Lectures
David W. Roth and Robert H. Symonds Memorial Lecture
Charmaine Chua
The Logistics Counter-revolution: Fast Circulation, Slow Violence, and the Transpacific Empire of Circulation
Charmaine Chua is a Singaporean organizer and writer, and Assistant Professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Their interdisciplinary research focuses on political economy, postcolonial development, and technological change, with a specific interest in how planetary supply chains shape the organization of “race,” coloniality and class, with particular attention to how these divisions are lived, contested, and overcome across working class social movements. They are currently writing two books, The Logistics Counterrevolution: Fast Circulation, Slow Violence and the Transpacific Empire of Circulation, and How to Beat Amazon: The Struggle of America’s New Working Class (co-authored with Spencer Cox). Her work has been published in The Review of International Studies, The Socialist Register, Theory and Event, Antipode, Society and Space, The Boston Review, The Nation, and Jacobin, among other venues. They co-founded the Marxist Institute of Research and organize with Workers in Palestine, Researchers Against War, and Amazonians United, an independent union of Amazon warehouse workers. She was recently named a 2023 Casey Foundation Freedom Scholar in recognition of movement leaders who participate in academia with a demonstrated commitment to supporting social movements.