The project argues that a complex bundle of so-cial, economic, scientific, technical and politi-cal practices arose since mid 19th century lead-ing to logistics as a core concept of modern so-cieties. We draw attention to the evolution and change of planning, storing, shipping and trans-porting activities for materials handling and information flows on a global scale. Tracing the material and information flows we study the cul-tural principles and social outcomes of logis-tics. We are also interested in the jams and leaks, the nightmares of modern logistics-based societies. We follow a methodological approach that combines local, national and global perspec-tives. The projet focuses on the national and international forces shaping the development of infrastructures, standards, buildings, technolo-gies and knowledge as well as local particularities. The premise of analyzing logistics as «heterogenous engineering» (John Law) informs all our projects: They investigate the rise of prac-tices for the handling of time and space in different contexts shaped by nature, politics, technology, science, economy and geographical topographies. Pdf