The Deadly Life of Logistics

Abstract

This book investigates the world of logistics, tracing its movement over the last 60 years from the battlefield to the boardroom, and back again. With a focus on chokepoints - national borders, zones of piracy, blockades, and cities – this book tracks contemporary efforts to keep stuff circulating and the new spaces of security and forms of violence they produce. This is the first book to analyse both the military and civilian world of logistics, refusing the usual segregation of these interlinked fields. Rough Trade considers contemporary logistics in the context of its long history and is centrally concerned with the role of war in trade. This is the first book to investigate the revolution in logistics outside the applied field of business management. This book draws on 7 years of fieldwork in many sites around the world while also offering a rich theoretical engagement with debates in political economy, science and technology studies, geography, security studies, and queer theory.