Securing Flow: Logistics and Value in Fluvial Colombia

With Austin Zeiderman, London School of Economics.

Part of the Economic Worlds Seminar Series.

This talk takes on the fluvial transport and logistics industry and its governing rationality: supply chain security. It examines the forms of expertise deployed to secure the smooth and uninterrupted flow of cargo, paying close attention to the categories, calculations, and probabilities used to manage the multiple factors threatening to disrupt circulation: from droughts, attacks, and pandemics to strikes, theft, and accidents. Underpinning the logics and optics of supply chain security are hierarchical orders that rank both human subjects and nonhuman objects according to their relative value. Attending to both the value gradations specific to Colombia and those endemic to the logistics industry worldwide, this chapter demonstrates how logistics renders some people and things security threats, while others are to be cared for and protected. (El Universal).