Matthew Heins - The Globalization of American Infrastructure: The Shipping Container and Freight Transportation

In The Globalization of American Infrastructure, Matthew Heins describes how the freight transportation system of the United States has been impacted and globalized, since the 1950s, by the presence of the shipping container. A globally standardized object, the container carries cargo moving in international trade, and it utilizes and fits within the existing transportation infrastructures of shipping, trucking and railroads. In this way, it binds them together into a nearly seamless worldwide logistics network. This process occurs not only in ocean shipping and at ports, but also deep within national territories. In its dependence on existing infrastructural systems, though, the network of container movement as it pervades domestic space is shaped by the history and geography of the nation-state. This global network is not invariably imposed in a top-down mannerto a large degree, it is cobbled together out of national, regional and local systems. The book describes this in the American context, examining the freight transportation infrastructures of railroads, trucking and inland waterways, and also the terminals where containers are transferred between train and truck. A detailed historical narrative is presented, and this is also theoretically informed by the contemporary literature on infrastructure and globalization.

Matthew Heins is currently a faculty member at the Rhode Island School of Design, and has also taught at Northeastern University and Wayne State University.