Shane Hamilton
Reader in Strategy, Management and Society.

Profile

Biography

Shane Hamilton is Senior Lecturer in Strategy, Management and Society at the University of York. He is the author of Supermarket USA: Food and Power in the Cold War Farms Race (Yale, 2018) and award-winning Trucking Country: The Road to America's Wal-Mart Economy (Princeton, 2008). He is associate editor of Enterprise & Society, co-editor of American Business, Politics, and Society (University of Pennsylvania Press), and has served as a Trustee and Web Administrator for the Business History Conference. He is the 2023-2024 President of the Agricultural History Society and the Co-Director of the Management Humanities Research Theme at the University of York School for Business and Society. Shane has published articles on food and agribusiness in Technology & Culture, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, History of Retailing and Consumption, Enterprise & Society, Business History Review, Business History, and Agricultural History.

Research

Overview

My research focuses on the historical political economy of agribusiness. My research interests include business history, entrepreneurship, strategy, technological innovation and maintenance, regulation, international business, agrifood and environmental sustainability, technology and organizational change, and risk management. 

Teaching

Undergraduate

I teach modules in strategy, management and society and business humanities and ethics. I have extensive experience mentoring undergraduate and postgraduate researchers.

Publications

Selected publications

Books 

Hamilton, S. (2018). Supermarket USA: Food and power in the cold war farms race. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Hamilton, S., and Phillips, S. T. (2014). The kitchen debate and cold war consumer politics: A brief history with documents. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's Press.

Hamilton, S. (2008). Trucking country: The road to America's wal-mart economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 

Articles and Book Chapters 

Hamilton, S., and D'Ippolito, B. (2020). From Monsanto to 'monsatan': Ownership and control of history as a strategic resource. Business History.

Hamilton, S. (2020). Crop insurance and the New Deal roots of agricultural financialization in the United States. Enterprise & Society, 21 (3), 648-680.

Godley, A. C., and Hamilton, S. (2020). Different expectations: A comparative history of structure, experience, and strategic alliances in the U.S. and U.K. poultry sectors, 1920–1990. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 14 (1), 89-104.

Hamilton, S. (2019). Theory and theorizing in agricultural history. Agricultural History, 93 (3), 502-519.

Hamilton, S. (2019). Distributing legitimacy: The politics of milk in post-World War Ii Venezuela. History of Retailing and Consumption, 5 (1), 29-50.

Hamilton, S. (2019). 'Flexibility is just another word for nothing left to lose', in Ottoson, M., and Wallengren, H. (eds.) Truckers: A profession in change. Landskrona, Sweden: Centrum för Arbetarhistoria.

Hamilton, S. (2016). Serve yourself: Consumers and corporations in America's 20th-century food system. In Jennifer Jensen Wallach and Michael D. Wise, (Eds.). The routledge history of American foodways. London: Routledge, pp. 48-58.

Hamilton, S. (2014). Agribusiness, the family farm, and the politics of technological determinism in the post-world war ii United States. Technology and Culture, 55 (Jul.), 560-90.

Hamilton, S. (2012). Supermarkets, free markets, and the problem of buyer power in the postwar united states. In Kim Phillips-Fein and Julian Zelizer, (Eds.). What's good for business: Business and American politics since world war ii. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 177-94.

Hamilton, S. (2009). The populist appeal of deregulation: Independent truckers and the politics of free enterprise, 1935-1980. Enterprise & Society, 10 (Mar.), 137-77.

Hamilton, S. (2009). Supermarket USA confronts state socialism: airlifting the technopolitics of industrial food distribution into cold war Yugoslavia. In Ruth Oldenziel and Karin Zachmann, (Eds.). Cold war kitchen: Americanization, technology, and European users. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 137-159.

Hamilton, S. (2009). Introduction. Business History Review, 83 (Summer), 234-38.

Hamilton, S. (2009). Analyzing commodity chains: linkages or restraints? In Warren J. Belasco and Roger Horowitz, (Eds.). Food chains: From farmyard to shopping cart. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 16-27.

Hamilton, S. (2004). Long-haul trucking and the technopolitics of industrial agriculture, 1945-1970. In Lisa Rosner, (Ed.). The technological fix: How people use technology to create and solve problems. New York: Routledge, pp. 93-118.

Hamilton, S. (2003). The economies and conveniences of modern-day living: frozen food and mass marketing, 1945-1965. Business History Review, 77 (Spring), 33-60.

Hamilton, S. (2003). Cold capitalism: The political ecology of frozen concentrated orange juice. Agricultural History, 77 (Fall), 557-81.

Full publications list

Compositions

Recordings