In the corona crisis the invisibilized work of people who provide basic services is becoming more visible. Could this be an unexpected opportunity for labor organizing? Urban researcher Katja Schwaller is exploring this question, focusing in particular on those areas of society where Big Tech is taking over. An interview by Magdalena Taube and Krystian …
Racialized Masculinities and Global Logistics Labor
The global capitalist supply chain is controlled by white hegemonic masculinity.[1] Affluent, corporate-elite, straight white men are structurally positioned as the managers and overseers of a vast global logistics labor force comprised primarily of working-class men of color. Throughout the logistics-driven global economy, logistics workers remain highly segregated by both gender and race. Starting from …
Big dick energy at the end of the world. Technopolitics for a global hustle
In a recent film by Ermalo Magradze, a Georgian film-maker famous for his trash-movies depicting the country’s life, we see a character sat in a car, he is the Prime Minister, he seems demoralised and he is complaining to his interlocutor: ‘We are stuck Mr Kakha, investors are very difficult to attract’ – says the …
Finance, extraction and logistics as axes of the third neoliberal moment in Latin America
With the notion of ‘operations of capital’, focused on the interaction between the dimensions of finance, extraction and logistics, authors such as Mezzadra and Neilson have highlighted some ‘underlying transformations of capitalism’ that go well beyond a generic idea of neoliberalism as ‘the hegemonic circulation of economic doctrines or processes of deregulation and governance’. The …
Gendering logistics: Subjectivities, biopolitics and extraction in supply chains
In the domain of critical logistical studies, now a burgeoning field, the analysis of gender relations is largely neglected, being a rare occurrence in scholarly as much as in political, activist and militant reflections. One explanation for this might lie in the fact that logistics, as some analysts contend, is (still) a male-dominated industry – …
Investigating the Frontiers of Capitalism. An Introduction to Into the Black Box Collective Research
Here we publish an introduction to the collective research of Into the Black Box we presented at last Historical Materialism Conference. In fact, the 7th of November we participated to a panel on workers’ inquiry with Notes From Below, Viewpoint Mag and Plateforme d’Enquêtes Militantes. The goal of this meeting was to create a transnational networking …