Humanitarianism and racial capitalism in the age of global shipping. (June 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Khalili, Laleh
• Is Part Of: European journal of international relations. Volume 29:Number 2(2023)
• Page Start: 374
• Page End: 397
• Publication Date: 2023-06
• Subjects: Seafarers -- racial capitalism -- humanitarianism -- Arabian Peninsula -- colonialism -- Mission to Seafarers; International relations -- Periodicals; 327.05
• DOI: 10.1177/13540661221139062
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1354-0661

Abstract

In what ways does humanitarianism uphold racial capitalism? The article draws on and expands Cedric Robinson's arguments about the relationship between humanitarianism and racial capitalism in his Black Marxism . It does so by focusing on the Mission to Seafarers in the countries of the Persian/Arabian Gulf. The Mission has worked alongside state institutions and businesses, both before and after independence from Britain, to facilitate maritime trade through these Arabian ports. In the context of seafarer exploitation, these institutions – the extractive, the governing and the caring – need to ensure worker productivity to facilitate racial accumulation of capital. I argue that the Mission acts as part of the structure of political economic order to produce a racially striated, capitalist politics of care to individuated and atomised seafarers, acting to conciliate conflicts between seafarers and shipowners, maintain seafarer productivity and diminish the possibility of collective mobilisation.