When smooth space becomes turbulent: The collapse of Hanjin Shipping and the immobilisation of ships, containers, goods and people

Abstract

This paper applies a mobilities perspective to the collapse of Hanjin Shipping in 2017, then the seventh-largest shipping line in the world and the biggest bankruptcy in the 50-year history of container shipping. Drawing on the notion of smooth space from Deleuze and Guattari that has previously been applied to the maritime transport sector to represent its space-annihilating tendencies, the analysis sets this apparently smooth space in opposition to the turbulence of disordered and fragmented mobilities. The case analysis charts not just the antecedents of the collapse but the immediate aftermath, in which flows of ships, containers, goods and people were rendered immobile and unmoored. Turbulence, drifting, induced and unproductive mobilities are anathema to the just-in-time globalised logistics sector, and the case analysis reveals how hyper-mobile flows of finance acted to reimpose the smooth logistics surface after a brief period of immobility following the bankruptcy.