Maritime movement has been essential to the current moment of capitalism, marked by the optimization of supply chains. As seaports continue to scale up tremendously, however, blockages, delays, and congestion persist and even multiply, complicating popular accounts of private capital unleashing an increasingly frictionless world. This article reports from research with logistics professionals in Mersin, Turkey—host to a privatized port operated by Singaporean state-held corporation PSA since 2007. Port advocates explain the recent growth in the port’s trade volume with the trope of efficiency increase under privatization. And yet, all around Mersin, talk about congestion in cargo movement will not stop. As parties disagree over whether congestion is a humanmade problem fixable by efficiency measures, or a near-inevitable reality of maritime trade beyond anyone’s immediate control, congestion becomes the terrain of politics—an exercise in designating objects of public governance. Through congestion conversations, many reflect on how wealth from maritime trade should flow—which frictions stand in the way of more prosperity and a more equitable distribution. Anchoring ourselves in a port city, we may be able to observe where new fault lines of politics have opened up across the frictional sites of contemporary supply-chain capitalism.

Canay Özden-Schilling is an anthropologist of capitalism, technology, and infrastructure, with past and ongoing research projects on markets of electricity and global port logistics. Broadly, she is interested in the scientific and technological work cultures that create and disseminate the economic formations with which we live. Her first book, The Current Economy: Electricity Markets and Techno-Economics (Stanford University Press, 2021), is an ethnography of the electric grid in the United States in the age of competitive markets and smart grids. Her current book-length project explores maritime shipping, as seen from the port cities of Mersin (Turkey) and Singapore.

Hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies and its Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA) initiative.