Thinking the African Food Crisis - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 775

collapse and expressed through the socially circumscribed distribution of entitlements
over basic necessities. Although entitlement-based theories of vulnerability have the
great merit of highlighting the specific social, economic, and institutional relations
between food and people (in contradistinction to an emphasis on supply-side dynam-
ics),andwhysomesocialclassesareafectedbyhungerandothershardlytouched,there
remainsaquestionofwhatsortofexplanation(ifany)entitlementsactuallyprovide
(WattsandBohle1993;Watts1991,2000).
WhileDrèzeandSenseeentitlements,inawidesense,asembracingnotonlyfood
intake(biology)butalsoaccesstohealthcareandeducation(thesocialenvironment)—
thatistosay,thebroaderdomainofwell-beingandadvantage—theyhavelesstosay
about the political economy of what they call “capability” and the “totality of rights”
that secure basic needs. Firstly, entitlement as commodity bundle provides a “con-
junctural” analysis, highlighting the immediate, triggering or proximate mechanisms
(pricemovements,speculation,drought)thatprecipitateashitinentitlements.Ithas
much less to say about the long-term structural and historical processes by which spe-
ciicpatternsofentitlementsandpropertyrightscometobedistributedorshittem-
porally—inotherwords,politicaleconomy.Infailingtoelaboratestructuralandoten
contradictory political, economic, and social determinants that mark the onset of the
famine process, entitlement misses an important opportunity to link crisis theory with
the longer-term processes that allocate and deprive households and individuals of assets
and endowments.
Secondly, the entitlement approach also fails to take into account the central dimen-
sionsoffamineconsequenceandrecovery.Itexplainsneitherwhattranspiresinthe
wake of mass starvation nor the lineaments linking a single famine to earlier or later cri-
ses.Inthissense,entitlement—especiallywhenreadinanarrowlegalormarketsense—
runs the grave danger of neglecting historical processes and, to invoke Gramsci, the
situationsandconjuncturesproducingsuchcalamitousoutcomes.Lastly,entitlements
haveotenbeenconstruedmuchtoonarrowly,andthisnarrownessofvisionconstrains
the variety of social domains in which claims over food and security can be exercised,
as well as the social processes that shape individual entitlements. Concerns with gender,
generation and age, and caste and ethnicity, for example, have received less attention
than occupational status, property, and the market4.
Inmyview,entitlementshavetoberadicallyextendednotsimplyinasocialorclass
sense,butalsopoliticallyandstructurally.Inotherwords,ananalysisoffamineandhun-
ger based on entitlements must account for the particular distribution of entitlements
and how they are reproduced in specific circumstances; the larger canvas of rights by
which entitlements are defined, fought over, contested, and won and lost (i.e., empow-
ermentorenfranchisement);andthestructuralproperties(whatI havecalled“crisis
proneness”)ofthepoliticaleconomythatprecipitatesentitlementcrises.Toencompass
thesequestions,entitlementswouldneedtobedepositedinwhatSen(1980,180) him-
selfcalls,butdoesnotexplore,themodeofproduction.Myownwork(Watts1983;Watts
2001)exploredhowclimaticvariability,foodpricevolatility,andfoodavailabilitywere
shaped not simply by inter-household inequalities, but also by the operations of the