This theme section, edited by Hege Høyer Leivestad (with Johanna Markkula, University of Oslo), proposes a new anthropology of global cargo circulation.
Container economies, Leivestad and Markkula show, are sustained by an undervalued labour force, dependent upon unstable logistics infrastructures and driven by speculative capital. The authors demonstrate that maritime logistics and labour is best understood by taking into account their wider networks of dependency expressed through kinship relations, ethnicity and coexisting regimes of value.