People, Ports and Power: A Global Geography of Community Struggle

This presentation introduces Francesco Savoldi’s ongoing research project into port territories, intended as critical sites where the spatial and financial reformulation of global maritime logistics ‘hit the ground’. After delving briefly into the rationale behind the emerging territorial frictions between people and ports, they focus on the spreading phenomenon of community struggle against port expansion in these zones between sea and land. Voices of resistance (audio clips from the podcast series FRICTIONS) as located manifestations of territorial agency will be played to reflect on their potential to resonate across scales and boundaries and confront the extractive planetary character of maritime logistics.

Francesca Savoldi is a human geographer (PhD) and Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at TU Delft. Her current academic research investigates the social and political consequences of the evolving port-city relationship in the era of logistics counter-revolution. She is the founder of sea is the new land, a social media and audio-research platform that airs historical and contemporary issues surrounding the intensifying relationship between capitalism and the sea. She has contributed to several radio projects, including A Thousand Channels (2021); Café Univers at Contour Biennale 8: Polyphonic Worlds: Justice as Medium, Belgium (2017) and R22 is Burning / R22 Notre Monde Brûle at Our World is Burning, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2020, with Radio Apartment22).