| This dissertation is a historical/comparative analysis of networks involved in maize (corn) production in historical Rhodesia, and Zimbabwe. I directly address the social embeddedness of production, and the social construction of markets and profits, synthesizing the work of Mark Granovetter, Karl Polanyi, and Harrison White. The Zimbabwean case is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of commodity chain analysis in political economy. The analysis rests theoretically on the understanding of economic embeddedness within production networks, and institutional development of exchange relations involved in long production networks. I extend this area of economic sociology by introducing interpretive aspects in my analysis.;I conclude that new theories, casting off the exchange maximization assumptions of market economics and focusing on the use and deployment of technical knowledge in politically robust actions is the key to understanding how economic networks are shaped and for whom.;Within this theoretical frame, I construct and elaborate the use of commodity chains, combining Michel Callon's techno-economic networks and sub-sector analyses from agricultural economics. I link physically productive processes to the fluid technical, social, and juridical milieux in which they are enveloped, comparing various periods of Rhodesian/Zimbabwean history, and note that social factors dominate the arrangements of work and technical expertise along the commodity chain. The three dominant aspects regulating economic action are the construction of racial categories, the imposition of scientific knowledge as a means of control and the manipulation of state intervention by groups with "effective" suffrage in the polity. |
