By Andrea Estrada

With approximately 18 million in use throughout the world, contemporary shipping containers play a vital role in the global economy. An international conference at UC Santa Barbara this week will explore how this important technological and economic innovation has transformed not only world trade, but also the politics, culture, and social structure of everyone connected with containers’ design, manufacture, and use.

Co-hosted by UCSB’s Interdisciplinary Humanities Center (IHC) and the Center for Work, Labor, and Democracy (CWLD), the conference is titled “The Traveling Box: Containers as the Global Icon of Our Era.” It will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars with expertise in geography, sociology, history, urban planning, art and architecture, and business logistics with labor leaders.

“Containerization has impacted the way humanities scholars see the world,” said Dick Hebdige, director of the IHC. “Because of the global trade imbalance, the United States finds itself with hundreds of thousands of surplus containers awaiting imaginative transformations. This conference provides a platform to explore innovative architecture and industrial re-use opportunity.”

Added CWLD Director Nelson

Lichtenstein: “Railroads transformed the 19th-century landscape while cars and trucks defined the social and economic geography of the 20th century. Containers may well be the key to understanding how the global economy works in the 21st.”

Speakers will discuss the impact of containerization on the urban landscape, national consumption patterns, distribution, and port security. The conference’s keynote speaker will be journalist Marc Levinson, author of the award-winning book “The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger.”

Levinson is an economist in New York and the author of three books. He was formerly finance and economics editor of The Economist, a Newsweek writer, and editorial director of the Journal of Commerce.

The conference, which is open to the public, is set for Thursday and Friday, Nov. 8 and 9 in the McCune Conference Room, 6020 Humanities and Social Sciences Building. It will include panel discussions and container demonstration projects.

For pre-registrants (the deadline was Oct. 31), a tour of the Port of Los Angeles led by Dave Arian, past president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, is planned on Nov. 10.

To view a complete schedule of events, visit the Web at <www.ihc.ucsb.edu/containers> or call Holly Unruh at x7799.