Brinda Sarathy: Before Amazon

IAS faculty member and dean Brinda Sarathy recently published an article examining the “pre-history” of warehouses and logistics in inland Southern California prior to the birth of Amazon. Sarathy’s work traces the production of the Inland Empire’s logistics industry to the development of military installations, differentially incarcerated Italian prisoners of war and Japanese American internees, and racialized warehouse work during World War II. In so doing, she depicts the dynamic production of the inland region through various flows, both material and metaphoric, and how particular racialized groups were partly sedimented in particular places and occupations.