ABSTRACT
It is a late autumn afternoon and a small crowd has gathered along the blustery dockside viewing area at port of Felixstowe in Suffolk, England. Perceptions of capitalistic growth in recent decades have focused increasingly heavily on speed – especially when it comes to China's development and the impact of this on the ability of consumers in the West to have access to commodities quickly and cheaply. Hutchinson Whampoa began life as two separate nineteenth-century companies – Hong Kong and Whampoa Dock established in 1863. In many ways, the onset of container shipping was the end of a story of the sea that began with a deeply rooted biblical repulsion of it as a sinister, dark unfathomable force, filled with monsters and unknown dangers – a fearsome primordial substance. On 27 November 2012, clerical workers at the Ports of LA and Long Beach went on strike to protest against the threat of their jobs being outsourced to China or elsewhere.
