Blog Archives - Page 8 of 10 - Logistical Worlds

The New Ikonion-Thriassion Rail Line

admin 16/12/2014

Anna Lascari

Anything new carries an aura of a promise and consequently an expectation. The not yet operational New Ikonion – Thriassion rail line does exactly that, as it unfolds from its origin in the heavily guarded Piraeus Container Terminal (PCT) facilities to the under construction Thriassion Freight and Intermodal Center. Scenarios about Cosco’s expansion that may generate employment in the area are futuristic and speculative. Unsubstantiated hopes have risen high amongst residents populating the areas that the rail crosses, expecting benefits for their communities, which will come, depending on their location, either from the development of Piraeus harbor and the PCT terminal, from Cosco or from the rail line itself.

Containment

admin 15/12/2014

Ursula Huws

A baby sardine

Saw his first submarine

And cried as he looked through the peephole

‘Oh come, come, come’, said the sardine’s mum

It’s only a tin full of people

Spike Milligan, 1968.

The container is simultaneously both one of the most concrete examples of the economic logic that enables global capitalism to function and one of the most potent metaphors for the social life of the population whose choices are shaped by this economic logic.

Dockworker Masculinities

admin 15/12/2014

Nelli Kambouri

Labour struggles in the Piraeus Port Authority (OLP) are dominated by tactics of controlling the limit between normal hours and overtime as well as occupying and bringing the port to a standstill. The division of labour along gender lines is a direct product of the composition of labour subjectivities that emerged in the docks in the long hours of paid overtime and striking. It may seem that dock work is stereotypically normalised as masculine only because in the past it required strong hands, but most of all it is the ability to work without having family or domestic care responsibilities that determine the gendered division of labour in the Port.

From Greece…to Kolkata*

Logistical Worlds 15/12/2014

Ranabir Samaddar

Collaborative spaces and corridors the world over need to heed ground realities. The land-based “New Silk Road” will begin in Xi’an in central China before stretching west near the border with Kazakhstan, then as before will run southwest from Central Asia to northern Iran before swinging west through Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. From Istanbul, the Silk Road will cross the Bosphorus Strait and head northwest through Europe – Bulgaria, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Germany – to move further north to Rotterdam in the Netherlands. From Rotterdam, the path will run south to Venice, Italy, where it will meet up with the equally ambitious Maritime Silk Road.