Ian Kumekawa on Globalization As Told Through One Ship

How do you write the history of something as abstract, as placeless, and as vast as the globalization that has remade our world over the past several decades? If you're Ian Kumekawa, you make those immaterial forces concrete by telling the story of one object: a hulking 94-meter-long steel barge he calls "The Vessel." From housing for oil roughnecks in the North Sea, to a barracks for British soldiers in the Falklands, to a jail docked on a Manhattan pier, the Vessel reveals how the murky world of offshore capitalism is in fact embodied in tangible things. It always involves real people living and working in real places. This one ship, then, helps us to see the too-often-invisible material reality of global capitalism at the close of the twentieth century.

You can listen to Ian Kumekawa on Globalization As Told Through One Ship online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Ian Kumekawa on Globalization As Told Through One Ship is an episode from Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast by Jessica Levy.

This episode is 31:43 long.

This episode was published on Jun 2, 2025.

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