ABSTRACT
The chapter begins by documenting the establishment of containerisation, highlighting its pivotal role in reshaping societies, economies and geographies, but also the many instabilities and insecurities that accompany this supposedly 'smooth' system. McLean's container system was then enlisted by US forces in Vietnam, demonstrating containerisation's efficiency and helping establish it as the hegemonic system of cargo distribution in the latter part of the twentieth century. Most research on cargo focuses on the production of maritime and port space, but logistics networks also extend inland. Contributing to a body of literature that highlights the inseparability of legal and illegal trade and activity within contemporary capitalism, Martin argues that it is 'impossible to disentangle the growth in sanctioned global cargomobilities from the movement of illicit cargos'. In their chapter, 'Digital cargo: 3D printing for development at the bottom of the pyramid', Thomas Birtchnell and William Hoyle consider possibilities offered by so-called 3D printing, or 'digital cargo'.
