Supply Chains as Disruption

Abstract

In this chapter, we explore supply chains with an interest in the complex conjunctions of practice, values and effects that their underpinning modernist imaginary of “seamless circulation” precludes from view. The agricultural landscapes of northwest Victoria provide a compelling vantage from which to ground truth and trouble the idea of seamless circulation and relatedly the idea that disruptions are merely technical blips in otherwise well-oiled machines. Working between the interpretive lenses of Anna Tsing and Bernard Stiegler, supply chains emerge as artefacts of distinctive social formations, conduits of colonial capital power, and ultimately distancing mechanisms that separate people from places and each other. Yet supply chains are also imperfect and incomplete in their operations, and it is this observation that provides for creative responses and the hope of reinvigorating more grounded approaches to the production of food and practices of feeding.