Storing value: The infrastructural ecologies of commodity storage

Abstract

As Marx pointed out in the second volume of Capital, storage is a critical moment in the circulation of capital. Yet, despite the resurgent interest in the political economy of circulation, logistics, and infrastructures, commodity storage remains under-examined in critical human geography. This paper examines the “hidden abode” of storage by tracing attempts to control moisture and realize value in two different commodity chains: Newfoundland saltfish and American grain in the late-19th- and 20th centuries. Storing preserved codfish and grain presented different biophysical obstacles for firms, but both required interventions to discipline moisture to preserve and realize the value embodied in the commodities. Through our empirical work, we frame storage sites as infrastructural ecologies: complex, more-than-human assemblages that both constrain and enable the realization of value embodied in lively commodities. This paper contributes to debates on circulation, logistics, and infrastructures by highlighting historical geographies of storage as a novel vantage point from which to analyze the frictions and flows of value under capitalist social relations. By grounding logistics in a value-theoretical framework, this paper also contributes to recent debates regarding the value (and valuation) of nature in political economy, by highlighting the role of storage and realization in the nature–value nexus.

Infrastructure and non-human life: A wider ontology

“…The latter is a condition where a suite of entities, potentials and forces animate, and have bearings upon, the circulation, assembly and contestations of infrastructure. Yet, barring a small and nascent body of work attentive to circulation (Amin and Thrift, 2017; Banoub and Martin, 2020; Mitchell, 2002), sensing and mediation (Gabrys, 2014; Parks, 2017), and multispecies assemblages (Carse, 2012; Doherty, 2019; Wakefield and Braun, 2019), scholarship on infrastructures remain largely anthropocentric in their outlook.…”

The Turbulent Circulation of Rent: Towards a Political Economy of Property and Ownership in Supply Chain Capitalism

“…These transfers of value, as several accounts have pointed out, become determined in terms of rent as one of the necessary forms through which the equalisation of the general rate of profit asserts itself (see Iñigo Carrera 2017; Roy 2017; Starosta 2010). After being a relatively sidelined dimension of his mature work for decades, Marx's reading of circulation (and of circuits of capital) has been garnering increasing scholarly interest in recent years (Arthur and Reuten 1998; Harvey 2013), especially within critical studies of logistics (Arboleda 2019(Arboleda , 2020aBanoub and Martin 2020;Cowen 2014;Danyluk 2018). The Marxian analytic of circulation is of particular relevance for this article insofar as it enables the analytical dissection of how property regimes both constrain and make possible the movement of the circuit in each of its three moments, which roughly coincide with the interlocking motive forces of supply chain capitalism: production, commodity circulation, and finance.…”

“…land, warehouses, buildings, railways, roads, port infrastructure, etc.) (see Banoub and Martin 2020;Danyluk 2018;Gregson et al 2017). They have also revealed that the logistics revolution has led a systematic assault on labour, degrading the material conditions of frontline workers in the global economy and intensifying conflict between classes and fractions of classes.…”

“…Perhaps hinting at the role that rent-and rentiers-play in this extended global warehouse, Gregson et al (2017) conclude that the analysis of logistical power through moments of friction, fixity, and interruption, is essential for the development of the field. According to Banoub and Martin (2020), in Volume II of Capital Marx frames storage as a crucial "circulation cost"; even though storage does not add value to commodities as such, it is absolutely necessary for the transformation of commodities (C) into surplus value (M'), perhaps in ways that are analogous to the interplay between land and food production in agriculture. Hinting at the implications of this problem for rent theory, Banoub and Martin (2020) highlight that circulation costs of this sort constitute necessary deductions from surplus value.…”

“…In this article, we intend to bridge the existing analytical gap between the bodies of literature that study these seemingly disparate tendencies. To do this, we develop a dialogue between critical theorisations of the circulation of capital (see Arboleda 2019Arboleda , 2020aArthur and Reuten 1998;Banoub and Martin 2020;Harvey 2013), and recent efforts to rethink rent beyond land and beyond the usual emphasis on relations of distribution (see Birch 2019;Christophers 2019;Greco and Apostolopoulou 2020;Purcell and Mart ınez 2018;Roy 2017;Ward and Aalbers 2016). In suggesting that the circulation of rent is intrinsically "turbulent", this article is also inspired by Chua et al's (2018) invitation to interrogate the seams, disruptions, and crisis tendencies of logistical systems that on the surface seem unified and coherent.…”