Rachel Schurman
Biographic Data
| ID | 96280 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rachel Schurman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rachel |
| FAMILY NAME | Schurman |
| SIGNATURE | SCHURMAN R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Minnesota |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2327-7021 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 443 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Agricultural Value Chain Development Projects and Household Nutrition in Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Côte d'Ivoire
Many mainstream development actors and scholars concerned about rural poverty and hunger in Africa recommend integrating smallholder farmers, especially women, into formally structured agricultural value chains (AVCs). This influential approach rests on the assumption that productivity-enhancing technologies and stronger market linkages will raise farmer incomes, and in turn improve food and nutrition security (FNS) in farmer households via incre…
Taking Population Seriously
Originally published in 1988 and 1990, this book asks what positive lessons can be learned from some of the developing world’s success stories on population. Six developing world countries, as well as the Indian state of Kerala had achieved dramatic reductions in birth rates at the time the book was originally published. The book examines what made their success possible and what lessons they held for the planet, where human beings (now, as then)…
Building an Ideational and Institutional Architecture for Africa's Agricultural Transformation
Over the past two decades, transnationally networked actors have promoted a vision of transforming African agriculture from an object of poverty-alleviating development assistance to a motor of economic growth by integrating smallholders into markets and promoting agribusiness through multi-stakeholder initiatives. Munro and Schurman analyze the networking and communicative labor that key policy actors have performed to advance this vision. An in…
The complex choreography of agricultural biotechnology in Africa
In spite of impressive efforts from public and private organizations over the last 25 years, agricultural biotechnology has gained relatively little ground in Africa. Using ethnographic research and case studies from across the continent, we argue that a complex choreography of socio-political, regulatory, and business conditions is required for agricultural biotechnology projects to ‘succeed’ in Africa. While this choreography is rarely achieved…
Circulating Discourses
In recent years, neo-institutional sociologists, political scientists and geographers have engaged in a lively set of theoretical debates about how policy ideas move from one place to another. This paper seeks to engage with claims about global norm diffusion or policy transfer by studying policy discourses on agricultural development in the East African country of Tanzania. Using documents produced by international donors and research institutio…
Micro(soft) managing a ‘green revolution’ for Africa: The new donor culture and international agricultural development
Limits of the New Green Revolution for Africa: Reconceptualising gendered agricultural value chains
In order to address food insecurity, the New Green Revolution for Africa (GR4A) promotes tighter integration of African smallholder farmers, especially women, into formal markets via value chains to improve farmers' input access and to encourage the sale of crop surpluses. This commentary offers a theoretical and practical critique of the GR4A model, drawing on early findings from a five-year study of value chain initiatives in Burkina Faso, Côte…
Building an Alliance for Biotechnology in Africa
Scholars and activists working from within a political economy perspective often fail to explore the distinct motives, interests and behaviours of powerful actors who appear to be working 'as one' on a common agenda. Such is the case in recent analyses of efforts to promote the use of biotechnology in Africa. While the critical literature largely focuses on the attempt to create what Peter Newell calls 'bio-hegemony', the present paper explores t…
Shadow space: Suicides and the predicament of rural India
According to the National Crime Records Bureau of the Government of India, 'between 1997 and 2006 an average of 17,366 agriculturalists committed suicide in India. By the end of 2008, 199,132 agric
Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth
Entries
Targeting Capital: A Cultural Economy Approach to Understanding the Efficacy of Two Anti-Genetic Engineering Movements
In the late 1990s, the British anti-genetic engineering (GE) movement effectively closed Britain's market for genetically modified foods, while the U.S. anti-GE movement had a negligible impact. In seeking to explain the different outcomes of these similar social movements, the authors draw upon the global commodity chains (GCC) literature to extend the understanding of the economic and industry-related openings and closures social movements face…
Ideas, thinkers, and social networks: The process of grievance construction in the anti-genetic engineering movement
Fighting “Frankenfoods”: Industry Opportunity Structures and the Efficacy of the Anti-Biotech Movement in Western Europe
This article analyzes how a new social movement against genetic engineering in agriculture managed to turn a major industry upside down. While the social movements literature has long recognized the importance of external context for the success of social movements, it has paid little attention to the institutional logic and features of targets other than the state. Here I argue that an undertheorized aspect of external context, namely, industry …
Fish and Flexibility: Working in The New Chile
As in all countries in which labor is fully exposed to the market and cannot depend on the state for protection against “natural” industry swings, Chile’s workers have borne the brunt of all risks and vulnerabilities
Uncertain Gains: Labor in Chile's New Export Sectors
Natural-resource-based export-oriented growth strategies have resurfaced as the dominant development approach in Latin America. While a growing literature exists on the economic, equity, gender, and environmental impacts of this development strategy, insufficient attention has been paid to its significance for labor. This article seeks to help fill this gap by analyzing its effects on Chilean workers. Based on a study of the fruit, forestry, and …
Industrial Dynamics and the Problem of Nature
Existing literature suggests that food, fiber, and raw material sectors differ from manufacturing in significant ways. However, there is no analytical basis for engaging the particular challenges of nature-centered production, and thus the distinct ways that industrialization proceeds in extractive and cultivation-based industries. This article presents a framework for analyzing the difference that nature makes in these industries. Nature is seen…
Industrial Dynamics and the Problem of Nature
Closing the 'Great Divide: New Social Theory on Society and Nature
Twenty years ago, two environmental sociologists made a bold call for a paradigmatic shift in the discipline of sociology-namely, one that would bring nature into the center of sociological inquiry and recognize the inseparability of nature and society. In this essay, we review recent scholarship that seeks to meet this challenge. The respective strands of this literature come from the margins of environmental sociology and border on other arenas…
Tuna Dreams: Resource Nationalism and the Pacific Islands' Tuna Industry
The 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea was expected by many to lead to a drastic redistribution of income from the world's fisheries. This article explores the extent to which this happened by examining the case of the Pacific Islands' tuna industry. The analysis shows that even though these developing countries gained legal jurisdiction over some of the largest tuna stocks in the world, they encountered tremendous obstacles when they attempted t…
Snails, southern hake and sustainability: Neoliberalism and natural resource exports in Chile
The Bay Shrimpers of Texas: Rural Fishermen in a Global Economy
Shrimpers who fish the shallow coastal waters of Texas fight a constant battle for survival--contending with shrimpers who fish the deeper gulf waters, competing with weekend sportsmen, wrangling with government regulations, and dodging environmentalists' incriminations. Add competition from the international market, an ominous threat frequently overlooked by bay fishermen, and the shrimpers; chances of winning--at least with their current lifest…
Chile’s new entrepreneurs and the “economic miracle”: The invisible hand or a hand from the state
Overfishing
Nontraditional Agricultural Exports in Latin America
After a decade of debt crisis and severe economic decline, countries throughout Latin America are seeking radical new treatments for their economic ills. Under pressure from internal political actors, international lending and aid agencies, or some combination of these, many Latin American countries are turning to outward-looking development strategies to stabilize their balance of payments and revitalize economic growth. Serving as the centerpie…
Industrial Dynamics and the Problem of Nature
Existing literature suggests that food, fiber, and raw material sectors differ from manufacturing in significant ways. However, there is no analytical basis for engaging the particular challenges of nature-centered production, and thus the distinct ways that industrialization proceeds in extractive and cultivation-based industries. This article presents a framework for analyzing the difference that nature makes in these industries. Nature is seen…
Closing the 'Great Divide: New Social Theory on Society and Nature
Twenty years ago, two environmental sociologists made a bold call for a paradigmatic shift in the discipline of sociology-namely, one that would bring nature into the center of sociological inquiry and recognize the inseparability of nature and society. In this essay, we review recent scholarship that seeks to meet this challenge. The respective strands of this literature come from the margins of environmental sociology and border on other arenas…
Fighting “Frankenfoods”: Industry Opportunity Structures and the Efficacy of the Anti-Biotech Movement in Western Europe
This article analyzes how a new social movement against genetic engineering in agriculture managed to turn a major industry upside down. While the social movements literature has long recognized the importance of external context for the success of social movements, it has paid little attention to the institutional logic and features of targets other than the state. Here I argue that an undertheorized aspect of external context, namely, industry …
Limits of the New Green Revolution for Africa: Reconceptualising gendered agricultural value chains
In order to address food insecurity, the New Green Revolution for Africa (GR4A) promotes tighter integration of African smallholder farmers, especially women, into formal markets via value chains to improve farmers' input access and to encourage the sale of crop surpluses. This commentary offers a theoretical and practical critique of the GR4A model, drawing on early findings from a five-year study of value chain initiatives in Burkina Faso, Côte…
Shadow space: Suicides and the predicament of rural India
According to the National Crime Records Bureau of the Government of India, 'between 1997 and 2006 an average of 17,366 agriculturalists committed suicide in India. By the end of 2008, 199,132 agric
Targeting Capital: A Cultural Economy Approach to Understanding the Efficacy of Two Anti-Genetic Engineering Movements
In the late 1990s, the British anti-genetic engineering (GE) movement effectively closed Britain's market for genetically modified foods, while the U.S. anti-GE movement had a negligible impact. In seeking to explain the different outcomes of these similar social movements, the authors draw upon the global commodity chains (GCC) literature to extend the understanding of the economic and industry-related openings and closures social movements face…
Micro(soft) managing a ‘green revolution’ for Africa: The new donor culture and international agricultural development
Snails, southern hake and sustainability: Neoliberalism and natural resource exports in Chile
Ideas, thinkers, and social networks: The process of grievance construction in the anti-genetic engineering movement
Chile’s new entrepreneurs and the “economic miracle”: The invisible hand or a hand from the state
Building an Alliance for Biotechnology in Africa
Scholars and activists working from within a political economy perspective often fail to explore the distinct motives, interests and behaviours of powerful actors who appear to be working 'as one' on a common agenda. Such is the case in recent analyses of efforts to promote the use of biotechnology in Africa. While the critical literature largely focuses on the attempt to create what Peter Newell calls 'bio-hegemony', the present paper explores t…
Tuna Dreams: Resource Nationalism and the Pacific Islands' Tuna Industry
The 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea was expected by many to lead to a drastic redistribution of income from the world's fisheries. This article explores the extent to which this happened by examining the case of the Pacific Islands' tuna industry. The analysis shows that even though these developing countries gained legal jurisdiction over some of the largest tuna stocks in the world, they encountered tremendous obstacles when they attempted t…
Industrial Dynamics and the Problem of Nature
Building an Ideational and Institutional Architecture for Africa's Agricultural Transformation
Over the past two decades, transnationally networked actors have promoted a vision of transforming African agriculture from an object of poverty-alleviating development assistance to a motor of economic growth by integrating smallholders into markets and promoting agribusiness through multi-stakeholder initiatives. Munro and Schurman analyze the networking and communicative labor that key policy actors have performed to advance this vision. An in…
The complex choreography of agricultural biotechnology in Africa
In spite of impressive efforts from public and private organizations over the last 25 years, agricultural biotechnology has gained relatively little ground in Africa. Using ethnographic research and case studies from across the continent, we argue that a complex choreography of socio-political, regulatory, and business conditions is required for agricultural biotechnology projects to ‘succeed’ in Africa. While this choreography is rarely achieved…
Overfishing
Nontraditional Agricultural Exports in Latin America
After a decade of debt crisis and severe economic decline, countries throughout Latin America are seeking radical new treatments for their economic ills. Under pressure from internal political actors, international lending and aid agencies, or some combination of these, many Latin American countries are turning to outward-looking development strategies to stabilize their balance of payments and revitalize economic growth. Serving as the centerpie…
Snails, southern hake and sustainability: Neoliberalism and natural resource exports in Chile
The Bay Shrimpers of Texas: Rural Fishermen in a Global Economy
Shrimpers who fish the shallow coastal waters of Texas fight a constant battle for survival--contending with shrimpers who fish the deeper gulf waters, competing with weekend sportsmen, wrangling with government regulations, and dodging environmentalists' incriminations. Add competition from the international market, an ominous threat frequently overlooked by bay fishermen, and the shrimpers; chances of winning--at least with their current lifest…
Chile’s new entrepreneurs and the “economic miracle”: The invisible hand or a hand from the state
Overfishing
Tuna Dreams: Resource Nationalism and the Pacific Islands' Tuna Industry
The 1982 United Nations Law of the Sea was expected by many to lead to a drastic redistribution of income from the world's fisheries. This article explores the extent to which this happened by examining the case of the Pacific Islands' tuna industry. The analysis shows that even though these developing countries gained legal jurisdiction over some of the largest tuna stocks in the world, they encountered tremendous obstacles when they attempted t…
Closing the 'Great Divide: New Social Theory on Society and Nature
Twenty years ago, two environmental sociologists made a bold call for a paradigmatic shift in the discipline of sociology-namely, one that would bring nature into the center of sociological inquiry and recognize the inseparability of nature and society. In this essay, we review recent scholarship that seeks to meet this challenge. The respective strands of this literature come from the margins of environmental sociology and border on other arenas…
Uncertain Gains: Labor in Chile's New Export Sectors
Natural-resource-based export-oriented growth strategies have resurfaced as the dominant development approach in Latin America. While a growing literature exists on the economic, equity, gender, and environmental impacts of this development strategy, insufficient attention has been paid to its significance for labor. This article seeks to help fill this gap by analyzing its effects on Chilean workers. Based on a study of the fruit, forestry, and …
Industrial Dynamics and the Problem of Nature
Existing literature suggests that food, fiber, and raw material sectors differ from manufacturing in significant ways. However, there is no analytical basis for engaging the particular challenges of nature-centered production, and thus the distinct ways that industrialization proceeds in extractive and cultivation-based industries. This article presents a framework for analyzing the difference that nature makes in these industries. Nature is seen…
Industrial Dynamics and the Problem of Nature
Fish and Flexibility: Working in The New Chile
As in all countries in which labor is fully exposed to the market and cannot depend on the state for protection against “natural” industry swings, Chile’s workers have borne the brunt of all risks and vulnerabilities
Fighting “Frankenfoods”: Industry Opportunity Structures and the Efficacy of the Anti-Biotech Movement in Western Europe
This article analyzes how a new social movement against genetic engineering in agriculture managed to turn a major industry upside down. While the social movements literature has long recognized the importance of external context for the success of social movements, it has paid little attention to the institutional logic and features of targets other than the state. Here I argue that an undertheorized aspect of external context, namely, industry …
Ideas, thinkers, and social networks: The process of grievance construction in the anti-genetic engineering movement
Entries
Targeting Capital: A Cultural Economy Approach to Understanding the Efficacy of Two Anti-Genetic Engineering Movements
In the late 1990s, the British anti-genetic engineering (GE) movement effectively closed Britain's market for genetically modified foods, while the U.S. anti-GE movement had a negligible impact. In seeking to explain the different outcomes of these similar social movements, the authors draw upon the global commodity chains (GCC) literature to extend the understanding of the economic and industry-related openings and closures social movements face…
Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth
Shadow space: Suicides and the predicament of rural India
According to the National Crime Records Bureau of the Government of India, 'between 1997 and 2006 an average of 17,366 agriculturalists committed suicide in India. By the end of 2008, 199,132 agric
Building an Alliance for Biotechnology in Africa
Scholars and activists working from within a political economy perspective often fail to explore the distinct motives, interests and behaviours of powerful actors who appear to be working 'as one' on a common agenda. Such is the case in recent analyses of efforts to promote the use of biotechnology in Africa. While the critical literature largely focuses on the attempt to create what Peter Newell calls 'bio-hegemony', the present paper explores t…
Circulating Discourses
In recent years, neo-institutional sociologists, political scientists and geographers have engaged in a lively set of theoretical debates about how policy ideas move from one place to another. This paper seeks to engage with claims about global norm diffusion or policy transfer by studying policy discourses on agricultural development in the East African country of Tanzania. Using documents produced by international donors and research institutio…
Micro(soft) managing a ‘green revolution’ for Africa: The new donor culture and international agricultural development
Limits of the New Green Revolution for Africa: Reconceptualising gendered agricultural value chains
In order to address food insecurity, the New Green Revolution for Africa (GR4A) promotes tighter integration of African smallholder farmers, especially women, into formal markets via value chains to improve farmers' input access and to encourage the sale of crop surpluses. This commentary offers a theoretical and practical critique of the GR4A model, drawing on early findings from a five-year study of value chain initiatives in Burkina Faso, Côte…
The complex choreography of agricultural biotechnology in Africa
In spite of impressive efforts from public and private organizations over the last 25 years, agricultural biotechnology has gained relatively little ground in Africa. Using ethnographic research and case studies from across the continent, we argue that a complex choreography of socio-political, regulatory, and business conditions is required for agricultural biotechnology projects to ‘succeed’ in Africa. While this choreography is rarely achieved…
Building an Ideational and Institutional Architecture for Africa's Agricultural Transformation
Over the past two decades, transnationally networked actors have promoted a vision of transforming African agriculture from an object of poverty-alleviating development assistance to a motor of economic growth by integrating smallholders into markets and promoting agribusiness through multi-stakeholder initiatives. Munro and Schurman analyze the networking and communicative labor that key policy actors have performed to advance this vision. An in…
Taking Population Seriously
Originally published in 1988 and 1990, this book asks what positive lessons can be learned from some of the developing world’s success stories on population. Six developing world countries, as well as the Indian state of Kerala had achieved dramatic reductions in birth rates at the time the book was originally published. The book examines what made their success possible and what lessons they held for the planet, where human beings (now, as then)…
Agricultural Value Chain Development Projects and Household Nutrition in Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Côte d'Ivoire
Many mainstream development actors and scholars concerned about rural poverty and hunger in Africa recommend integrating smallholder farmers, especially women, into formally structured agricultural value chains (AVCs). This influential approach rests on the assumption that productivity-enhancing technologies and stronger market linkages will raise farmer incomes, and in turn improve food and nutrition security (FNS) in farmer households via incre…
Political science (17 works) · Economics (16 works) · Business (10 works) · Law (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Politics (9 works) · Agriculture (8 works) · Geography (8 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (6 works) · Economic growth (6 works)