H20-ERC-European Research Council

How to study the turbulent transitions and risky mobilities of global capitalism today? An illuminating, but often overlooked site that lends itself to explorations into the changing nature of our economic system can be found at the interface between sea and city, i.e. at the port. Container ports have often been pushed to the edges of the urban spaces that they used to be centrally located in. A study on the city/sea-nexus will illuminate the dynamics behind the ways in which the center of global capitalism is currently on the move east-wards. This is not a uni-linear shift from “the West” to “the Rest”, but rather, is brought into existence by the nature of the ever-changing interplay between local territorialization and global connectedness. By investigating the relationship between port and city, PORTS will achieve three objectives: 1. to uncover the daily practices that port-related infrastructures enable in order to ensure the flow of commodities travelling through them; 2. to document the ways in which workers employed in the orbit of the port are affected by, and relate to, race-to-the-bottom-dynamics within the maritime world; and 3. to analyze the gradual move of the port away from the city center, and the urban waterfront changes that come with it, and how these are experienced, discussed, and justified by various stake-holders. PORTS will engage with local histories, unruly presents, and possible futures in four of the most important port-cities in the world: Singapore, Pusan (Korea), Rotterdam (Netherlands) and Piraeus (Greece). Through ethnographic work, it will clarify the changing nature of work, the significance of “place” as a site of accumulation and resistance, and the role of infrastructure for the inner workings of ports. Given the dearth of work addressing logistics-driven capitalism from an urban angle, this is the first study that systematically utilizes the ethnographic tool-kit to explore the economic frontier between city and sea.