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    Governing circulation, disruption, and emergency on the London Underground: a theory of logistical power

    Mutter, Samuel (2020) Governing circulation, disruption, and emergency on the London Underground: a theory of logistical power. PhD thesis, Birkbeck, University of London.

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    Abstract

    The following thesis argues for and –using the case study of the London Underground –elaborates upon the idea of logistical power as a framework for understanding contemporary forms of urban governance (in particular in the post-industrial cities of the ‘global North’). This is a framework evolved from attention to the dual heritage of logistics: its military origins on the one hand, wherein it was key to the management and minimisation of the frictions of circulatory systems, and its work in the corporate sphere, on the other, through which it became practiced in discovering and extracting novel forms of value from circulation. Today, this set of ideas, calculations, spatial ,sensory and affective mechanisms is increasingly applied, I will argue, to urban infrastructures in the context of a claimed unprecedented level of uncertainty and risk, together with intense financial pressures. Theoretically, the thesis will claim that the prominence of logistics in the governance of circulation forces us to reconsider the binary of the tactical and the strategic; of systems and their disruption, upon which the political stakes of urban infrastructure have been wagered.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Thesis
    Copyright Holders: The copyright of this thesis rests with the author, who asserts his/her right to be known as such according to the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. No dealing with the thesis contrary to the copyright or moral rights of the author is permitted.
    Depositing User: Acquisitions And Metadata
    Date Deposited: 06 Oct 2021 13:37
    Last Modified: 01 Nov 2023 14:54
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/46204
    DOI: https://doi.org/10.18743/PUB.00046204

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