The production of capitalist 'smooth' space in global port operations

摘要

New developments in a post-Fordist economic environment have changed the source of port competitiveness from economies of scale based on basic production factors (capital, land, labour) to economies of scope based on advanced production (service) factors. The institutional setting in which ports are now embedded requires methods of analysis that go beyond those traditionally applied in transport geography, but port geography research has not embraced critical, radical or relational geographies. Thus, questions relating to the new conceptions of space and networks created through the corporatisation of the industry remain unanswered.