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Between Sea and City: Ethnographic explorations of infrastructure, work, and place around leading urban container ports

Project description

Sailing away from the city centre

What is the relationship between port and city? First and foremost, ports are economic catalysts for the regions they serve. They are important inroads into new markets. Focussing on four of the most important port-cities in the world (Singapore, Pusan, Rotterdam and Piraeus), the EU-funded PORTS project will study the link between cities and the sea in order to identify the dynamics behind the ways in which the centre of global capitalism is currently on the move towards the east. By investigating the relationship between port and city, the project will uncover the daily port practices that ensure the flow of commodities travelling through them. Moreover, it will describe how port-related jobs are affected by and related to the race-to-the-bottom dynamics of the maritime world and it will seek to understand why the port is moving away from the city centre.

Objective

How to study the turbulent transitions and risky mobilities of global capitalism today? An illuminating, but often overlooked site that lends itself to explorations into the changing nature of our economic system can be found at the interface between sea and city, i.e. at the port. Container ports have often been pushed to the edges of the urban spaces that they used to be centrally located in. A study on the city/sea-nexus will illuminate the dynamics behind the ways in which the center of global capitalism is currently on the move east-wards. This is not a uni-linear shift from “the West” to “the Rest”, but rather, is brought into existence by the nature of the ever-changing interplay between local territorialization and global connectedness. By investigating the relationship between port and city, PORTS will achieve three objectives: 1. to uncover the daily practices that port-related infrastructures enable in order to ensure the flow of commodities travelling through them; 2. to document the ways in which workers employed in the orbit of the port are affected by, and relate to, race-to-the-bottom-dynamics within the maritime world; and 3. to analyze the gradual move of the port away from the city center, and the urban waterfront changes that come with it, and how these are experienced, discussed, and justified by various stake-holders. PORTS will engage with local histories, unruly presents, and possible futures in four of the most important port-cities in the world: Singapore, Pusan (Korea), Rotterdam (Netherlands) and Piraeus (Greece). Through ethnographic work, it will clarify the changing nature of work, the significance of “place” as a site of accumulation and resistance, and the role of infrastructure for the inner workings of ports. Given the dearth of work addressing logistics-driven capitalism from an urban angle, this is the first study that systematically utilizes the ethnographic tool-kit to explore the economic frontier between city and sea.

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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ERC-STG - Starting Grant

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2019-STG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITETET I OSLO
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 499 950,00
Address
PROBLEMVEIEN 5-7
0313 Oslo
Norway

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Region
Norge Oslo og Viken Oslo
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 499 950,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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