Since the mid-20th century, logistics has evolved into a wide-ranging science of circulation involved in planning and managing flows of innumerable kinds. In this introductory essay, we take stock of the ascendancy and proliferation of logistics, proposing a critical engagement with the field. We argue that logistics is not limited to the management of supply chains, military or corporate. Rather, it is better understood as a calculative logic and spatial practice of circulation that is at the fore of the reorganization of capitalism and war. Viewed from this perspective, the rise of logistics has transformed not only the physical movement of materials but also the very rationality by which space is organized. It has remade economic and military space according to a universalizing logic of abstract flow, exacerbating existing patterns of uneven geographical development. Drawing on the articles that make up this themed issue, we propose that a critical approach to logistics is characterized by three core commitments: (1) a rejection of the field's self-depiction as an apolitical science of management, along with a commitment to highlighting the relations of power and acts of violence that underpin it; (2) an 2 interest in exposing the flaws, irrationalities, and vulnerabilities of logistical regimes; and (3) an orientation toward contestation and struggle within logistical networks.
The growth and transformation of logistics have been attributed to a specific confluence of forces that compelled firms to turn their attention to the circulation of commodities in the second half of the 20th century. This article seeks to develop a more theoretically informed account of the logistics revolution by delineating the industry’s role in promoting the accumulation of capital and the reproduction of capitalism. Drawing on Marxian geographical thought, I contend that the logistical turn of the past five decades has facilitated a multifaceted “spatial fix” to capitalism’s chronic problem of overaccumulation—one that has reconfigured the geographies of circulation as well as production, consumption, and appropriation. This argument has important implications for our understanding of globalization. By enhancing the mobility of both commodity capital and the production process itself, advances in logistics have been an essential, albeit neglected, condition of global economic integration since the 1970s.
This study examines the relationship between gentrification and the transport mode selected for the journey to work. A review of surveys, ethnographies and electoral records shows a liberal and anti-suburban ideology associated with gentrification, including endorsement of sustainability and the public household. Consequently, one would expect to find non-automobile transport prevailing in gentrified districts. Data secured from the Census of Canada permit this proposition to be examined for the central cities of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. The results show some complexity, due in part to divisions internal to gentrified neighbourhoods. The most robust results reveal an overrepresentation of cycling to work in gentrified districts and, surprisingly in light of a putative left-liberal ideology, an underutilisation of public transport compared with other districts.
This article examines an emerging form of interspatial competition premised on attracting cargo traffic and value‐added logistics activities. Against the backdrop of economic globalization and the revolution in logistics, place‐based actors are increasingly vying to insert their localities into transnational supply chains. I explore the causes, conditions and consequences of this burgeoning growth strategy through a study of the dynamics surrounding the expansion of the Panama Canal, opened to shipping traffic in June 2016, and the consequent battle among North American ports to attract a new generation of oversized container vessels. The spatial practices of mobile actors in the logistics industry, I argue, represent the leading edge of capitalism's tendency to render places interchangeable—a condition I call fungible space. The abstract logic of spatial substitution, however, can never fully escape the concrete qualities of particular places, which form the very conditions of interchangeability itself. This dialectic of spatial fungibility and geographic specificity has intensified rivalries for volatile commodity flows and made logistics‐oriented development a particularly risky growth strategy for cities. What is at stake in these speculative ventures is the welfare of vulnerable communities and workers, who disproportionately bear the costs and risks of supply‐chain volatility.
The study of public finance—the role of government in the economy—has faded in geography as attention to private finance has grown. Disrupting the tendency to fetishize private financial power, this article proposes an expanded conception of public finance that emphasizes its role in shaping geographies of inequality. We conceptualize the relationship between public and private finance as a dynamic interface characterized today by asymmetrical power relations, path-dependent policy solutions, the depoliticization of markets, and uneven distributional effects. A reimagined theory and praxis of public finance can contribute to building abolitionist futures, and geographers are well positioned to advance this project.
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