New publication: The Big Warehouse Collection
The first three volumes will be available from November 26, 2024, in both print and digital (PDF) formats, at bookstores and online. Additional titles, currently in production, are scheduled for release in 2025 and 2026. The books feature illustrations by Mélanie Forné and maps by David Lagarde. This collection is the outcome of an ANR programme supported by LEST and MFO.
About this collection
We are witnessing a profound transformation, akin to the Industrial Revolution. The history of one sheds light on the emergence of the other. Some have even called it the 'logistics revolution.' At its core, logistics represents the modern foundation of a global economy driven by the movement of goods—along with people, information, and money. To better understand this shift, we’ve established a research programme to explore its far-reaching implications: the factories that organise new global economies, the economic actors they empower and those they render obsolete, the forms of work and mobilisation they foster, and what they build and destroy in industrial spaces. We’ve named this programme The Big Warehouse because warehousing and its economic structure play a pivotal role in this transformation. Warehouses, ports transformed into vast container parks, and even landfill sites, all feature prominently.
In this collection, we bring together works that shed light on this transformation—describing it, measuring its impact, and analysing its consequences. Our aim is not only to examine the economic, social, and spatial forms of this change, but also its profound effects: its force, its violence, and its disruptive nature. Simply put, the transformation known as logistics is, for the most part, not a positive development in the economic world. It is a disaster—a disruption of already chaotic systems, an unprecedented upheaval, or intensification, of economies that were already in turmoil. The authors of these works come from fields such as labour studies, sociology, urban anthropology, and economic geography. They expose the rough edges, the chasms, the suffering, and the breakdowns of this new world, but they do not romanticise it or celebrate its supposed brilliance.
Download the presentations of the 3 books:
- La logistique et ses monstres, by Delphine Mercier & Michel Peraldi
- De port en port, où règne la Marchandise, by Andrea Bottalico
- Dans les interstices de la globalisation, by Franck Poupeau& Nico Tassi
Public engagement & graphic design: David Lagarde & Mélanie Forné
