Laleh KhaliliEvery podcast appearance, updated as new ones drop

Podcast : Return to Bandung (LS 33 · TOP 5% what is this? ) Episode : The Political Economy of Global Shipping with Laleh Khalili Pub date : 2025-11-26 Get Podcast Transcript → powered by Listen411 - fast audio-to-text and summarization In this episode, I’m joined by Laleh Khalili, Professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter and author of Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula (Verso, 2020), to discuss the incredibly important but often-overlooked role of international shipping and logistics in the capitalist-imperialist world system. We discuss how the global shipping industry relates to everything from transnational labor exploitation to environmental devastation to the genocide in Palestine, as well as the power of organized labor in this crucial industry to bring the capitalist system to a grinding halt. About the show: Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website , as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock . Support Return to Bandung : If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts! If you’re able, please also consider supporting my work—which encompasses both my writing and this podcast, as well as various other political education projects by signing up as a paid subscriber to my Substack or making a one-off contribution: Become a paid Substack subscriber Buy Me a Coffee Sources and helpful links: Laleh Khalili — Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula (Verso, 2020) Deborah Cohen — The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) Johan Mathew — Margins of the Market:

In this episode, I’m joined by Laleh Khalili, Professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter and author of Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula (Verso, 2020), to discuss the incredibly important but often-overlooked role of international shipping and logistics in the capitalist-imperialist world system. We discuss how the global shipping industry relates to everything from transnational labor exploitation to environmental devastation to the genocide in Palestine, as well as the power of organized labor in this crucial industry to bring the capitalist system to a grinding halt. About the show: Return to Bandung is hosted by Pranay Somayajula, an Indian-American writer, researcher, and organizer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His work explores themes of diaspora, (inter)nationalism, anticolonial politics, and the many lives and afterlives of empire. You can learn more about Pranay and read his writing on his website , as well as on his Substack blog, culture shock . Support Return to Bandung : If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to leave a review or rating, and subscribe to the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts! If you’re able, please also consider supporting my work—which encompasses both my writing and this podcast, as well as various other political education projects by signing up as a paid subscriber to my Substack or making a one-off contribution: Become a paid Substack subscriber Buy Me a Coffee Sources and helpful links: Laleh Khalili — Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula (Verso, 2020) Deborah Cohen — The Deadly Life of Logistics: Mapping Violence in Global Trade (University of Minnesota Press, 2014) Johan Mathew — Margins of the Market: Trafficking and Capitalism across the Arabian Sea (University of California Press, 2016) Jatin Dua — Captured at Sea: Piracy and Protection in the Indian Ocean (University of California Press, 2019) Laleh Khalili — The Suez Canal Is a Lifeline for Global Capitalism (interview with Jacobin , March 2021) Peter Cole — Building Worker Power on the Docks (interview with Jacobin , December 2019) Ashok Kumar — <a href="https://jacobin.com/2025/05/yemen-hou

We chat with Laleh Khalili — author of Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy — about the different systems, footsoldiers, and circuits of extraction that are essential to capitalism. We take a tour of the great many worlds of extraction: from sand mines and oil fields, to management consultants and chemical engineers, to surveillance systems and genocidal colonialism — all of which are connected together by the imperatives of extraction. Marx said that capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction, but we are in a race to see who capitalism will destroy first: itself or all of us. ••• Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy | Laleh Khalili https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/3405-extractive-capitalism Standing Plugs: ••• Order Jathan’s new book: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520398078/the-mechanic-and-the-luddite ••• Subscribe to Ed’s substack: https://substack.com/@thetechbubble ••• Subscribe to TMK on patreon for premium episodes: https://www.patreon.com/thismachinekills Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (bsky.app/profile/jathansadowski.com) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (www.x.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (bsky.app/profile/jebr.bsky.social)

Laleh Khalili ,, Professor of International Politics and author of Sinews of War & Trade , joins us for a conversation on land reclamation, dredging and the role of maritime infrastructures as conduits of the movement of technologies, capital, people and cargo. Addressing the significant bodies of water around which a politics has taken shape, Laleh discusses the tension of the sea as a romanticised incredible and abstract space, yet also a space of death, exploitation, slavery and colonialism, highlighting the geoeconomical inequalities in the world. Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcript-conversation-laleh-khalili This conversation was recorded on 30th June 2021 Speakers: Luke de Noronha , Lecturer in Race, Ethnicity & Postcolonial Studies, UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre // Laleh Khalili , Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London Producer: Kaissa Karhu Editor: Amie Liebowitz www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/podcasts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Laleh Khalili, Professor of International Politics and author of 'Sinews of War & Trade', joins us for a conversation on land reclamation, dredging and the role of maritime infrastructures as conduits of the movement of technologies, capital, people and cargo. Addressing the significant bodies of water around which a politics has taken shape, Laleh discusses the tension of the sea as a romanticised incredible and abstract space, yet also a space of death, exploitation, slavery and colonialism, highlighting the geoeconomical inequalities in the world. Transcript: www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/transcript-conversation-laleh-khalili This conversation was recorded on 30th June 2021 Speakers: Luke de Noronha, Lecturer in Race, Ethnicity & Postcolonial Studies, UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre // Laleh Khalili, Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London Producer: Kaissa Karhu Editor: Amie Liebowitz www.ucl.ac.uk/racism-racialisation/podcasts

Dan interviews Laleh Khalili on Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula . The Suez Canal, the colonial roots of contemporary maritime trade, Aden dock worker radicals, why Dubai is not exceptional, the impacts of steam engines and containerization—and so much more. Support this podcast at Patreon.com/TheDig

Following on the heels of the grounding of the Ever Given in the Suez Canal last month, Matt Seybold speaks with Dr. Laleh Khalili, whose 2020 book, Sinew of War & Trade: Shipping & Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula, covers the history, present, & potential futures of maritime transport. For a bibliography of this episode, visit MarkTwainStudies.com/SuezCanal

Okay, so the big boat is no longer blocking the Suez Canal. But that doesn’t mean we can go back to ignoring the global networks of capitalism and colonialism that make our world run. Laleh Khalili – author of the brilliant new book, Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula – joins us for a wide-ranging discussion of her rich, historical analysis of global shipping, imperialist infrastructure, and technological fantasy. Grab Laleh’s book: versobooks.com/books/3172-sinews-of-war-and-trade Follow Laleh: twitter.com/LalehKhalili Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills TMK shirts are now available here: bonfire.com/mech-luddite/ Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)

This week, Grace talks to Laleh Khalili, Professor of International Politics at Queen Mary University of London, and author of Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula. They discuss the fascinating architecture and infrastructure that underpins the backbone of capitalism - global shipping - and what these networks tell us about state power, corporate sovereignty and imperialism - as well as how they are changing with China's increasingly assertive economic expansion. For access to the full episode, support us on Patreon at https://patreon.com/ aworldtowinpod

Laleh Khalili talks about her latest book, Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula, with Marc Lynch on this week’s podcast. The book explores what the making of new ports and shipping infrastructures has meant for the Arabian Peninsula and beyond. Khalili explains, “Whenever you look at the list of the Journal of Commerce’s top 10 container ports in the world, the only port that is not either in East Asia or Southeast Asia in that top 10 list is Dubai, Jebel Ali in Dubai. And to me, that was also really interesting. Why is it that Jebel Ali, which does not have a very large hinterland, which is a city-state, why would it end up being such a significant port for container transport?” Khalili continues, “What is interesting is that there is very little actually about the role of trade and the transformation of the peninsula beyond the trade in oil once oil becomes the commodity that starts defining the political economy of these countries.” “I wanted to zoom out to a more regional Indian ocean and global trade. But I also wanted to zoom in and focus on the kind of stories that emerge in the context of these forms of global trade and to locate Arabian Peninsula not as some sort of hermetically sealed exceptional kind of object of study but rather as one node in the large vast network of global trade and developing and transforming constantly as this kind of nodes,” says Khalili. Laleh Khalili is a professor of international politics at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of Heroes and Martyrs of Palestine: The Politics of National Commemoration (Cambridge 2007) and Time in the Shadows: Confinement in Counterinsurgencies (Stanford 2013). Music for this season's podcast was created by Feras Arrabi. You can find more of his work on his Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ferasarrabimusic)and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/feras.arrabi/)page.