Capitalism and the sea : the maritime factor in the making of the modern world / Liam Campling and Alejandro Colás.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Campling, Liam, author.

Colás, Alejandro, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Marine resources.

Ocean and civilization--History.

Ocean and civilization.

Navigation--History.

Navigation.

History.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 418 pages : illustrations, map ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Verso, 2021.

Summary:

What keeps capitalism afloat? The global ocean has through the centuries served as a trade route, strategic space, fish bank and supply chain for the modern capitalist economy. While sea beds are drilled for their fossil fuels and minerals, and coastlines developed for real estate and leisure, the oceans continue to absorb the toxic discharges of our carbon civilization - warming, expanding, and acidifying the blue water part of the planet in ways that will bring unpredictable but irreversible consequences for the rest of the biosphere. In this bold and radical new book, Campling and Colás analyze these and other sea-related phenomena through a historical and geographical lens. In successive chapters dealing with the political economy, ecology and geopolitics of the sea, the authors argue that the earth's geographical separation into land and sea has significant consequences for capitalist development. The distinctive features of this mode of production continuously seek to transcend the land-sea binary in an incessant quest for profit, engendering new alignments of sovereignty, exploitation and appropriation in the capture and coding of maritime spaces and resources.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: Temporalities

Spatialities

Lives

1. Circulation

`Expediting of the Affair of Negoce': The Maritime Factor in Capitalism

Networks of Commodity Exchange

Calculations of Risk, Casualties of Credit

Market Integration through the Sea

Capitalism, Circulation and Production

The Commercialisation Model and Its Critics

Circulation and the Maritime Frontier

2. Order

A Nomos of the Sea

Freedom of the Seas

The Globalisation of Navalism

Command of the Commons

Stocks and Flows: Piracy and Disputed Sovereignty in the Contemporary Maritime Order

3. Exploitation

Maritime Labour Regimes under the Pax Britannica

Globalising Capital and Cosmopolitan Labour

Discipline and Punish: `The Special Circumstances of a Ship at Sea'

Radical Resistance, Liberal Reform

Maritime Labour Regimes in the Neoliberal Era

Changing Conditions of Work

Transnational Capital I Multinational Labour

Reform and Reaction in International Labour Regulation

The Maritime Labour Regime

4. Appropriation

Commodity Chains in Marine Life

Fish that Feed Workers

One of Life's Little Luxuries

Theorising Marine Appropriation - Or Why There Are not Plenty More Fish in the Sea

Pelagic Imperialism

The Appropriation of Marine Life before Steam and Oil

War, Food and Imperialism, 1880S-1940S

The Globalisation of Industrial Fisheries under the American Pelagic Empire, 1950S-19JOS

The Politics of Property Relations in the Sea, 1980S-2010S

The Sea, the State and Capital

5. Logistics

The Value of Logistics: The Annihilation of Time by Sea?

Maritime Logistics under the Pax Britannica, 1860S-1930S

Steam, Steel and Cable

The Logistics of Imperialism

Capitalist Competition and Liner Shipping

Tramping and the Deepening of Specialisation in Oceanic Shipping

Maritime Logistics in Contemporary Globalisation, 1950S-2010S

The Postwar Shipping Boom

The Great Shipping Crisis and the Neoliberalisation of Maritime Logistics

Accumulation, Control and Crisis in Maritime Logistics

Continuity and Change in Maritime Logistics

6. Offshore

Maritime Utopias and Insular Infernos

An Offshore Sublime

Prisoners of Paradise

Remnants of Empire

A Forgotten Space?

The Offshore Presence.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 323-405) and index.

ISBN:

1784785237

9781784785239

OCLC:

1141133027