Webinar

DIIS Event

The infrastructures of maritime capitalism: Flags of convenience and offshoring

Laleh Khalili explores the murky waters of capital accumulation at sea
a ship registered in Ulan Bator, capital of landlocked Mongolia
By pressing play you accept cookies and tracking from the external video-provider.


Watch the recording of the webinar here

 

Accumulation of capital in the maritime industry - like so many other forms of capital accumulation- is predicated on elasticity, evasion, and cooptation. The very mobile and fragmentary nature of the business of shipping; its amphibian nature; its global expanse; and its private and family-owned ownership structures undergird its ability to escape even the most basic forms of scrutiny and demands for accountability. Among the technologies used as an infrastructure for accumulation are offshoring of ownership and offshoring of ship registries (or flags of convenience).

At this webinar, Laleh Khalili sketches these legal devices, invented, facilitated and supported by all the great political powers and the largest corporations involved in the maritime industry. She will explain how these legal infrastructures provide the modalities of accumulation where the boundaries between licit and illicit are blurred and capital evades forms of labour or environmental regulation.

Laleh Khalili is Professor of International Politics, Queen Mary University of London. Her research comprises infrastructures, political violence, war, the politics of gender and masculinities, and collective memory, amongst other issues.

The webinar is part of the Infrastructure as analytical approach series where we explore the potential and implications of infrastructure analysis through state-of-the art talks by leading scholars.


Speakers
Laleh Khalili, Professor of International Politics, Queen Mary University of London
Jethro Norman, Postdoc, DIIS

Programme
14.50-15.00      Virtual coffee
15.00-15.00      Welcome and introduction, Jethro Norman
15.05-15.25      The infrastructures of maritime capitalism: Flags of convenience and offshoring, Laleh  Khalili
15.25-15.45      Q&A - chair Jethro Norman
 

Recorded on Monday 19 October, 15.00-15.45 on Zoom

Sign up

19 October 2020 15:00–15:45
Online via Zoom

DIIS Experts

Jethro Norman
Peace and violence
Postdoc
Nauja Kleist
Migration and global order
Senior Researcher
+45 3269 8667