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The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade
A genealogy of logistics, tracing the link between markets and militaries, territory and government
In a world in which global trade is at risk, where warehouses and airports, shipping lanes and seaports try to guard against the likes of Al Qaeda and Somali pirates, and natural disaster can disrupt the flow of goods, even our “stuff” has a political life. The high stakes of logistics are not surprising, Deborah Cowen reveals, if we understand its genesis in war.
In The Deadly Life of Logistics, Cowen traces the art and science of logistics over the past sixty years, from the battlefield to the boardroom and back again. Focusing on choke points such as national borders, zones of piracy, blockades, and cities, she tracks contemporary efforts to keep goods circulating and brings to light the collective violence these efforts produce. She investigates how the old military art of logistics played a critical role in the making of the global economic order—not simply the globalization of production but the invention of the supply chain and the reorganization of national economies into transnational systems. While reshaping the world of production and distribution, logistics is also actively reconfiguring global maps of security and citizenship, a phenomenon Cowen charts through the rise of supply chain security, with its challenge to long-standing notions of state sovereignty and border management.
Though the object of corporate and governmental logistical efforts is commodity supply, The Deadly Life of Logistics demonstrates that they are deeply political—and, considered in the context of the long history of logistics, deeply indebted to the practice of war.
In a world in which global trade is at risk, where warehouses and airports, shipping lanes and seaports try to guard against the likes of Al Qaeda and Somali pirates, and natural disaster can disrupt the flow of goods, even our “stuff” has a political life. The high stakes of logistics are not surprising, Deborah Cowen reveals, if we understand its genesis in war.
In The Deadly Life of Logistics, Cowen traces the art and science of logistics over the past sixty years, from the battlefield to the boardroom and back again. Focusing on choke points such as national borders, zones of piracy, blockades, and cities, she tracks contemporary efforts to keep goods circulating and brings to light the collective violence these efforts produce. She investigates how the old military art of logistics played a critical role in the making of the global economic order—not simply the globalization of production but the invention of the supply chain and the reorganization of national economies into transnational systems. While reshaping the world of production and distribution, logistics is also actively reconfiguring global maps of security and citizenship, a phenomenon Cowen charts through the rise of supply chain security, with its challenge to long-standing notions of state sovereignty and border management.
Though the object of corporate and governmental logistical efforts is commodity supply, The Deadly Life of Logistics demonstrates that they are deeply political—and, considered in the context of the long history of logistics, deeply indebted to the practice of war.
328 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
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About the author
Deborah Cowen
17 books5 followersDeborah Cowen is associate professor of geography at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Military Workfare: The Soldier and Social Citizenship in Canada.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 16, 2021
One of the nice things about being out of the academy is that I no longer have to pretend to like over-theorized claptrap. Cowen aims at a critical history of global logistics as an applied discipline which has reconfigured shipping, production, cities, and the political economy of modern empire. She uses Marx, Foucault, cybernetics, and Queer theory to attack her subject. The end result is banal, preferring digressions on theory to discussion of the actual evidence, and overall a work which mistakes invective for criticism.
First, traditional logistics. Armies have always needed supplies, and an overwhelming concern of competent commanders is ensuring those supplies. Cowen gestures at Martin Van Crevald as one of the few historians of logistics (true), but she doesn't actually discuss military logistics. Since details matter, my own capsule summary, with what Cowen touches on in bold.
In pre-industrial times, this meant wagons and pack trains, and also since military supplies were much the same as civilian supplies, ensuring that an army moved and stayed in hostile territory, since that meant the enemy's population fed your troops. Railroads enabled strategic land logistic, and campaigns from the American Civil War to the Second World War were centered around railroads. The Second World War also saw the development of motorized blitzkrieg tactics. Motorized armies had tactical mobility greater than ever before, but required constant inputs of fuel, parts, and ammunition. Even a casual survey of WW2 shows that the key driver of Allied victory was the ability to produce more war material and deliver it to the battlefield. As Axis troops starved on Guadalcanal and froze outside Moscow, Allied forces were building strength for a series of counter-offensives which won the war. Subsequent to WW2, the American military industrial complex sponsored a series of R&D projects on improving logistics, which resulted in the development of the standardized military CONEX and civilian 20' & 40' cargo container in the 1960s. Cold War planning assumed that a war would progress too quickly to move armored divisions across the Atlantic, so REFORGER plans had pre-positioned tanks which would be united with crews flown in on chartered airliners. While REFORGER was never activated, the mobilization of forces in Desert Storm demonstrated the capability of the United States to mass overwhelming force anywhere on the planet on short notice. The key feature of the American empire since 1991 has been this overwhelming logistical superiority: With few exceptions (light armor in the initial occupation of Iraq), no American soldier anywhere on the global has lacked the material necessary for their mission. Even with political incoherence and immense expense, this logistical empire has conquered the globe.
So Cowen is not a serious military historian, which is fine. Most lefty geographers find war abhorrent. But while military and civilian logistics share genealogy and some techniques, (including a love of cybernetics inspired systems diagrams), there's a big difference between enabling high-tempo kinetic operations in an evolving strategic domain, and multi-modal value added supply chains.
The major point of the book (I decline to give it the honor of thesis) is that the actual workings of the current American empire are enacted through a doctrine of total supply chain security. This hidden foreign policy is managed through anodyne acronyms, like C-TPAP (Customs-Trade Partnership against Terrorism) and TWIC (Transportation Workers Identification Credential). Even as the border became more fortified in the wake of 9/11, public-private partnerships carved out a trusted regime of security partners, manufacturing and shipping firms qualified to manage their own inspections.
But nuggets of facts are buried in depths of theory. If I might digress for a moment, one reason why academic research is valuable is that experts have the time and skill to read things we'd rather not, like the voluminous official documentation on the DHS website about C-TPAP. My sense of this book is that the analysis of the actual materials is rather cursory. Cowen is far more interested in delving into Marx and Foucault than the actual subjects of her work. A similar lackadaisical approach to the matter is evident in the interviews, which concern a fatality of a union longshoreman, and not the grinding pace of the casual logistics worker. App-based delivery like Uber Eats or Doordash was a true start-up when this book was written in 2013, but Mother Jones was writing about the horrific conditions of warehouse workers in 2012. Again and again, Cowen points to the existence of a thing, offers a 'first-page-of-Google' summary, and then hares off in pursuit of some Theory driven explanation. It is rather telling that the most sustained and systematic analysis in the book is of the symbolism in a National Geographic produced, UPS sponsored wildlife documentary series Great Migrations.
This review is becoming rather scattered, but Deadly Life is a rather scattered book. The Mother Jones article linked above is far shorter, more focused, and has more evidence. In particular, Cowen makes the key error of using her theoretical tools to construct a monolithic strawman of a neoliberal American logistics empire, rather than using those tools to critically interrogate the gaps and contingencies in real world logistical systems and concepts. That said, Deadly Life broadly opens up some questions for further research.
1) Protection of the supply chain has become an obsession of modern states and large corporations. Yet supply chain disruption attacks have not happened? (I follow John Robb, if it had happened, he would have mentioned it). Is this due to the success of these security policies, or are they based on a fantasy? While the COVID-19 pandemic saw shortages and disruptions, these were represented by price increases and temporarily bare shelves, rather than any kind of collapse. Even road-blocking protests as part of Black Lives Matter are about disrupting commutes rather than logistics broadly. If logistics are so vulnerable, how are they so resilient?
2) Logistics Hubs underpin urban amenities, and require armies of disposable workers to function. Can these hubs work with humane labor practices? How can labor power be rebuilt against technology to render them deskilled biorobots?
3) What is the impact of American-style unlimited logistics on contemporary military operations? Can a leaner force with a smaller logistic tail still meet the political needs of American empire?
Interesting questions. However, this is not the book the answer them.
First, traditional logistics. Armies have always needed supplies, and an overwhelming concern of competent commanders is ensuring those supplies. Cowen gestures at Martin Van Crevald as one of the few historians of logistics (true), but she doesn't actually discuss military logistics. Since details matter, my own capsule summary, with what Cowen touches on in bold.
In pre-industrial times, this meant wagons and pack trains, and also since military supplies were much the same as civilian supplies, ensuring that an army moved and stayed in hostile territory, since that meant the enemy's population fed your troops. Railroads enabled strategic land logistic, and campaigns from the American Civil War to the Second World War were centered around railroads. The Second World War also saw the development of motorized blitzkrieg tactics. Motorized armies had tactical mobility greater than ever before, but required constant inputs of fuel, parts, and ammunition. Even a casual survey of WW2 shows that the key driver of Allied victory was the ability to produce more war material and deliver it to the battlefield. As Axis troops starved on Guadalcanal and froze outside Moscow, Allied forces were building strength for a series of counter-offensives which won the war. Subsequent to WW2, the American military industrial complex sponsored a series of R&D projects on improving logistics, which resulted in the development of the standardized military CONEX and civilian 20' & 40' cargo container in the 1960s. Cold War planning assumed that a war would progress too quickly to move armored divisions across the Atlantic, so REFORGER plans had pre-positioned tanks which would be united with crews flown in on chartered airliners. While REFORGER was never activated, the mobilization of forces in Desert Storm demonstrated the capability of the United States to mass overwhelming force anywhere on the planet on short notice. The key feature of the American empire since 1991 has been this overwhelming logistical superiority: With few exceptions (light armor in the initial occupation of Iraq), no American soldier anywhere on the global has lacked the material necessary for their mission. Even with political incoherence and immense expense, this logistical empire has conquered the globe.
So Cowen is not a serious military historian, which is fine. Most lefty geographers find war abhorrent. But while military and civilian logistics share genealogy and some techniques, (including a love of cybernetics inspired systems diagrams), there's a big difference between enabling high-tempo kinetic operations in an evolving strategic domain, and multi-modal value added supply chains.
The major point of the book (I decline to give it the honor of thesis) is that the actual workings of the current American empire are enacted through a doctrine of total supply chain security. This hidden foreign policy is managed through anodyne acronyms, like C-TPAP (Customs-Trade Partnership against Terrorism) and TWIC (Transportation Workers Identification Credential). Even as the border became more fortified in the wake of 9/11, public-private partnerships carved out a trusted regime of security partners, manufacturing and shipping firms qualified to manage their own inspections.
But nuggets of facts are buried in depths of theory. If I might digress for a moment, one reason why academic research is valuable is that experts have the time and skill to read things we'd rather not, like the voluminous official documentation on the DHS website about C-TPAP. My sense of this book is that the analysis of the actual materials is rather cursory. Cowen is far more interested in delving into Marx and Foucault than the actual subjects of her work. A similar lackadaisical approach to the matter is evident in the interviews, which concern a fatality of a union longshoreman, and not the grinding pace of the casual logistics worker. App-based delivery like Uber Eats or Doordash was a true start-up when this book was written in 2013, but Mother Jones was writing about the horrific conditions of warehouse workers in 2012. Again and again, Cowen points to the existence of a thing, offers a 'first-page-of-Google' summary, and then hares off in pursuit of some Theory driven explanation. It is rather telling that the most sustained and systematic analysis in the book is of the symbolism in a National Geographic produced, UPS sponsored wildlife documentary series Great Migrations.
This review is becoming rather scattered, but Deadly Life is a rather scattered book. The Mother Jones article linked above is far shorter, more focused, and has more evidence. In particular, Cowen makes the key error of using her theoretical tools to construct a monolithic strawman of a neoliberal American logistics empire, rather than using those tools to critically interrogate the gaps and contingencies in real world logistical systems and concepts. That said, Deadly Life broadly opens up some questions for further research.
1) Protection of the supply chain has become an obsession of modern states and large corporations. Yet supply chain disruption attacks have not happened? (I follow John Robb, if it had happened, he would have mentioned it). Is this due to the success of these security policies, or are they based on a fantasy? While the COVID-19 pandemic saw shortages and disruptions, these were represented by price increases and temporarily bare shelves, rather than any kind of collapse. Even road-blocking protests as part of Black Lives Matter are about disrupting commutes rather than logistics broadly. If logistics are so vulnerable, how are they so resilient?
2) Logistics Hubs underpin urban amenities, and require armies of disposable workers to function. Can these hubs work with humane labor practices? How can labor power be rebuilt against technology to render them deskilled biorobots?
3) What is the impact of American-style unlimited logistics on contemporary military operations? Can a leaner force with a smaller logistic tail still meet the political needs of American empire?
Interesting questions. However, this is not the book the answer them.
October 9, 2021
In this review, I think it's important that I clarify how I rate a book. The number of stars does not necessarily reflect whether I agree with a text. Rather, it's an indication of how worthy I think a book is of reading and consideration. More than a simple "like" or "dislike," I evaluate books by how well they help me think, challenge my perspective, or teach me about the world we inhabit.
Focused global supply chains and their impact economics, politics, and war, "The Deadly Life of Logistics" delivers an analysis of how these functions are interconnected. Cowen clearly articulates how important logistics is to waging war and adeptly demonstrates how the practice of supply chain management and logistics became an area of focus for American corporations in the latter half of the 20th century. Drawing on other sources, her insights into this transition, the role of labor in supporting key logistics infrastructure nodes into/out of the United States, and her pointed observation on the lack of substantial analysis on military logistics are both informative and motivating for someone in my line of work.
Toward the end of the book, however, I find Cowen's arguments on the sexuality and gender of supply chains inconclusive. There are socioeconomic trends borne out within logistics (entry-level positions tend to be lower paying jobs), but the notion that contemporary corporate supply chains descend from military and colonial exploitation is a claim that fails to account for modern political movements that promote greater representative government in democracy across the west.
I recommend this to someone who's interested in how military logistics shaped corporations' view on supply chains, modern politics of supply chains (including the role of organized labor in supporting key logistics nodes), and the need for more strategic logistics thinking among military personnel today.
Focused global supply chains and their impact economics, politics, and war, "The Deadly Life of Logistics" delivers an analysis of how these functions are interconnected. Cowen clearly articulates how important logistics is to waging war and adeptly demonstrates how the practice of supply chain management and logistics became an area of focus for American corporations in the latter half of the 20th century. Drawing on other sources, her insights into this transition, the role of labor in supporting key logistics infrastructure nodes into/out of the United States, and her pointed observation on the lack of substantial analysis on military logistics are both informative and motivating for someone in my line of work.
Toward the end of the book, however, I find Cowen's arguments on the sexuality and gender of supply chains inconclusive. There are socioeconomic trends borne out within logistics (entry-level positions tend to be lower paying jobs), but the notion that contemporary corporate supply chains descend from military and colonial exploitation is a claim that fails to account for modern political movements that promote greater representative government in democracy across the west.
I recommend this to someone who's interested in how military logistics shaped corporations' view on supply chains, modern politics of supply chains (including the role of organized labor in supporting key logistics nodes), and the need for more strategic logistics thinking among military personnel today.
February 27, 2022
The fact that this atrocious gesture at an analysis came out in 2013, my junior year of high school, while I was getting my gay little head bounced against the lockers, is just GETTING to me. "Can BDSM thus offer a kind of queer method for constructing countercartographies of logistics space?” Deborah, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that that one is a RESOUNDING "no."
Anyway, read DS FitzGerald if you're interested in an actual analysis of extra-territorialized borders that manages to maintain its line of argument for longer than five pages at a stretch.
Anyway, read DS FitzGerald if you're interested in an actual analysis of extra-territorialized borders that manages to maintain its line of argument for longer than five pages at a stretch.
March 26, 2017
Surprisingly inspirational for my dissertation project in health/medical geography
October 11, 2020
A critical history of the rise of the logistics industry, that makes numerous interesting points about globalization. It begins with an intellectual history/genealogy of the concept of logistics, how it went from being a field of modern military planning, particularly with the rise of petroleum-based warfare, to becoming in the 1960s, under the influence of systems thinking, a general management science. She then shows that rather than the "civilianization" of military logistics, in fact logistics now operates in spatially specific ways to co-shape military and civilian logistics: the military increasingly relies on civilian logistics firms to manage supply, personnel circulate between civilian and military logistics operations, and the spaces of civilian logistical apparatus are often literally former military bases once dedicated to the same purpose.
This is also a book about post-9/11 security logics. The rise of systems-based logistics models evaporated the classical distinctions between production, shipping, and consumption, seeing them instead as one integrated process. Facilitated by the rise of the containerized intermodal shipping systems, this allowed for the production process to be spatially disaggregated into "supply chains" with production spatially spread over multiple sites connected by "just in time" logistics systems that minimized inventory and overhead. But this same disaggregation created both new "supply chain security" risks (which could come from sources as different as natural disasters, terrorism, or labor action) that required the extension of security away from the geographic border. In the 2000s, led by a 9/11-concerned United States, new kinds of security logics began to extend the "border security" process away from the port of entry, to the points of departure and even the sites of production or extraction in globalized supply chains. Supply chain security conceptualizes the supply chain as a "vital system" that needs to be protected in order to protect the populations that rely on these supply chains for commodities.
This security reconceptionalization involves a fundamental challenge to the traditional liberal conception of the hermetic geopolitical unit of the nation-state: "Efforts to recalibrate security around the network space of supranational supply chains challenge longstanding territorial notions of state sovereignty," Cowen explains, "by extending the zone of border management outward into the ports of foreign states, inward along domestic transport networks, into the space of 'logistics cities.'" (81)
As this last phrase suggests, this is also profoundly a work about urbanism, wherein Cowen discusses the difference between a city logistics -- that is a city that pre-existed the rise of logistics but has been reconfigured into more controlled and efficient spaces of flows (albeit often with violent effects on the population) -- versus the logistical city (emblematically, Dubai), which entails the wholesale production of entirely new urban forms in order to achieve the same results. Whereas city logistics involves rewriting the urban palimpsest, the logistical city is a master-planned space, purpose-built and standardized. (This maps to "brownfield" versus "greenfield" types of spatial development.)
This is also a book about post-9/11 security logics. The rise of systems-based logistics models evaporated the classical distinctions between production, shipping, and consumption, seeing them instead as one integrated process. Facilitated by the rise of the containerized intermodal shipping systems, this allowed for the production process to be spatially disaggregated into "supply chains" with production spatially spread over multiple sites connected by "just in time" logistics systems that minimized inventory and overhead. But this same disaggregation created both new "supply chain security" risks (which could come from sources as different as natural disasters, terrorism, or labor action) that required the extension of security away from the geographic border. In the 2000s, led by a 9/11-concerned United States, new kinds of security logics began to extend the "border security" process away from the port of entry, to the points of departure and even the sites of production or extraction in globalized supply chains. Supply chain security conceptualizes the supply chain as a "vital system" that needs to be protected in order to protect the populations that rely on these supply chains for commodities.
This security reconceptionalization involves a fundamental challenge to the traditional liberal conception of the hermetic geopolitical unit of the nation-state: "Efforts to recalibrate security around the network space of supranational supply chains challenge longstanding territorial notions of state sovereignty," Cowen explains, "by extending the zone of border management outward into the ports of foreign states, inward along domestic transport networks, into the space of 'logistics cities.'" (81)
As this last phrase suggests, this is also profoundly a work about urbanism, wherein Cowen discusses the difference between a city logistics -- that is a city that pre-existed the rise of logistics but has been reconfigured into more controlled and efficient spaces of flows (albeit often with violent effects on the population) -- versus the logistical city (emblematically, Dubai), which entails the wholesale production of entirely new urban forms in order to achieve the same results. Whereas city logistics involves rewriting the urban palimpsest, the logistical city is a master-planned space, purpose-built and standardized. (This maps to "brownfield" versus "greenfield" types of spatial development.)
August 6, 2025
"Any serious engagement with contemporary political life must think through the violent economies of space." (5)
August 2, 2019
Trading Spaces
Cowan presents a passionate and articulate examination of the social impact of the evolving globalized infrastructure used to move physical goods from one end of the planet to the other. She begins by tracing the historic codependency of trade and military requirements. Commerce at a distance has always required security and the military has always needed supply chains, for as Napoleon once noted, “an army travels on its stomach”. The same conduits are used for weapons, as for consumer goods, food, aid and people. The first part of the book provides a historic background from Alexander the Great's supply lines to the Baron Haussman's redesign of Paris and the development of the shipping container as a standardized unit of transport, the key benefit mentioned being the reduction of labour costs.
Using maps Cowan illustrates how logistics has recast the world from nations with boundaries into gateways and transport corridors, logistic spaces with economic, political and security interests of their own. The model now being used around the world for this is Dubai Logistcis City (DLC), replicated in the Philipines at Gateway Logicists City (GGLC) and Basra Logistics City (Iraq) and the now underdevelopment Tsawwassen Gateway Logistics in British Columbia. Not surprisingly the first three are all replace military bases which were designed with security and self containment in mind. They are also all viewed as important regional economic drivers. The internationally sponsored Transportion Worker Identification Code protocol (TWIC), while designed to ensure that individual posing potential security risks not have access to commercial supply chains, becomes an Orwellian dystopia replete with security zones, biometrics, gating and cameras. The rational is protection from terrorism, theft and sabotage, but the burden of proof is often placed on the employee; the requirements are invasive, an end run around labour laws.
Chapter 4 on Somali piracy was especially interesting. Though pirates became instruments of state policy during the 16th-18th century (Barbary pirates, English and French buccaneers), they were most often viewed as outside the law, and by operating on the high seas, beyond it's reach, leading to a cooperative development of international law between sovereign nations. Somalia, which is widely regarded as a collapsed state unable to police itself or its territory, has a broad 3000 km coastline that has been subject to over fishing by foreign trawlers and a convenient dumping ground for biomedical, electronic and even nuclear waste. For their part, Somali pirates have stylized themselves as the Somali Coast Guard, holding ships hostage and demanding multi-million dollar ransoms. The Gulf of Aden lies at the gateway to the Suez Canal, through which flows 95% of European trade with the far east, a significant choke-point. The cost of insurance alone increased 40 fold between 2007 and 2011, and the policing of the Gulf has resulted in a mix of state and private security costing an estimated 5.5 billion/year. It's a hot mess of unethical dumping, legitimate international interests, criminal piracy and ongoing tragedy.
The oddly titled final chapter “Rough Trade? Sex, Death and the Queer Nature of Circulation” starts well with a comparison between the National Geographic made for TV documentary series “Great Migrations” and it's sponsor UPS. UPS used the production to brand itself with the slogan “We *heart *logistics” and Cowan shows how the themes of mobility and resilience in the natural world resonate with the mission of a delivery company, which was the sponsor's motivation. The 2nd half of the chapter, about 12 pages, attempts a secondary argument analogizing Cowan's previous analysis to the historic oppression of the gay community, thus explaining the chapter's title but the intersectionality approach is so far fetched as to seriously detract from the book. This aside, author makes a good case that logistic systems are an epi-phenomena of the military-industrial complex and that there is a real need to integrate social justice principles to counterbalance some of the command and control excesses of supply chain economics.
Cowan presents a passionate and articulate examination of the social impact of the evolving globalized infrastructure used to move physical goods from one end of the planet to the other. She begins by tracing the historic codependency of trade and military requirements. Commerce at a distance has always required security and the military has always needed supply chains, for as Napoleon once noted, “an army travels on its stomach”. The same conduits are used for weapons, as for consumer goods, food, aid and people. The first part of the book provides a historic background from Alexander the Great's supply lines to the Baron Haussman's redesign of Paris and the development of the shipping container as a standardized unit of transport, the key benefit mentioned being the reduction of labour costs.
Using maps Cowan illustrates how logistics has recast the world from nations with boundaries into gateways and transport corridors, logistic spaces with economic, political and security interests of their own. The model now being used around the world for this is Dubai Logistcis City (DLC), replicated in the Philipines at Gateway Logicists City (GGLC) and Basra Logistics City (Iraq) and the now underdevelopment Tsawwassen Gateway Logistics in British Columbia. Not surprisingly the first three are all replace military bases which were designed with security and self containment in mind. They are also all viewed as important regional economic drivers. The internationally sponsored Transportion Worker Identification Code protocol (TWIC), while designed to ensure that individual posing potential security risks not have access to commercial supply chains, becomes an Orwellian dystopia replete with security zones, biometrics, gating and cameras. The rational is protection from terrorism, theft and sabotage, but the burden of proof is often placed on the employee; the requirements are invasive, an end run around labour laws.
Chapter 4 on Somali piracy was especially interesting. Though pirates became instruments of state policy during the 16th-18th century (Barbary pirates, English and French buccaneers), they were most often viewed as outside the law, and by operating on the high seas, beyond it's reach, leading to a cooperative development of international law between sovereign nations. Somalia, which is widely regarded as a collapsed state unable to police itself or its territory, has a broad 3000 km coastline that has been subject to over fishing by foreign trawlers and a convenient dumping ground for biomedical, electronic and even nuclear waste. For their part, Somali pirates have stylized themselves as the Somali Coast Guard, holding ships hostage and demanding multi-million dollar ransoms. The Gulf of Aden lies at the gateway to the Suez Canal, through which flows 95% of European trade with the far east, a significant choke-point. The cost of insurance alone increased 40 fold between 2007 and 2011, and the policing of the Gulf has resulted in a mix of state and private security costing an estimated 5.5 billion/year. It's a hot mess of unethical dumping, legitimate international interests, criminal piracy and ongoing tragedy.
The oddly titled final chapter “Rough Trade? Sex, Death and the Queer Nature of Circulation” starts well with a comparison between the National Geographic made for TV documentary series “Great Migrations” and it's sponsor UPS. UPS used the production to brand itself with the slogan “We *heart *logistics” and Cowan shows how the themes of mobility and resilience in the natural world resonate with the mission of a delivery company, which was the sponsor's motivation. The 2nd half of the chapter, about 12 pages, attempts a secondary argument analogizing Cowan's previous analysis to the historic oppression of the gay community, thus explaining the chapter's title but the intersectionality approach is so far fetched as to seriously detract from the book. This aside, author makes a good case that logistic systems are an epi-phenomena of the military-industrial complex and that there is a real need to integrate social justice principles to counterbalance some of the command and control excesses of supply chain economics.
October 28, 2022
The cacophony of advanced technological systems we envision connecting our world like buses and circuits on a motherboard, is the technology of the present and not the future. To imply otherwise would be deceptive.
As we move into the 2020s, popular conceptions (and academia alike) have improved their conceptions of society’s current and projected grasp on technology. However, this catch-up of technical development has not been accompanied by improved understandings of our organizational systems. This is where logistics steps in.
Critics of neoliberalism have long grasped the crucial turn of the 1970s/80s, from a Keynesian-Fordist-Nationalist mode of production to a Hayekian-PostFordist-Globalist investment economy; however, few have grasped the longer term shift occurring from this transformation. Indeed, this trend may explain the persistence of the Neoliberal dream in spite of its bankrupt ideology and draconian policies: logistics.
Sure, as Cowan reminds us, logistics is hardly a new field of inquiry. Since ancient times, societies (particularly ones at war) have had to grapple with establishing logistical apparatuses to ensure stability; however, the totality and power of logistics has never been as strong as it is today. Evolving from the tight-knit strategies that guaranteed global imperialism and 2 World Wars, our logistics economy is increasingly assuming an autonomous voice in global affairs. Shipping lanes, ports of entry, airports, beltways, and other infrastructural hallmarks are assuming the role once played long ago by major geologic features and not so long ago by national borders. Though logistics renders neither of these 2 geographies as irrelevant, it increasingly displaces their salience in a global capitalist economy increasingly concerned with speed of circulation.
Indeed, one of my favorite parts of this book was Cowen digging up ole Marx’s investigation of circulation, as a key mechanism for the reproduction of capitalism. While many leftists are still stumped as to how capitalism has not crumbled on top its cracked foundation, logistics scholars would tell you that the lifeline systems of capitalism are simply too strong, stronger in fact than most national militaries.
Of course, I should back up a minute, because the label “logistics scholars” is misleading. Despite the crucial role of logistics in maintaining not just the global economy, but society as we know it, there is relatively scant scholarship dedicated to the subject. The economic case for reading this book should hence be clear, where else are you going to find as comprehensive a recounting of such an understudied subject?
Of course, here again I am being a bit disingenuous (oops). Logistics is studied from a scholarly perspective, and has been for the past 60 years. The catch? It’s primarily been from the fields of business and technology. Cowen’s highlighting of these cringe academic ties reveal the extent to which logistics, like all too many major geographic phenomena, is treated as either a given in our 21st century societies or (more antiquated yet) as a purely technical field as divorced from social consequences as Newtonian Physics. Geographers have long bickered over the merits and degree to which they should take logistics seriously, but upon having ample time to reflect over the larger transformations of logistics, it should be clear that the subject merits attention, not just for its structuring of contemporary globalization, but it’s ability to endure as an organizational form beyond our current iteration of capitalism. The power logisticians (and friends) have over International organizations, National governments, tech companies, and major cities privileges the field above most others. This shouldn’t be surprising, logistics is the provider of stuff, and society needs stuff. But what should be scary is how they choose to wield this control (e.g. controlling who is on national and international watchlists), and the sheer array of tools increasingly at their disposal (e.g. Walmart having the largest domestic satellite system, insane!).
Enough generalities, why read this book? Admittedly, it is not super focused. Like any great scholar, Cowen often delves a little too deep into the weeds, featuring what may very well be the most impressive collection (and review) of literatures I’ve seen from a book this length, though perhaps at the cost of clearly explicating her ideas or chosen examples. This is especially apparent in the final chapter, in the lengthy discussion over the intersection of queer geographies with discriminatory biology paradigms (an odd conversation to end off a book of logistics).
Ultimately though, I see far more value in this book than limitations. There is a lot presented, and even more summarized, but I feel like that should be the purpose for this book. In a way, the voluminous angles on which she details logistics makes this more reminiscent of a textbook than a single-topic-book, but of course no textbook has this much wry language on the covered subjects. I don’t mention this facetiously either, Cowen’s honest and scathing remarks on these developments not only makes the reading livelier but it simulates genuine discussion scholars and students alike can and should be having over these subjects. Honestly, this book is a blueprint for designing a course around the rise and dominance of logistics.
Just as an example of this level of discursive nuance is the distinction between “city logistics” and “logistics cities”. The terms diverging historical periods, scholarly provocations, and relevance to globalization highlight the difficulties of attempting to follow (let alone, scrutinize) the developments of contemporary logistics. At times, Cowen surprised me with how well she could relate long-term scholarly discussions to current trends, particularly when it came to the discussion of popular perceptions of pirates (who knew this was so closely related to changing notions of citizenship and sovereignty).
For sure, this is a medium-level read, ideal for individuals with at least some experience with the human geo (and friends) literature. Cowen makes many points in this book, through all her literary endeavors, with the more careful reader being rewarded the more nuanced takes/points. Ultimately though, we shouldn’t lose track of the title: logistics is deadly. It’s influence on international law, workers’ rights, urban economies, and military/domestic dichotomies has been detrimental (to say the least). This book is one of many that must go towards demystifying society’s lifelines, and convincing others that we should not continue to pursue a global economy structured around violence against the poor masses.
To take a page from the logistician’s playbook, these developments are merely a matter of technical choice. As such, we should simply change our choices (of global economic organization) to eliminate old imperial/neoliberal violences that persist in the contemporary world.
Worth a read, the patient reader will get the most from this.
As we move into the 2020s, popular conceptions (and academia alike) have improved their conceptions of society’s current and projected grasp on technology. However, this catch-up of technical development has not been accompanied by improved understandings of our organizational systems. This is where logistics steps in.
Critics of neoliberalism have long grasped the crucial turn of the 1970s/80s, from a Keynesian-Fordist-Nationalist mode of production to a Hayekian-PostFordist-Globalist investment economy; however, few have grasped the longer term shift occurring from this transformation. Indeed, this trend may explain the persistence of the Neoliberal dream in spite of its bankrupt ideology and draconian policies: logistics.
Sure, as Cowan reminds us, logistics is hardly a new field of inquiry. Since ancient times, societies (particularly ones at war) have had to grapple with establishing logistical apparatuses to ensure stability; however, the totality and power of logistics has never been as strong as it is today. Evolving from the tight-knit strategies that guaranteed global imperialism and 2 World Wars, our logistics economy is increasingly assuming an autonomous voice in global affairs. Shipping lanes, ports of entry, airports, beltways, and other infrastructural hallmarks are assuming the role once played long ago by major geologic features and not so long ago by national borders. Though logistics renders neither of these 2 geographies as irrelevant, it increasingly displaces their salience in a global capitalist economy increasingly concerned with speed of circulation.
Indeed, one of my favorite parts of this book was Cowen digging up ole Marx’s investigation of circulation, as a key mechanism for the reproduction of capitalism. While many leftists are still stumped as to how capitalism has not crumbled on top its cracked foundation, logistics scholars would tell you that the lifeline systems of capitalism are simply too strong, stronger in fact than most national militaries.
Of course, I should back up a minute, because the label “logistics scholars” is misleading. Despite the crucial role of logistics in maintaining not just the global economy, but society as we know it, there is relatively scant scholarship dedicated to the subject. The economic case for reading this book should hence be clear, where else are you going to find as comprehensive a recounting of such an understudied subject?
Of course, here again I am being a bit disingenuous (oops). Logistics is studied from a scholarly perspective, and has been for the past 60 years. The catch? It’s primarily been from the fields of business and technology. Cowen’s highlighting of these cringe academic ties reveal the extent to which logistics, like all too many major geographic phenomena, is treated as either a given in our 21st century societies or (more antiquated yet) as a purely technical field as divorced from social consequences as Newtonian Physics. Geographers have long bickered over the merits and degree to which they should take logistics seriously, but upon having ample time to reflect over the larger transformations of logistics, it should be clear that the subject merits attention, not just for its structuring of contemporary globalization, but it’s ability to endure as an organizational form beyond our current iteration of capitalism. The power logisticians (and friends) have over International organizations, National governments, tech companies, and major cities privileges the field above most others. This shouldn’t be surprising, logistics is the provider of stuff, and society needs stuff. But what should be scary is how they choose to wield this control (e.g. controlling who is on national and international watchlists), and the sheer array of tools increasingly at their disposal (e.g. Walmart having the largest domestic satellite system, insane!).
Enough generalities, why read this book? Admittedly, it is not super focused. Like any great scholar, Cowen often delves a little too deep into the weeds, featuring what may very well be the most impressive collection (and review) of literatures I’ve seen from a book this length, though perhaps at the cost of clearly explicating her ideas or chosen examples. This is especially apparent in the final chapter, in the lengthy discussion over the intersection of queer geographies with discriminatory biology paradigms (an odd conversation to end off a book of logistics).
Ultimately though, I see far more value in this book than limitations. There is a lot presented, and even more summarized, but I feel like that should be the purpose for this book. In a way, the voluminous angles on which she details logistics makes this more reminiscent of a textbook than a single-topic-book, but of course no textbook has this much wry language on the covered subjects. I don’t mention this facetiously either, Cowen’s honest and scathing remarks on these developments not only makes the reading livelier but it simulates genuine discussion scholars and students alike can and should be having over these subjects. Honestly, this book is a blueprint for designing a course around the rise and dominance of logistics.
Just as an example of this level of discursive nuance is the distinction between “city logistics” and “logistics cities”. The terms diverging historical periods, scholarly provocations, and relevance to globalization highlight the difficulties of attempting to follow (let alone, scrutinize) the developments of contemporary logistics. At times, Cowen surprised me with how well she could relate long-term scholarly discussions to current trends, particularly when it came to the discussion of popular perceptions of pirates (who knew this was so closely related to changing notions of citizenship and sovereignty).
For sure, this is a medium-level read, ideal for individuals with at least some experience with the human geo (and friends) literature. Cowen makes many points in this book, through all her literary endeavors, with the more careful reader being rewarded the more nuanced takes/points. Ultimately though, we shouldn’t lose track of the title: logistics is deadly. It’s influence on international law, workers’ rights, urban economies, and military/domestic dichotomies has been detrimental (to say the least). This book is one of many that must go towards demystifying society’s lifelines, and convincing others that we should not continue to pursue a global economy structured around violence against the poor masses.
To take a page from the logistician’s playbook, these developments are merely a matter of technical choice. As such, we should simply change our choices (of global economic organization) to eliminate old imperial/neoliberal violences that persist in the contemporary world.
Worth a read, the patient reader will get the most from this.
November 19, 2017
I purchased this book because it was referenced in a blog and was not disappointed. Deborah has thoroughly researched the topic.
Read
November 22, 2022one of the better books for this seminar - reevaluating my everyday capitalist realities
November 17, 2019
Definitely an interesting if depressing read. I did sometimes think it went a bit far into theory, though.
April 11, 2024
Very cool large-scope analysis on the development of globalized trade, which is framed as a consuming force that national security has, in many ways, become dependent on. Where is the line between civilian and military drawn when any disruption in the flow of commodities increasingly becomes an issue of national security?
January 1, 2026
hmmm the end was weird… while showing promising ideas these were barely applied to logistics and/or seemingly irrelevant topics (ads), and thereby the following conclusions lacked any depth and were in general way too short and universal compared to the theoretical introduction
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