Working for global capital: assembling the global ship demolition market

Keywords: maritime markets, global ship demolition, ship recycling, conjunctural analysis, scale
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 2/27/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/27/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 18

Abstract

'Supply chain woes', 'port crisis', 'truckers needed', 'tanker market blues', these are just some of the global headlines circulating our media recently related to the global logistics and supply chain crisis. The global shipping economy is made up of four primary markets: freight (container, bulk, oil), new builds, secondhand sales, and ship demolition. Covid-19 has helped to cast a spotlight on how fast and deep market fluctuations manifest in these shipping markets. Early in the pandemic, trade came to a stand-still with the media reports highlighting the spatio-temporality of ships and crews anchored off port, not allowed entry and slowing down capital circulation in its varied forms. Today, reports focus on the slowed movement of cargo as an infrastructural issue, and nod to ‘Containergeddon’ as not going away anytime soon, yet oil rigs and tankers are not being scrapped fast enough. This paper brings into the spotlight the global ship demolition market; employing Gil Hart’s conjunctural analysis it considers how a multi-scaled set of stakeholders are transforming the conditions, mechanisms, and spaces of the global ship demolition market in response to dynamic political-economic, social, and environmental pressures.