This paper reviews the history of African agricultural and food security policy in the post-colonial period in order to contextualize the productionist approach embedded in the New Green Revolution for Africa. Full-text
Written with one of my former MA students, this article investigates the escalating violence directed by community members towards the Ndumo game reserve in South Africa, which has pitted residents against the reserve they are invested in as owners and managers. We argue that the destruction and violence at Ndumo are best understood as an …
This article follows the efforts of white settlers to impose cotton as an export crop in Natal and Zululand. Touted as a commodity capable of remaking land and life in the region in the 1850s, the 1860s, and again in the 1910s and 1920s, cotton never achieved more than marginal status in the region’s …
This paper investigates the elevated expectations and dramatic downturns of the Empire Cotton Growing Corporation’s African experimentation program. It follows the trials of U.4, an insect-resistant variety bred to withstand continental growing conditions, whose expansion through east and southern Africa was filled with promise but ended in disappointment. Full-text (protected) | Pre-publication version
This article is based on a chapter of my Ph. D. dissertation which investigated the boom and bust of the largest cotton surge in South African history. I argue that cotton figured as a preferred crop within emerging national agricultural policy because it accorded with the political and ideological priorities of the new white settler …