The international airport: the hub-and-spoke pedagogy of the American empire

Abstract

Airport hubs and the networks linking them have an important bearing on the formation of modern identities in world politics. The argument is that an airport connects individual experience—movement through the hub‐and‐spoke structure—and the world order's transformation towards progressively more imperial forms. It can be hypothesized that airports teach people the central rituals of acknowledgement that are needed to navigate in the Byzantine structures of the modern hierarchical world order. The aviopolis provides places where appropriate imperial categories are produced—such as Westerner, Third‐Worlder and terrorist—where modern virtues are measured and constant vigilance is directed to the political totality of the imagined imperial community. The striking reminders—suspicious strangers, auditory and visual warnings, memories of past terror attacks, metal detectors and security checks—placed throughout the airport frame are meant to drive home the fact that the survival is at stake in the post‐September 11th world. The affirmation of political health takes place against the declinist images of weakening imperial hierarchies and the failure to follow their central norms.

A Formula for Disaster: The Department of Homeland Security's Virtual Ontology

“…This politicisation takes many forms, from sophisticated biometric technologies to preventative governmentalised technologies such as risk management and surveillance. Since 2001, many have noted the expansion of digital and biometric technologies in public and private spaces (Aaltola, 2005;Adey, 2004;Amoore, 2006;Dodge and Kitchin, 2004;Muller, 2004) and the ways in which they work to produce new forms of citizenship and biopolitical enrollment (Bhandar, 2004;Isin, 2004;Rose and Novas, 2004). As Louise Amoore notes in her analysis of biometric security technologies at the border The biometric border is the portable border par excellence, carried by mobile bodies at the very same time as it is deployed to divide bodies at international boundaries, airports, railway stations, on subways or city streets, in the office or the neighbourhood (Amoore, 2006, p. 338).…”

Being-in-the-world of the international

“…45 As Mika Aaltola shows, these nonspaces present themselves as universalistic and neutral, while simultaneously they function as pedagogical spaces in which the international order is reproduced and naturalised as objective. 46 The second way in which the international discloses itself in our everyday lives is through 'othering'. Here, the distinction between inside and outside serves as a marker for the constitutive determination and delimitation of collective identities.…”

Airport facilities management alliances: Problems of competition and complexity

“…The hub-and-spoke system has attracted more interest among airlines in the past decades, and airports are concerned about their position within this system ( Pels et al , 2003 ). The hub-and-spoke system was one of the biggest developments in the airline industry during the 1970s and 1980s ( Bhadra and Hechtman, 2004 ;Aaltola, 2005 ). The hubs refer to major airports with their own connections, whereas the spoke refers to an airport with few connections ( Aaltola, 2005 ).…”

“…The hub-and-spoke system was one of the biggest developments in the airline industry during the 1970s and 1980s ( Bhadra and Hechtman, 2004 ;Aaltola, 2005 ). The hubs refer to major airports with their own connections, whereas the spoke refers to an airport with few connections ( Aaltola, 2005 ). Therefore, airports have to strategically position themselves in the market in order to attract the custom of the major airlines.…”