Conference paper

Publication year: 2019

Pages: 199-208

Journal: Geoforum

Volume number: 100

ISSN: 0016-7185

eISSN: 1872-9398

DOI Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.01.011

Conference: PASCA Conference

Publisher: Elsevier

Abstract: 
This paper analyzes the contestedness of contemporary operations of capital by looking at the conflictual constellation between corporate security frameworks and 'logistical resistance'. In recent years, protest movements around the world have engaged in acts of logistical resistance - such as blocking ports, occupying financial districts and disrupting infrastructural flows - with the intention of rendering capitalist transactions inoperable. Corporate actors increasingly regard these movements as threats to their operations and implement security frameworks such as Business Continuity Management (BCM) in finance and Supply Chain Security (SCS) in logistics. These security strategies help to maintain connectivity between heterogeneous operations of capital. Logistical resistance targets this connectivity and constitutes a threat to endeavours to 'secure circulation'. We analyze the uneasy relationship between logistical resistance and corporate security strategies. To do so we adopt an operational perspective that provides a particularly revealing lens for looking at technologies of security, which try to protect and maintain operations, as well as practices of resistance that try to disrupt or block them. We argue that both practices of resilience and resistance rely on and enact a particular ontology of operations. We combine our conceptual considerations concerning operations of capital, security and resistance with an analysis of particular cases: the role of BCM during public protests in Frankfurt's financial district which attempted to interrupt the banking business, and the role of SCS during attempts to block seaports in the context of Occupy Oakland and demonstrations against a recent G20 summit in Hamburg.

Harvard Citation style: Folkers, A. and Stenmanns, J. (2019) Logistical resistance against operations of capital: Security and protest in supply chains and finance, Geoforum, 100, pp. 199-208. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.01.011

APA Citation style: Folkers, A., & Stenmanns, J. (2019). Logistical resistance against operations of capital: Security and protest in supply chains and finance. Geoforum. 100, 199-208. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.01.011