Page 24 - Mellinato, Giulio, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2022. Complex Gateways. Labour and Urban History of Maritime Port Cities: The Northern Adriaticin a Comparative Perspective. Koper: University of Primorska Press.
P. 24
plex Gateways
bour conditions during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (Lev
Centrih and Loredana Panariti). Moreover, the unsatisfactory outcomes
caused by the overlap of responsibilities, but also by the mismatch of
the strategic goals, was more or less the same in Rijeka during the eight-
eenth century (Ervin Dubrović), in Trieste during the AMG years (Giulio
Mellinato) and in Koper when the times seemed ready for the creation
of an oil terminal (Deborah Rogoznica). An interesting precursor can be
found at the very beginning of the modern debate on free ports (Giulia
Delogu), suggesting that precisely the overlay of responsibilities can be
one of the most important (and understudied) components of the com-
plexity inherent in these kind of studies.
As already said, almost all the chapters deal with the analysis of the
relationship between the port and its surrounding environment in the
broader sense, even from the cultural point of view (Janine Schemmer).
Every time, and independently, all authors have highlighted the multilev-
el interdependencies linking (but also bounding) ports and their socio-
economic environment, well beyond the usual roles assigned to ports as
providers of working positions, services, utilities, and so on. New issues
have been pointed out: how can seaports play a role in the construction
of consensus towards the established order, of symbolic values to the ad-
vantage of the entire port-city nexus, of new instruments for controlling
social marginality, at the local level, or even of means of pressure and di-
rection of foreign policy.
The evidence we have studied suggests that the human factor is
largely undervalued and that some adjustments are in order. The cas-
es presented in this book have the aim of bringing out a research per-
spective closer than usual to the real life of operating city-port systems.
From this perspective, we think we can say that port performances rely
on more than one equilibrium (technosocial, institutional, financial, en-
vironmental, human, and others) in such a complex way that an equally
elaborate set of analytical tools must be arranged and made operational,
in order that this research topic may be appropriately studied.
Bibliography
References
Alimahomed-Wilson, J., and I. Ness, eds. 2018. Choke Points: Logistics
Workers Disrupting the Global Supply Chain. London: Pluto.
24
bour conditions during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (Lev
Centrih and Loredana Panariti). Moreover, the unsatisfactory outcomes
caused by the overlap of responsibilities, but also by the mismatch of
the strategic goals, was more or less the same in Rijeka during the eight-
eenth century (Ervin Dubrović), in Trieste during the AMG years (Giulio
Mellinato) and in Koper when the times seemed ready for the creation
of an oil terminal (Deborah Rogoznica). An interesting precursor can be
found at the very beginning of the modern debate on free ports (Giulia
Delogu), suggesting that precisely the overlay of responsibilities can be
one of the most important (and understudied) components of the com-
plexity inherent in these kind of studies.
As already said, almost all the chapters deal with the analysis of the
relationship between the port and its surrounding environment in the
broader sense, even from the cultural point of view (Janine Schemmer).
Every time, and independently, all authors have highlighted the multilev-
el interdependencies linking (but also bounding) ports and their socio-
economic environment, well beyond the usual roles assigned to ports as
providers of working positions, services, utilities, and so on. New issues
have been pointed out: how can seaports play a role in the construction
of consensus towards the established order, of symbolic values to the ad-
vantage of the entire port-city nexus, of new instruments for controlling
social marginality, at the local level, or even of means of pressure and di-
rection of foreign policy.
The evidence we have studied suggests that the human factor is
largely undervalued and that some adjustments are in order. The cas-
es presented in this book have the aim of bringing out a research per-
spective closer than usual to the real life of operating city-port systems.
From this perspective, we think we can say that port performances rely
on more than one equilibrium (technosocial, institutional, financial, en-
vironmental, human, and others) in such a complex way that an equally
elaborate set of analytical tools must be arranged and made operational,
in order that this research topic may be appropriately studied.
Bibliography
References
Alimahomed-Wilson, J., and I. Ness, eds. 2018. Choke Points: Logistics
Workers Disrupting the Global Supply Chain. London: Pluto.
24
