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<TITLE>GCS research seminar, Friday 25 March: Ned Rossiter and Brett Neilson</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:11pt'>Department of Gender and Cultural Studies 2011 seminar series<BR>
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</SPAN><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14pt'><B>ON LIFE, LABOUR AND LOGISTICS<BR>
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Ned Rossiter, University of Western Sydney<BR>
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With militaristic origins, logistics emerged as a business concept in the 1950s concerned with the management of global supply chains. Today, the complex task of logistics is aided by specially engineered computer software and information technology (IT) tracking devices that facilitate the organization of labour, storage and goods. This paper is part of a larger study on labour regimes, IT infrastructures and questions of sovereignty within maritime logistics and electronic waste industries. Particular attention is paid to the operation of transnational shipping in and out of Ningbo Port - the second largest in China and a close competitor of its neighbouring port in Shanghai. The ship is a deterritorialized extension of the nation-state. The management of labour and control of borders associated with the maritime vessel serves as a microcosm for the problem of governance for the territorial state. My thesis in this paper is as follows: When situated in the era of the Cold War and Fordism, modern logistics is strangely out of time. As a managerial science of flexiblization and transnational flows, post-World War Two logistics arguably anticipated post-Fordist regimes of the past 10-30 years. What, therefore, might the circuits of control in contemporary maritime logistics have to say about the future-present of sovereign states and the biopolitical management of populations?<BR>
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Ned Rossiter recently started a position as Professor of Communication in the School of Communication Arts, University of Western Sydney. Ned is also a member of UWS's Centre for Cultural Research. He has previously worked in China, Northern Ireland and Melbourne.<BR>
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</SPAN><FONT SIZE="4"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:14pt'><B>LOGISTICS AND THE SOVEREIGN MACHINE OF GOVERNANCE<BR>
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Brett Neilson, University of Western Sydney<BR>
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What kind of power is manifest in logistical practices? Historically, logistics was one of the three 'arts of war' along with strategy and tactics. But it has largely been forgotten in cultural and political accounts of power. Similarly it has been neglected in critical studies of globalization that examine how capitalist production and distribution have been reorganized at a global scale. Revisiting Foucauldian arguments about the evolution of power and recent studies of the metamorphosis of economic space, this paper suggests that logistical infrastructures are actively forming new kinds of polity. In particular, it argues that the complexities of logistical life can be explained neither by theories that emphasize the transformations of sovereign power nor by those that posit decentralized modes of governance. An empirical study of semiconductor supply chains coming out of China will show how logistics at once exploits and blurs the differences between sovereignty and governance, exception and norm.<BR>
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Associate Professor Brett Neilson is Principal Research Fellow and Immediate Past Director at the Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney. He is lead investigator of the transnational research project Transit Labour: Circuits, Regions, Borders (<a href="http://transitlabour.asia">http://transitlabour.asia</a>).<BR>
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Date: Friday 25 March 2011<BR>
Time: 14:00 - 16:00<BR>
Location: The Refectory, Main Quadrangle (downstairs from the Faculty of Arts)<BR>
Street: University Drive, University of Sydney<BR>
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All welcome. Drinks will follow at the New Law School Bar.<BR>
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Contact: Fiona Allon (<a href="fiona.allon@sydney.edu.au">fiona.allon@sydney.edu.au</a>) or Natalya Lusty (<a href="natalya.lusty@sydney.edu.au">natalya.lusty@sydney.edu.au</a>)<BR>
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