Milk in Motion: Logistical Geographies in Twentieth-Century Britain

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyses the formation of the logistical system designed to supply and deliver milk in twentieth-century Britain. The article explores several themes: the painful, monotonous lives of cattle; the affective relations forged by milkmen; the acceleration of milk distribution; the rise of multiple chokepoints; and the increasingly encapsulated nature of modern milk. The system was a vast technology of niche construction, producing new milieux for cattle while increasing human milk consumption and providing novel environments for animal behavior, notably the emergent capacity of some birds to open milk bottles. The article, finally, draws attention to two major tensions within the system: that between the treatment of cows and the affection with which milkmen and bottled milk were frequently held; and that between the genuine advances toward seamless milk distribution and the endless irruption of chokepoints. These tensions suggest that logistics is a more contradictory process than is sometimes assumed.