Logistical geographies

Abstract

Although logistics are fundamentally geographical and of critical importance to contemporary society, it is only relatively recently that human geographers and cognate social scientists have started to meaningfully engage with the topic. This paper explores this recent growth of interest, which encompasses the work of transport geographers, economic geographers, labour geographers, mobilities scholars and critical logistics scholars. It synthesises, reviews and evaluates this research around four themes: logistics, cities and regional development; logistics and global production networks; logistics labour; and infrastructure, power and violence. These themes are presented in the loose order in which they have emerged in the literature; while these topics have originated in particular subdisciplines, important conversations are now starting to emerge between different kinds of scholars both within and across these themes. These conversations have also increasingly connected geographers into vibrant interdisciplinary debates involving researchers from political science, sociology, anthropology, labour studies, and architecture and planning, among others.

Automated infrastructure: COVID-19 and the shifting geographies of supply chain capitalism

“…Coe and Yeung (2015 : 5) describe this strategy as a form of ‘spatial fix’, whereby ‘lead firms in manufacturing and service industries seek lower-cost suppliers in international markets’, through constructing networks of value activity across borders. Combined with ‘regulatory frameworks, network integration, place marketing, labour relations and political climate’, institutional and material infrastructures serve as anchor points upon which ‘footloose’ capital and resources can organize ( Coe, 2020 : 4).…”

“…Infrastructure work – or work done to keep capital’s myriad infrastructures moving – is particularly noteworthy as it is one of the last ‘frontiers’ where value is being created, often through the extraction of labour in labour-intensive processes such as distribution, transport and warehousing, as well as retail, finance and administration ( Cowen, 2010 , 2014 ; Rossiter, 2016 ). When even this labour becomes ‘ossified and made concrete in the shape and form of a machine’ ( Kirsch and Mitchell, 2004 : 696), the tertiary sectors of global production networks (GPNs), then, become hostile to workers as well ( Coe, 2020 ), potentially affecting not just blue-collar workers, but also white-collar ones ( Lee, 2018 ). It triggers a configuration of exchange that increasingly and unsustainably places waged work, but not consumption, outside of capital’s circuits, further heightening capital’s contradictions ( Harvey, 2014 : 104).…”

Cross‐border expansion of digital platforms and transformation of the trade and distribution networks of imported fresh fruits from Southeast Asia to China

“…The power asymmetries between digital platforms as a new type of lead firms and other actors in industrial restructuring driven by digital platforms could be better understood from the GPN/GVC frameworks. As suggested by Coe (2020: 5) from the GPN perspective, ‘there was merit in a “twin” GPN perspective that sought to analytically distinguish between the role played by logistics firms in client GPNs (inter‐industry dynamics) and the relationships between logistics and transport operators of different kinds that underpinned the ability of logistics firms to serve those client GPNs (intra‐industry dynamics). To this end, the intersections of the two types of GPN create a complex mesh of both vertical and horizontal connections between what Cui and Hertz (2011) term ‘‘industrial supply chains’’ and ‘logistics firm networks’”.…”

“…To this end, the intersections of the two types of GPN create a complex mesh of both vertical and horizontal connections between what Cui and Hertz (2011) term ‘‘industrial supply chains’’ and ‘logistics firm networks’”. The conceptualization of logistics firms as simultaneously specialized suppliers to clients and lead firms in their own GPNs (Coe, 2020) can be extended to examine the inter‐, intra‐ and extra‐platform strategies in the interplay between the cross‐border expansion of digital platforms and digital transformation of production networks/value chains of variegated industries that have been penetrated by digital platforms.…”

Coping with commoditization: The third-party logistics industry in the Asia-Pacific

“…Chua et al., 2018; Cowen, 2014). These exciting intellectual trajectories have seen scholars from economic and transport geography, political science, sociology, labour studies, and architecture and planning, among others, joining the debate (Coe, 2020).…”