The rise of the global logistics industry has profoundly impacted global workers' struggles by organizing goods movement through a politics of just-in-time circulation. Although scholars have often dubbed this phenomenon "the revolution in logistics," Dr. Chua argues that the so-called 'logistics revolution' is better understood as a counter-revolution.
Tracing the historical conjuncture of the rise of logistics with the end of formal empire, she asks: What did the rise of logistics look like from the vantage of the decolonizing Global South? As anti-colonial leaders and trade unions in Southeast Asia pursued economic sovereignty during the “Third World’s” transition to independence, they nationalized industry, seized colonial property, and sought to build national shipping and industrial capacity.
To contain this threat to private enterprise, US and UK shipping corporations, backed by their states, pursued the globalization of supply chain infrastructures. Focusing on a swathe of nationalizations of Dutch and British merchant, shipping, and plantation corporations in Indonesia from 1960-66, this talk examines how shipping containerization only became viable when it aided imperial containment strategy.
As Chua argues, bringing the history of logistics into conversation with decolonizing workers' and nationalist struggles in Southeast Asia transforms our understanding of the logistics counter-revolution, positioning it as a reactionary political project that consolidated colonial power into new economic forms.
Charmaine Chua is a Singaporean organizer and writer, and Assistant Professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Their interdisciplinary research focuses on political economy, postcolonial development, and technological change, with a specific interest in how planetary supply chains shape the organization of “race,” coloniality and class, with particular attention to how these divisions are lived, contested, and overcome across working class social movements. They are currently writing two books, The Logistics Counterrevolution: Fast Circulation, Slow Violence and the Transpacific Empire of Circulation, and How to Beat Amazon: The Struggle of America's New Working Class (co-authored with Spencer Cox). Her work has been published in The Review of International Studies, The Socialist Register, Theory and Event, Antipode, Society and Space, The Boston Review, The Nation, and Jacobin, among other venues. They co-founded the Marxist Institute of Research and organize with Workers in Palestine, Researchers Against War, and Amazonians United, an independent union of Amazon warehouse workers. She was recently named a 2023 Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar in recognition of movement leaders who participate in academia with a demonstrated commitment to supporting social movements.