Doctoral Dissertation Research: Global Economy, Technical Expertise and Mega-Port Development in Northern Morocco

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

Doctoral Dissertation Research: Global Economy, Technical Expertise and Mega-Port Development in Northern Morocco This doctoral research explores the technical expertise, infrastructure and everyday practices of global logistics,focusing on the planning, implementing, and controlling of the global movement of goods and resources from places of origin to places of consumption at the emerging logistics hub of a new mega-port in Northern Morocco. Through semi-structured interviews with logistics professionals and participant observation in academic and on-site training programs in the Tangier region, this research will examine the perceptions and experiences of Moroccans training and working for this expanding industry. Three months of comparative research will be conducted in Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, the largest logistics hub in the United States. This study aims to elucidate (1) the complex social and technical processes of logistics enabling the efficient flow of goods in the global economy and (2) how a global form of technical expertise is constituted in particular places. Intellectual merit This study will connect literatures in Cultural Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies (STS) in order to advance the social scientific understanding of globalization, technical expertise, and the local trajectories and impacts of training global experts. There are anthropologists who argue that the contemporary world should be studied by tracing the global flows of things, people and ideas. This study examines the material and technical dimension to the metaphor of global flow since most globally traded goods are organized by logistics experts to literally flow across the world's oceans. This study also builds on the commitment in STS to identify the social issues and political stakes in developing scientific and technological expertise in the post-colonial world. Broader impacts An ethnographic study of global logistics is timely given the increasing outsourcing of shipping services and infrastructure, the social and environmental impacts of mega-port development, and the centrality of uninterrupted global flows of goods in current US national security policy.