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About the author
Gordon Wilmsmeier is Honorary Professor at the University of Applied Science Bremen, Germany and Economic Affairs Officer at UN-ECLAC. Jason Monios is Senior Research Fellow at the Transport Research Institute, Edinburgh Napier University, UK.
Summary
New developments in a post-Fordist economic environment have changed the source of port competitiveness from economies of scale based on basic production factors (capital, land, labour) to economies of scope based on advanced production (service) factors. The institutional setting in which ports are now embedded requires methods of analysis that go beyond those traditionally applied in transport geography, but port geography research has not embraced critical, radical or relational geographies. Thus, questions relating to the new conceptions of space and networks created through the corporatisation of the industry remain unanswered. This book examines prevailing ideas of space in port geography and elaborates the case for a smooth space conceptualisation. It draws on two theoretical traditions of the spatial impacts of capital accumulation, beginning with Marx and Harvey to demonstrate how ports represent an exemplar of the inherently unstable spatial fix of mobile capital, then turning to the concept of smooth space introduced by Deleuze and Guattari. Using these concepts, the book examines the production of capitalist smooth space in the global port operations sector, in which a handful of multinational corporations manage portfolios of major ports across the globe. These ideas are explored empirically through an application to the port system of Latin America and the Caribbean. While this book is focused on the port sector, the conclusions are generalizable to the wider debate on the privatisation and deregulation of transport industries.
