges on both its circulation and accumulation. Data exchange among supply chain actors streamlines logistics processes, enhancing reliability and flexibility. Simultaneously, aggregating data facilitates the provision of complex logistics services and deepens market understanding, creating a competitive advantage. This dual nature introduces tensions between the imperative to collaborate and exchange data and the inclination to accumulate it and compete. The article further suggests a nuanced perspective, proposing that the interplay between collaboration and competition in the digital realm may lead to the emergence of data cartels rather than monopolies. Despite these efforts, challenges persist in shaping market structures conducive to such collaboration.

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Short abstract:

At the crossroads of STS, sociology of agriculture, and political economy, this communication analyzes the power dynamics and the logistical governance underlying a digital platform developed by French wheat value chain actors to visualize and manage wheat flows at the national scale.

Long abstract:

Like other commodities such as oil, wheat logistics is strongly entangled with political and economic power: acting upon wheat flows (through interruption, optimization, financialization, etc.) has immediate consequences on food security, geopolitical stability, and global markets. Nowadays, wheat logistics is going through digitization processes, to optimize efficiency and increase competitiveness with algorithms and data. Among the French wheat sector, value chain actors recently started to develop digital platforms to visualize and manage wheat flows. Aligned with the historical role of European storage policies in the agricultural sector, this project operates in a strong public-private dialogue organized around data production, public funding, and national transportation strategies. But this platform also shows a clear positioning of French private actors upon data production to optimize wheat national flows. At the crossroads of STS, sociology of commodities, and political economy, this presentation investigates the following questions: Does digitization implement a new politics for wheat flows? What type of power dynamics between public and private actors does this digitization entail? I rely on interviews with Intercéréales, the French organism gathering and representing wheat value chain actors; and with FranceAgriMer, the public institution in charge of the wheat logistical policies to study both the platform design and how public-private actors collaborate to implement a national logistical strategy for the wheat sector. I show that this digitization aims at strengthening the integration of private actors within the value chain, but also increases the competition between European agro-logistical businesses to govern wheat flows.

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Long abstract:

This paper focuses on shifts in energy logistics caused by decarbonization and electrification. While renewable energy sources (RES) such as hydro, solar, or wind power have been historically characterized as unregulated streams or flows (Malm 2013), fossil sources have been extracted and distributed as fuel (Mitchell 2009). Turning the flows into fuel has had significant political implications, permitting large amounts of energy to be stored, delivered, and deployed on demand. RES are usually not captured in the fuel form that would allow such storage and flexibility of use, creating a demand for new energy storage technologies such as lithium-ion batteries. In reaction to this increasing demand, the largest utility corporation in central Europe, ČEZ Group, plans to reopen a decommissioned mine in the inner periphery of northern Bohemia to extract lithium. At the same time, the corporation built a 10MW battery bearing 90 tons of lithium in a traditionally industrial area of Vítkovice while planning to develop additional 300MW of similar storage capacities in other Czech industrial regions by 2030. These batteries are designed to store energy and balance the voltage spikes caused by the streams of RES.

The increasing demand for lithium puts pressure on the (more than human) communities near the mining sites. While the green transition bears promise of undoing the regimes of extractivism, the re-emergence of the fuel form in green energy reinvigorates possibly harmful regimes of energy logistics and reproduces the existing temporalities and spatialities of capitalist production and reproduction.

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Long abstract:

Logistical hubs, such as docks, dry ports, and container terminals, have gained attention in recent years within the field of anthropological studies of logistics. As roads became emblematic of 21st-century material infrastructure (Dalakoglou and Harvey 2015), this trend coincided with the launch of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. Within this context, the "Western Europe – Western China" (WE-WC) highway in southeastern Kazakhstan and the Khorgos dry port on the Sino-Kazakh border have received particular focus as international transit corridors.

However, less conspicuous are the individuals who assist in facilitating daily logistical operations along the highway, and for whom "logistics is the bread of Kazakhstan". Their claims and contributions to logistical developments are frequently overlooked, yet they are crucial as they provide valuable insights into the scale and power dynamics within logistical worlds.

Over a 16-month period of ethnographic field research conducted in southeastern Kazakhstan between 2016 and 2019, with additional one-month follow-up visits each year, I examined the opportunities and challenges arising from the material infrastructures of the Khorgos dry port and the WE-WC highway.

This paper aims to make three contributions: Empirically examining the impact of multi-scale politics on local landscapes, with a focus on roadside economies; methodologically highlighting grassroots perspectives in logistics through the voices of less visible actors; and theoretically exploring the interplay of logistics, power, and law by focusing on how marginalized logistical actors navigate and circumvent ad hoc regulations.

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Long abstract:

Urban freight transportation is essential to most urban activities, but it is criticised for its important contribution to air pollution, traffic congestion and noise. Because of this, some voices are calling for a transformation of urban delivery fleets towards lighter and less polluting vehicles (Bigo et al. 2022).

In this paper, I focus on two of these mid-size vehicles through a case study in the cities of Lyon (France) and Casablanca (Morrocco): cargo tricycles and mini-trucks. Both of these vehicles are significantly smaller, lighter, and can carry a lesser charge than standard light utility vehicles. I show that urban delivery work and its inscription in urban logistics systems is mediated by the use of these unconventional vehicles.

The two vehicles considered are perceived very differently: one the one hand, cargo tricycles are pretty recent in Lyon, where their use is considered innovative and trendy, and even subsidised by local authorities. On the other hand, mini-trucks, that have been operating in Casablanca for over ten years with dedicated vehicle markets and an established professional culture, are disregarded as informal transportation and not valued.

The delivery drivers using these vehicles operate under very different positions: in Lyon, most cargo tricycle riders are under regular employment and use company vehicles whereas in Casablanca, mini-truck drivers are paid on the task and are either using their own vehicle or renting it from someone else. Despite these differences, delivery work is a low-status work with difficult working conditions in both cities.

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Long abstract:

It has been noted that contemporary capitalism relies on well-managed inventories and optimized supply chains, more so than a disciplined proletariat and vertically integrated production (Tsing 2013). Lean management techniques have been extended from production onto the sphere of circulation, bringing maritime shipping to the fore—and efficiently-run, private or privatized seaports. This paper reports from ethnographic research in Mersin, Turkey—host to a port operated by Singaporean state-held corporation PSA since 2007. Port executives and employees explain the growth in the port’s trade volume since 2007 with the trope of efficiency increase under privatization. And yet, all around Mersin, talk about congestion will not stop. From freight forwarders to trade chamber representatives, many complain about long wait times for shipment release, specifically due to the port’s underinvestment in efficiency technologies. In this paper, I seek to disaggregate profitability, growth, and efficiency in the daily life of supply-chain capitalism. While profitability does motivate port executives in privatized settings, this motivation does not automatically translate into a search for increased efficiency, when profits can accrue from growth without efficiency, or even a level of congestion, given revenue from facility use rents. Actors operating in far-flung inter-Asian circuitries may find their efficiency investment motivation even further curbed if acting as the ports’ medium-term lessees. Technological efficiency is only one among many tools wielded by the overseers of global supply chains, often sacrificed for profitability to the dismay of producers and consumers, beholden to congested ports.