Andrew Brooks

Work on global food systems has focused on the livelihoods of farmers directly affected as growers of agricultural export goods and has paid less attention to those who are left behind by new patterns of production and consumption. The connections between pre-existing agricultural livelihoods and the new systems of provision associated with fashionable products are poorly understood. Global trends in food culture have wide ranging local impacts. In this paper, we argue that researchers need to look beyond linear commodity chains and the goods that travel from producers in one country to consumers in another and expand global food systems analysis to understand what regional livelihoods are modified or displaced by globalized agriculture. Avocados are a popular health food among millennials. Colombia is experiencing a boom in exports. Avocados have long been grown in the Santander region, but global demand has turned them into a politically important crop. Using food systems analysis, our field research illuminates how new opportunities for capital accumulation are transmitted through global markets and shape regional agricultural practices. Large investors have profited, while small-scale farmers have been impoverished. We demonstrate how the interplay of requirements for homogenous fruit from local supermarkets, demand for the export Haas variety, as well as the government's export-oriented policies have modified local livelihoods.Our contribution examines the broader social space in which agriculture is located. We argue for the need to study food systems beyond the vertical relations that constitute linear supply chains and examine the horizontal context of systems of provision.

In the 2000s and 2010s a narrative of ‘Africa Rising’ was popularised by businesses, donors, media and political leaders. High economic growth rates, increased investment from the BRICS and the export of natural resources supported claims of development success. One group held up as beneficiaries were the emerging African middle class. Despite the optimism, poverty ratios remained stable and impoverishment was widespread. Change was occurring, but the gains were uneven. Mozambique had a liberalised economy and was at the forefront of numerous accounts of Africa’s rise in 2014. Perceptions of change among middle class Mozambicans working in small and medium enterprises in the hospitality, retail and construction sectors in Maputo were investigated. Economic growth enabled good performance for some businesses in the capital city, but there were challenges such as regulations that hampered entrepreneurship, rising inequality and labour exploitation by foreign companies. There was frustration among the middle class with the state and business elites. Through a process of extraversion leaders in the ruling FRELIMO party worked as intermediaries between the global and national market and gained from uneven development. Mozambique served as an important example of how economic growth had limited developmental benefits for those in the middle.

Recent protest movements in sub-Saharan Africa have generally failed to effect progressive transformations. Efforts to achieve social change have been frustrated by governing elites that continue to utilise their vacillating and unequal relationships with the external environment to sustain power. Although the leading figures may change, the dominant African class can re-establish leadership through new alliances with domestic and international networks of capital. To understand such 'change-without-change', this paper contributes to the growing body of literature on Antonio Gramsci's development of 'passive revolution'. The comparative character of Gramscian analysis enables his philosophy of praxis to be translated into very different historical and geographical settings. With this in mind we draw together recent engagements with passive revolution from Geography, Politics and African Studies. In particular we develop Jean-Franc ßois Bayart's notion of extraversion, while considering it in relation to more recent philological engagements with Gramsci. Our empirical focus is the politics of transition in Malawi. In his second term in office, the autocratic and unpopular president, Bingu wa Mutharika, implemented economic policies that ran against neoliberal orthodoxy and suppressed protest during a period of crisis. Mutharika was replaced, following his death in 2012, by Joyce Banda, a previously marginalised vice-president, who nurtured a re-engagement with transnational capital. Working through the state, Banda led a transformation from on high and moved to impose new economically liberal policies, including a major currency devaluation, which reduced living standards for many. We draw our empirical material from Chancellor College, a major site of protest against Mutharika in 2011. Evidence from interviews with staff and students demonstrates how two episodes of revolution/restoration in Malawi, a country distant from the western historical experience, can be interpreted through Gramsci's socially differentiated understanding of politics.

African clothing industries have declined since the implementation of economic
liberalization policies in the early 1980s whilst used-clothing imports
to Africa have increased. The general effects of economic liberalization on
African clothing industries are well documented, although little research has
been conducted on the particular impact of increased imports of second-hand
clothes on the local manufacturing sectors. Whether these two processes are
causally related is difficult to determine due to limitations in official data
sets. In this article, the used-clothing trade is explored in detail and a broad
range of cultural and local economic processes are investigated. Trends such
as declining local purchasing power and the opening of African markets to
cheap new clothing imports, as well as imports of used-clothing, are examined, along with the converse boost to African clothing export production
resulting from preferential trade agreements in the 2000s. With respect to
the differential legal and illegal imports of second-hand clothing to selected
African countries, it is demonstrated that official trade data sets often fail to
capture the nuances of contemporary social and economic processes.

This paper aims to stretch the GPN approach through investigating a second-hand trade network. One of the understudied geographies of the world economy is the large-scale international trade in second-hand clothes which are exported from the Global North to Africa. Clothing collected by charities and commercial recyclers is sold in the developing world. This article examines how secondhand clothing commodities are produced in the UK, the international economic geographies of the used-clothing trade and labour activities in Mozambique. The societal, network and territorial embeddedness of GPNs are investigated illuminating how there are coordinated and non-integrated patterns of trade. Migrant and diaspora populations play key roles in coordinating activities between some exporters and importers, whereas in other networks British charities undertake the more profitable collection and sorting activities and are separated from African wholesale and retailers. Within global second-hand clothing networks there are different power relations between charities, firms and individuals, which enable them to extract more or less value from second-hand things. The socially and historically embedded roles of British charities and firms in the collection, sorting and export of second-hand clothing are discussed and the importance of the material culture which surrounds these networks of intersecting charitable and commercial activities are highlighted. The reproduction of exchange-value in used clothing through socially necessary labour time in sorting factories is examined. Different case studies are discussed demonstrating the difficulties of studying the complex webs of networks with dynamic geographies which constitute second-hand trade. This article stretches GPN analysis to consider the back-end of the global economy and explore how profit is accumulated from the trade in low-value commodities from the Global North to the Global South.

The trade in used commodities has received limited geographical attention. The global production network (GPN) approach offers a theoretical frame through which to explore how second-hand goods, such as used cars, are traded internationally. The structure of a trade network and the tensions within it are researched through an inductive empirical GPN method and the embeddedness of powerful actors is related to context specific discourse. This article contributes to the analysis of the links between production and consumption through investigating informal and corrupt economic networks and exploring how a trade flow is embedded in a patrimonial state. The empirical case study demonstrates how used commodities are re-produced through political and cultural processes. In Japan a strict inspection regime excludes many used cars from the domestic market, some of which are exported via South Africa for sale in Mozambique. Embedded actors, including Pakistani trading families, play key roles in the governance of this international trade network. Corrupt individuals within the Mozambican customs service exert power at the import node to extract rent from this trade network, but the official neoliberal narrative of ‘development success’ in Mozambique constrains space for critique of their actions. Discussing the example of used car imports demonstrates how there are political structures which enable actors to have agency in trade networks and this shows how studies of international commodity flows have to stretch beyond the immediate manifestation of trade networks and chains to capture the dynamics of power relations.

Chinese engagement in Africa is an increasingly prescient and important subject for academic discourse on globalisation generally, and African political economy particularly, but local scale impacts of new Chinese investments have not been sufficiently addressed. The Mulungushi Textile Factory in Kabwe, Zambia, has a long association with China. New Chinese capitalist investment established the 'Zambia-China Mulungushi Textiles Joint Venture Ltd.' in 1997, rehabilitating a dilapidated industrial site. Through detailed ethnographic research this article explores how this specific Chinese engagement affected the lives of the Zambians who worked at Mulungushi Textiles. Using the lived experiences of ex-workers, changes to the social pattern of work are examined illustrating how a Zambian state model of labour organisation was replaced by a neo-liberal exploitative form at this globalised site. Wages were suppressed through casualisation, working conditions worsened and strict discipline was imposed. Workers did not gain the modern livelihoods they anticipated and through labour struggles, meanings and understandings of racial differences were produced and anger towards the Zambian state was articulated. Labour disputes, financial difficulties and increasing competition in the globally liberalised textile and clothing markets, diminished the enterprise's viability and Chinese investment abandoned Mulungushi in 2006.

One of the understudied geographies of the world economy is the large-scale export of second-hand clothing form the global North to Africa. The consumption and re-use of clothing traces a transnational gradient of inequality between the rich and poor. This thesis examines the (re)production of second-hand clothing commodities in Britain, the international economic geographies of the used-clothing trade and the labour activities of African market traders. Coordinated and non-integrated patterns of trade are investigated through a theoretical approach which draws upon Fine’s ‘system of provision’ analysis from heterodox economics and connects this to existing commodity studies approaches in geography. Within global second-hand clothing networks there are differential power relations between charities, companies and individuals. The socially and historically embedded roles of British charities and firms in the collection, processing and export of second-hand clothing are introduced. This is connected to the main empirical exploration of the downstream social and economic impacts of second-hand clothing imports in Africa. Linkages are made across the new and used clothing sectors and in the relationships between the decline of clothing industries across Africa, economic liberalisation and the growth of used-clothing imports. Patterns of import are investigated, with specific reference to Mozambique, where Indian merchants control distribution. Second-hand clothing markets are widespread in African urban centres and retail activities in Maputo are examined in-depth drawing upon twelve months of ethnographic research. Through specific social formations market traders have precarious livelihoods. Incomes do not provide opportunities for Mozambicans to progress out of poverty. By examining different processes at various locations in the international economy, it is demonstrated how it is not second-hand clothes which create economic relationships, but definite social relations between people.

This paper examines the international trade in used clothes to Africa through a Global Production Network approach. The trade depends on used-clothing commodities being (re)produced from unwanted clothing in high-income countries and being exported and re-valued in Africa. A network of charitable and capitalist exchange links the richest and poorest peoples in accidental intimacy as garments are re-worn. Used-clothing traders’ livelihoods in Maputo, Mozambique are inherently linked to globalization processes. The economic geography of the production of used-clothing commodities in the United Kingdom is investigated and the import and retail of used-clothing in Maputo is mapped. The livelihoods of used clothing traders and their business strategies are explored. Within global used-clothing networks there are differential capitalisation, positionalities and power relations of market participants. Informal traders’ businesses are risky and they have low levels of influence and agency, inhibiting their ability to organise and their opportunities for representation

Following the journey of a pair of jeans Clothing Poverty takes the reader on a vivid around-the-world tour from cotton fields to retail stores. Andrew Brooks shows how new and second-hand clothes are traded across continents and traces the human and environmental impacts of production and consumption.

Using research from around the globe, colourful stories and hard data demonstrate how the clothing, textile and recycling sectors have played a major part in making different regions of the world rich and poor. Clothing Poverty uncovers how fast fashion retailers and charity shops are embroiled in commodity chains which perpetuate poverty.

Stitching together rich narratives from Papua New Guinean tribal people, Mozambican cotton growers, Zambian factory workers, American jeans markets, international charities, Nigerian smugglers, London’s vintage clothing scene and Vivienne Westwood’s new ethical designer lines, Brooks uncovers the many secret sides of fashion.

Why did some countries grow rich while others remained poor?

Tracing the long arc of human history from hunter gatherer societies to the early twenty first century, Andrew Brooks rejects popular explanations for the divergence of nations. This accessible and illuminating volume shows how the wealth of ‘the West’ and poverty of ‘the rest’ stem not from environmental factors or some unique European cultural, social or technological qualities, but from the expansion of colonialism and the rise of America. Brooks puts the case that international inequality was moulded by capitalist development over the last 500 years.

The End of Development provides a compelling account of how human history unfolded differently in varied regions of the world. Brooks argues that we must now seize the opportunity afforded by today’s changing economic geography to transform attitudes towards inequality and to develop radical new approaches to addressing global poverty, as the alternative is to accept that impoverishment is somehow part of the natural order of things.