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<p>Social and cultural form is being reshaped by the increasing centrality of logistical
science to everyday lived experience. Formerly confined to the governance of commodity
chains, logistics’ influence has grown into a pervasive social rationality that promotes
endless circulation and perpetual uncertainty as inextricable realities of contemporary
life. Its ubiquity, I argue, is creating an altogether new global economic system
which I call the logistical mode of production. As a planetary system of governance
and control, the logistical mode of production operates on many geographical and temporal
registers at once. My project thus employs a multi-scalar approach to capture the
diversity of spaces and speeds that simultaneously converge to form our new logistical
reality. I begin with the largest scale, i.e. the planetary logistical infrastructure
that has historically been defined by the global supply chain. Its most significant
actor, Amazon.com, has radically restructured commodity chains to service its worldwide
retail network and fulfill its promise of rapid on-demand consumption. Beneath Amazon’s
reconfiguration of the global supply chain exists what I call the social supply chain.
It is defined by on-demand service apps like Uber and Deliveroo, whose platforms redirect
logistical media’s governance of commodity circulation to control and coordinate human
movement through urban space. As significant conductors of human circulation, mobile
platforms not only reshape physical geographies, but restructure individual subjectivity
along logistical lines. I therefore conclude my project by analyzing how the logistical
mode of production creates individual subjects that embody its ideals of ceaseless
circulation, infinite flexibility, and ruthless efficiency.</p>
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