Doctoral Dissertation Research: Labor Dynamics in Maritime Commerce

Cuny Graduate School University Center, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

We live in a world where material goods and products are moving at an ever-increasing speed and scale. In the United States, approximately 90% of everything we consume on a daily basis is now shipped to us by sea. The stability of maritime commerce depends on a workforce of over 1.6 million international seafarers, the dynamics of which have yet to be fully mapped. In particular, we know little about whether the trends that we associate with the globalization, industrialization, and automation manifest within the maritime commerce industry. This project, which trains a graduate student in how to conduct rigorous, scientifically grounded fieldwork, asks how the labor market that services this critical, yet understudied commercial space, is changing with increased automation, acceleration, and globalization of production. Research findings will be published in professional journals and presented at maritime conferences to create media exposure and foster exchanges between academia and the shipping industry regarding labor relations. Based on his findings, the researcher will also develop college-level curricular materials aimed to innovate higher education pedagogies and to disseminate critical anthropological knowledge of global supply chains to a diverse body of business, international law, and global studies students, thereby engaging a wider audience with the scientific process. Liang Wu, under the supervision of Dr. Karen Strassler from the Department of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, will explore labor dynamics, human and capital mobility across maritime circuits of commerce. He will study contemporary seafarers working on board ocean-going container ships of the international shipping industry, the majority of whom are now outsourced from China, the Philippines, Indonesia, India, Russia, and Ukraine among other labor exporting countries. Research will be conducted with seafarers on board a container ship and in the ports of New York and Hong Kong as hubs of transatlantic and transpacific trades. Drawing on wide-ranging language skills and more than a decade of field experiences, the researcher will investigate seafarers' work routines and relationships on board, backgrounds and aspirations, job cycles, port duties, shore leave, port-based welfare facilities and services, and shipping infrastructures and logistics management. Methods include combination of ethnographic fieldwork on board a container ship and at the ports of Hong Kong and New York, as well as social network, geospatial, and other methods of data analysis. The project will make theoretical contributions to scientific understandings of the terraqueous circuits of global capitalism, mobilities, and labor dynamics. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.