The social production of container space

Abstract

A sizable body of popular and academic literature explores how containers have reconstituted the spaces through which they travel. However, the space within containers remains largely unexamined. This article leverages the concepts of “earmarking” and “pressure” to analyze the space within containers as socially produced rather than arithmetically defined. The analysis draws upon an ethnographic study of container freight from China to Africa. Earmarking describes the practice of attaching segments of shipment space to specific sets of social relations, which in turn defines appropriate usage of the space and bestows it with economic value. African traders earmark space in containers shipped from China as a way to manage their capital in volatile economic environments. Logistics agents apply physical pressure to goods as they are loaded in containers in South China. The practice—made possible by the material characteristics of the container—disrupts the relationship between the container’s measurements and the shipment volumes sold, and generates asymmetries across modes of calculating space. Application of pressure renders the relation between containers and goods unstable and shipments vulnerable during customs inspections. Opening the container space for analysis reveals how China’s successful logistics integration with Africa relies heavily on political tolerance for disorder and localized solutions.

Logistical geographies

“…A third sets of ideas serve to highlight what Chua et al (2018) term the “liveliness” of logistics by revealing the inherent vulnerability, fragility and instability of logistics systems. Gregson et al (2017) frame this in terms of analysing the “frictions and interruptions” that are integral to logistical power, while Gutelius (2016: vii) urges examination of the underbelly of logistics to reveal it “as a lurching and experimental affair that is, at its core, the product of the social world.” Ethnographic work on container freight from China to Africa, for example, reveals the considerable work that was required by logistics agents to establish affordable less‐than‐container‐load (LCL) routes from Guangzhou to key ports in Africa, bypassing existing intermediaries in Hong Kong (Haugen, 2019). These attributes are further highlighted in other research.…”

Somali Ventures in China: Trade and Mobility in a Transnational Economy

“…While cargo companies serving Africa appeared in Guangzhou around 1999 (Haugen 2019), those serving East Africa proliferated from the mid-2000s. One group of five companies has dominated the cargo business between China and Eastleigh, and is well-known among Kenyan clients.…”

States of circulation: Logistics off the beaten path

“…They foreground the elemental properties of copper and the elements that constitute logistics as a political force, and how both elements entangle as a copper line which reshapes the conditions for domestic political struggles within Chile but also reconfigures international political associations between Chile and China. Starting with a thing-in-motion is also what Heidi Haugen (2019) does when she follows bundles of cheap Chinese produce from Chinese ports where Nigerian peddlers attempt to squeeze as much of it as possible into containers, to informal market stalls across Nigeria where the bundles eventually end up. As she shows in her contribution, much of the booming “informal” China-Africa trade has literally managed to squeeze itself inside the standardized format of the container shipping industry, creatively subverting the logic of legibility and standardization it promises exactly by pushing its logic of accumulation to the max.…”