Andrew Bowman
Biographic Data
| ID | 122477 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andrew Bowman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andrew |
| FAMILY NAME | Bowman |
| SIGNATURE | BOWMAN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Edinburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5132-6121 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 69 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2011 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Value capture in the emerging medical cannabis global value chain: Insights from South Africa
BACKGROUND: A global value chain (GVC)-an international network linking producers and consumers through multiple intermediaries-has rapidly emerged in recent years to connect geographically dispersed cultivators and consumers of legal medical cannabis. This is commonly presented as an important new economic development opportunity for low- and middle-income countries with favourable agro-ecological conditions. This paper analyses the growth of th…
The Industrialisation of Meat and its Implications: Exploring Governance, Power, and Inclusion in the South African Beef Value Chain
As with meat production in much of the Global South, beef production in South Africa has become increasingly industrialised. What does this entail for governance and power relations in meat value chains, and what are the implications for widely shared aspirations to build ‘inclusive’ value chains that incorporate smallholder livestock farmers? The paper finds that the mid-sections of the chain have become increasingly concentrated, with verticall…
Supermarketisation, Agro-Industrial Concentration and the Food System's Shrinking Interstices: Insights From South African Agro-Processing
We analyse processes of supermarketisation in South Africa and its implications for inclusion, exclusion and industrial concentration in the mid-sections of agri-food value chains. Empirical material from maize processing shows differentiated impacts accompanying major retailers' growing power and extended reach into the food system's township and rural peripheries. Large firms' co-evolutionary adaptations and constitutive power counteract superm…
Accumulation by Intermediation: The Contestation of Agro-Food Capital in the South African Maize Industry
The power of agro-food capital is frequently highlighted, but its internal dynamics are under-researched. This paper contributes to the understanding of agro-food capital in agrarian political economy through an analysis of milling and storage activities that intermediate grain production and consumption in South Africa. The paper shows that these activities can provide important sources of income and optionality supporting diverse accumulation s…
Inclusive agro-industrial development and sectoral systems of innovation: Insights from South Africa
The agro-industries are widely viewed as important to inclusive industrial development due to their relatively low entry barriers and acessibility to small firms. However, the agro-industries are more technologically complex than commonly assumed. Small and young firms face challenges acquiring capabilities to compete effectively. The paper explores how differing sectoral systems of innovation (SSI) shape patterns of inclusion and exclusion in th…
Land, conflict and radical distributive claims in South Africa's rural mining frontier
Mining in Africa after the supercycle: New directions and geographies
Mining in Africa is at a pivotal moment. For most of the period 2000 to 2012, the extractive industries were in a “supercycle” of sustained high commodity prices. Driven by resource‐intensive growth in emerging market economies, these high commodity prices were anticipated to continue for decades to come. However, this “supercycle” ended in 2012 and there followed a severe slump in mineral prices from 2014 onwards. On the one hand, a new era of c…
Parastatals and economic transformation in South Africa: The political economy of the Eskom crisis
This article analyses the causes, outcomes, and political significance of the inter-connected operational, financial, and governance crises afflicting Eskom, South Africa’s electricity parastatal. These crises emerged in the context of African National Congress initiatives to turn Eskom and other key parastatals into instruments of an envisaged South African developmental state, through increased investment and strategic procurement to support ec…
Black economic empowerment policy and state–business relations in South Africa: The case of mining
The article analyses contestation of black economic empowerment ownership transfer policies in South Africa’s mining industry. Using case study material from platinum, the article examines the transition between the first Mining Charter of 2004 and the third Mining Charter of 2018. It argues that the inherent fragilities of this financialised redistribution mechanism have generated poor redistributive outcomes and achieved limited progress in the…
Trade Associations, Narrative and Elite Power
This article introduces and develops the concept of trade narrative to understand how business sectors defend against public disapproval and the threat of increased regulation or removed subsidy. Trade narrative works by accumulating lists of benefits and occluding costs, and is created by consultants for economic interests organized via trade associations. This represents an under-analysed 'policy-based evidence machine', the aim of which is to …
The 2014 platinum strike: Narratives and numbers
In 2014 South Africa's three largest platinum mining companies were partially shut down by a 70,000 person-strong, five-month long strike. Alongside closed-door negotiations between the companies a
What a Waste: Outsourcing and How it Goes Wrong
This is the first ever book to analyse outsourcing – contracting out public services to private business interests. It is an unacknowledged revolution in the British economy, and it has happened quietly, but it is creating powerful new corporate interests, transforming the organisation of government at all levels, and is simultaneously enriching a new business elite and creating numerous fiascos in the delivery of public services. What links the …
Sovereignty, Risk and Biotechnology: Zambia's 2002 GM Controversy in Retrospect
The southern African food crisis of 2002 led to one of the most significant controversies over the use of genetically modified (GM) crops in the developing world to date. Zambia's staunch opposition to GM food aid during the crisis is still frequently used as a reference point in debates over GM seed technology in agricultural development, and the morality of advanced biotechnology. This article re-examines the controversy and its contemporary re…
After the green gold rush: The Construction of Climate Change as a Market Transition
This paper examines the emergence of a representation of climate change amongst business and political elites as an axiomatic frame of long-term economic strategy. In this representation, the rationale for action on climate change is liberated from the premise of an exogenous physical threat, and replaced by incentives endogenous to the market in the form of opportunities in the so-called carbon economy. The relationship between climate science a…
Science and ethics in the post-political era: Strategies within the Camp for Climate Action
Despite a peak in activism against climate change in the UK, new environmental direct action networks have not yet received much academic attention. Taking perhaps the most prominent of such networks – the Camp for Climate Action – which held several high-profile protest events between 2006 and 2011 as a case study, and using a theoretical framework that understands society as being distinctly ‘post-political’ in character, we ask questions about…
Mass Production or Production by the Masses? Tractors, Cooperatives, and the Politics of Rural Development in Post-Independence Zambia
The fall of colonial regimes across Africa was accompanied by the rise in expectations for rapid and inclusive rural economic progress. In Zambia, the cooperative production unit was one of two key initiatives at the centre of the United National Independence Party's ambitious development efforts. The other was the tractor. By following these two interlinked initiatives in the years immediately following independence, this article contributes to …
Ecology to Technocracy: Scientists, Surveys and Power in the Agricultural Development of Late-Colonial Zambia
This article provides an account of the transformation in agricultural development expertise that took place in late-colonial Zambia. Frustration with the slow pace of agricultural 'improvement' in the Native Reserves forced the socially and ecologically aware approach to rural development fostered during the 1930s–1940s, to give way to the technocratic model now associated with the green revolution agriculture and the 'developmental state'. Thro…
Science and ethics in the post-political era: Strategies within the Camp for Climate Action
Despite a peak in activism against climate change in the UK, new environmental direct action networks have not yet received much academic attention. Taking perhaps the most prominent of such networks – the Camp for Climate Action – which held several high-profile protest events between 2006 and 2011 as a case study, and using a theoretical framework that understands society as being distinctly ‘post-political’ in character, we ask questions about…
After the green gold rush: The Construction of Climate Change as a Market Transition
This paper examines the emergence of a representation of climate change amongst business and political elites as an axiomatic frame of long-term economic strategy. In this representation, the rationale for action on climate change is liberated from the premise of an exogenous physical threat, and replaced by incentives endogenous to the market in the form of opportunities in the so-called carbon economy. The relationship between climate science a…
Mass Production or Production by the Masses? Tractors, Cooperatives, and the Politics of Rural Development in Post-Independence Zambia
The fall of colonial regimes across Africa was accompanied by the rise in expectations for rapid and inclusive rural economic progress. In Zambia, the cooperative production unit was one of two key initiatives at the centre of the United National Independence Party's ambitious development efforts. The other was the tractor. By following these two interlinked initiatives in the years immediately following independence, this article contributes to …
Trade Associations, Narrative and Elite Power
This article introduces and develops the concept of trade narrative to understand how business sectors defend against public disapproval and the threat of increased regulation or removed subsidy. Trade narrative works by accumulating lists of benefits and occluding costs, and is created by consultants for economic interests organized via trade associations. This represents an under-analysed 'policy-based evidence machine', the aim of which is to …
Black economic empowerment policy and state–business relations in South Africa: The case of mining
The article analyses contestation of black economic empowerment ownership transfer policies in South Africa’s mining industry. Using case study material from platinum, the article examines the transition between the first Mining Charter of 2004 and the third Mining Charter of 2018. It argues that the inherent fragilities of this financialised redistribution mechanism have generated poor redistributive outcomes and achieved limited progress in the…
Parastatals and economic transformation in South Africa: The political economy of the Eskom crisis
This article analyses the causes, outcomes, and political significance of the inter-connected operational, financial, and governance crises afflicting Eskom, South Africa’s electricity parastatal. These crises emerged in the context of African National Congress initiatives to turn Eskom and other key parastatals into instruments of an envisaged South African developmental state, through increased investment and strategic procurement to support ec…
Inclusive agro-industrial development and sectoral systems of innovation: Insights from South Africa
The agro-industries are widely viewed as important to inclusive industrial development due to their relatively low entry barriers and acessibility to small firms. However, the agro-industries are more technologically complex than commonly assumed. Small and young firms face challenges acquiring capabilities to compete effectively. The paper explores how differing sectoral systems of innovation (SSI) shape patterns of inclusion and exclusion in th…
Land, conflict and radical distributive claims in South Africa's rural mining frontier
Ecology to Technocracy: Scientists, Surveys and Power in the Agricultural Development of Late-Colonial Zambia
This article provides an account of the transformation in agricultural development expertise that took place in late-colonial Zambia. Frustration with the slow pace of agricultural 'improvement' in the Native Reserves forced the socially and ecologically aware approach to rural development fostered during the 1930s–1940s, to give way to the technocratic model now associated with the green revolution agriculture and the 'developmental state'. Thro…
Supermarketisation, Agro-Industrial Concentration and the Food System's Shrinking Interstices: Insights From South African Agro-Processing
We analyse processes of supermarketisation in South Africa and its implications for inclusion, exclusion and industrial concentration in the mid-sections of agri-food value chains. Empirical material from maize processing shows differentiated impacts accompanying major retailers' growing power and extended reach into the food system's township and rural peripheries. Large firms' co-evolutionary adaptations and constitutive power counteract superm…
Accumulation by Intermediation: The Contestation of Agro-Food Capital in the South African Maize Industry
The power of agro-food capital is frequently highlighted, but its internal dynamics are under-researched. This paper contributes to the understanding of agro-food capital in agrarian political economy through an analysis of milling and storage activities that intermediate grain production and consumption in South Africa. The paper shows that these activities can provide important sources of income and optionality supporting diverse accumulation s…
The 2014 platinum strike: Narratives and numbers
In 2014 South Africa's three largest platinum mining companies were partially shut down by a 70,000 person-strong, five-month long strike. Alongside closed-door negotiations between the companies a
Sovereignty, Risk and Biotechnology: Zambia's 2002 GM Controversy in Retrospect
The southern African food crisis of 2002 led to one of the most significant controversies over the use of genetically modified (GM) crops in the developing world to date. Zambia's staunch opposition to GM food aid during the crisis is still frequently used as a reference point in debates over GM seed technology in agricultural development, and the morality of advanced biotechnology. This article re-examines the controversy and its contemporary re…
Mass Production or Production by the Masses? Tractors, Cooperatives, and the Politics of Rural Development in Post-Independence Zambia
The fall of colonial regimes across Africa was accompanied by the rise in expectations for rapid and inclusive rural economic progress. In Zambia, the cooperative production unit was one of two key initiatives at the centre of the United National Independence Party's ambitious development efforts. The other was the tractor. By following these two interlinked initiatives in the years immediately following independence, this article contributes to …
Ecology to Technocracy: Scientists, Surveys and Power in the Agricultural Development of Late-Colonial Zambia
This article provides an account of the transformation in agricultural development expertise that took place in late-colonial Zambia. Frustration with the slow pace of agricultural 'improvement' in the Native Reserves forced the socially and ecologically aware approach to rural development fostered during the 1930s–1940s, to give way to the technocratic model now associated with the green revolution agriculture and the 'developmental state'. Thro…
Science and ethics in the post-political era: Strategies within the Camp for Climate Action
Despite a peak in activism against climate change in the UK, new environmental direct action networks have not yet received much academic attention. Taking perhaps the most prominent of such networks – the Camp for Climate Action – which held several high-profile protest events between 2006 and 2011 as a case study, and using a theoretical framework that understands society as being distinctly ‘post-political’ in character, we ask questions about…
After the green gold rush: The Construction of Climate Change as a Market Transition
This paper examines the emergence of a representation of climate change amongst business and political elites as an axiomatic frame of long-term economic strategy. In this representation, the rationale for action on climate change is liberated from the premise of an exogenous physical threat, and replaced by incentives endogenous to the market in the form of opportunities in the so-called carbon economy. The relationship between climate science a…
The 2014 platinum strike: Narratives and numbers
In 2014 South Africa's three largest platinum mining companies were partially shut down by a 70,000 person-strong, five-month long strike. Alongside closed-door negotiations between the companies a
What a Waste: Outsourcing and How it Goes Wrong
This is the first ever book to analyse outsourcing – contracting out public services to private business interests. It is an unacknowledged revolution in the British economy, and it has happened quietly, but it is creating powerful new corporate interests, transforming the organisation of government at all levels, and is simultaneously enriching a new business elite and creating numerous fiascos in the delivery of public services. What links the …
Sovereignty, Risk and Biotechnology: Zambia's 2002 GM Controversy in Retrospect
The southern African food crisis of 2002 led to one of the most significant controversies over the use of genetically modified (GM) crops in the developing world to date. Zambia's staunch opposition to GM food aid during the crisis is still frequently used as a reference point in debates over GM seed technology in agricultural development, and the morality of advanced biotechnology. This article re-examines the controversy and its contemporary re…
Trade Associations, Narrative and Elite Power
This article introduces and develops the concept of trade narrative to understand how business sectors defend against public disapproval and the threat of increased regulation or removed subsidy. Trade narrative works by accumulating lists of benefits and occluding costs, and is created by consultants for economic interests organized via trade associations. This represents an under-analysed 'policy-based evidence machine', the aim of which is to …
Black economic empowerment policy and state–business relations in South Africa: The case of mining
The article analyses contestation of black economic empowerment ownership transfer policies in South Africa’s mining industry. Using case study material from platinum, the article examines the transition between the first Mining Charter of 2004 and the third Mining Charter of 2018. It argues that the inherent fragilities of this financialised redistribution mechanism have generated poor redistributive outcomes and achieved limited progress in the…
Parastatals and economic transformation in South Africa: The political economy of the Eskom crisis
This article analyses the causes, outcomes, and political significance of the inter-connected operational, financial, and governance crises afflicting Eskom, South Africa’s electricity parastatal. These crises emerged in the context of African National Congress initiatives to turn Eskom and other key parastatals into instruments of an envisaged South African developmental state, through increased investment and strategic procurement to support ec…
Land, conflict and radical distributive claims in South Africa's rural mining frontier
Mining in Africa after the supercycle: New directions and geographies
Mining in Africa is at a pivotal moment. For most of the period 2000 to 2012, the extractive industries were in a “supercycle” of sustained high commodity prices. Driven by resource‐intensive growth in emerging market economies, these high commodity prices were anticipated to continue for decades to come. However, this “supercycle” ended in 2012 and there followed a severe slump in mineral prices from 2014 onwards. On the one hand, a new era of c…
Inclusive agro-industrial development and sectoral systems of innovation: Insights from South Africa
The agro-industries are widely viewed as important to inclusive industrial development due to their relatively low entry barriers and acessibility to small firms. However, the agro-industries are more technologically complex than commonly assumed. Small and young firms face challenges acquiring capabilities to compete effectively. The paper explores how differing sectoral systems of innovation (SSI) shape patterns of inclusion and exclusion in th…
Supermarketisation, Agro-Industrial Concentration and the Food System's Shrinking Interstices: Insights From South African Agro-Processing
We analyse processes of supermarketisation in South Africa and its implications for inclusion, exclusion and industrial concentration in the mid-sections of agri-food value chains. Empirical material from maize processing shows differentiated impacts accompanying major retailers' growing power and extended reach into the food system's township and rural peripheries. Large firms' co-evolutionary adaptations and constitutive power counteract superm…
Accumulation by Intermediation: The Contestation of Agro-Food Capital in the South African Maize Industry
The power of agro-food capital is frequently highlighted, but its internal dynamics are under-researched. This paper contributes to the understanding of agro-food capital in agrarian political economy through an analysis of milling and storage activities that intermediate grain production and consumption in South Africa. The paper shows that these activities can provide important sources of income and optionality supporting diverse accumulation s…
Value capture in the emerging medical cannabis global value chain: Insights from South Africa
BACKGROUND: A global value chain (GVC)-an international network linking producers and consumers through multiple intermediaries-has rapidly emerged in recent years to connect geographically dispersed cultivators and consumers of legal medical cannabis. This is commonly presented as an important new economic development opportunity for low- and middle-income countries with favourable agro-ecological conditions. This paper analyses the growth of th…
The Industrialisation of Meat and its Implications: Exploring Governance, Power, and Inclusion in the South African Beef Value Chain
As with meat production in much of the Global South, beef production in South Africa has become increasingly industrialised. What does this entail for governance and power relations in meat value chains, and what are the implications for widely shared aspirations to build ‘inclusive’ value chains that incorporate smallholder livestock farmers? The paper finds that the mid-sections of the chain have become increasingly concentrated, with verticall…
Political science (11 works) · Economics (10 works) · Politics (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Political economy (7 works) · Business (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Market economy (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Development economics (4 works)