Doctoral Dissertation Research: Labor Dynamics in Maritime Commerce

我们生活在一个物质商品和产品以不断增长的速度和规模流动的世界。在美国，我们每天消费的东西中大约有90%是通过海运来的。海上贸易的稳定取决于160多万国际海员的劳动力，其动态尚未得到充分的了解。特别是，我们对全球化、工业化和自动化的趋势是否在海上商业行业中表现出来知之甚少。该项目旨在培训研究生如何进行严谨、科学的实地考察，探讨服务于这一关键但尚未得到充分研究的商业领域的劳动力市场如何随着生产自动化、加速和全球化的提高而发生变化。研究结果将在专业期刊上发表，并在海事会议上发表，以增加媒体曝光率，促进学术界与航运业之间就劳资关系进行交流。根据他的研究结果，研究人员还将开发大学水平的课程材料，旨在创新高等教育教学方法，并向不同的商业、国际法和全球研究学生传播全球供应链的关键人类学知识，从而使更广泛的受众参与科学过程。在纽约城市大学研究生中心人类学系的凯伦·斯特拉斯勒博士的指导下，吴亮将探索海上商业线路上的劳动力动态、人力和资本流动。他将研究在国际航运业远洋集装箱船上工作的当代海员，他们中的大多数现在都外包自中国、菲律宾、印度尼西亚、印度、俄罗斯和乌克兰等劳动力输出国。研究对象包括一艘集装箱船上的海员，以及作为跨大西洋和跨太平洋贸易枢纽的纽约和香港的港口。利用广泛的语言技能和十多年的实地经验，研究人员将调查海员的工作惯例和在船上的关系、背景和愿望、工作周期、港口职责、岸上休假、港口福利设施和服务以及航运基础设施和物流管理。方法包括在集装箱船上和在香港和纽约港口进行的人种学实地调查，以及社会网络、地理空间和其他数据分析方法的结合。该项目将为科学理解全球资本主义、流动性和劳动力动态的水陆循环做出理论贡献。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.