Topic: Critical Logistics Studies
Class Information
Instructor: Clover, Joshua
CRN: 61867
Time: T 3:10-6:00pm
Location: 248 Voorhies
Description
Logistics, an art of war for capitalism since the emergence of interstate trade, has emerged as an object of broader critical study since containerization, the rise of Just In Time production, and the increasing centrality to capitalist profitability of supply chain management, core elements in the so-called revolution in logistics. Revolution or not, logistics has been understood both as itself a theory of social and economic ordering; and as a way to theorize transformations in local and global political economies, modes of governance and regimes of value production. It has been taken up by ever greater numbers of scholarly disciplines and fields, and has produced a growing body of historical and theoretical literature. Is the study of logistics a critical theory? Is critical logistics studies? even a thing? This course is not sure, but let's try to think about it together. Readings include Marx, Levinson, Cowen, Moten & Harney, Chua, Khalili, Arboleda, LaDuke, Dyer-Witheford et al.