Thinking the African Food Crisis - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 776

grain, labor, and land markets that collectively could both impoverish and enrich differ-
ingclassesofpeasantsduringperiodsoffoodscarcityandfamineitself(seeDavis2001).
Another body of work has an even more restrictive economic account in that it limits
thepurviewoffaminetothefunctioningofmarkets(seeRavallion1987).Morepre-
cisely, famine in this view is seen as a function of imperfect markets that are weak, unin-
tegrated, and possibly driven by speculative or hoarding behavior. Collectively, these
marketpathologiesdriveupfoodpricesbeyondthecapacity(ofsome)tobuy.he
InternationalFoodandPolicyResearchInstitute's(IFPRI)syntheticworkonAfrican
faminesisacaseinpoint(vonBraunet al1998).Famineislargelyseenintechnocratic
terms—afunctionofinstitutional,organizational,andpolicyfailures—whichistosay,
famine is a poverty problem rooted in poor economic performance and failed or weak
states. Policy failures are never construed as political or military, both of which are sim-
ply seen as derivative of, and secondary to, low productivity of the poor and an anodyne
senseof“policyfailure.”Yet,paradoxically,muchofthefaminecorpusofthelasttwo
decades necessarily focused on Africa, where it was glaringly clear that famines could
only beunderstoodinrelationtopolitics,civilwars,militarism,andColdWarconlict.
The politics of famine point to the third strand of research, which starts from the pre-
sumption that famines are crises of political accountability, both national and interna-
tional(deWaal1989,2009;Keen1994;Kenally2011;Davis2001).Inthisaccounting,
famines are “complex emergencies”—humanitarian crises linked to large-scale vio-
lentconlict—inwhichviolenceisthehandmaidenoffooddistribution.Compelling
analyses of the food crises in Sudan and the Horn of Africa raise the prospect of what
Devereux(2007)calls“newfamines.”Starvationrelectsnotsimplytheabsenceofa
politicalcontract—thenotionthatcrisesaredeterredbyanti-faminecontractsbetween
rulersandruled—butalsoofthefailuresbyhumanitarianagenciesandinternational
governmentstoshapehowandwhetherfoodrelief—thecentralrequirementinalleviat-
ingfailedentitlements—isefective(Clapp2011).
Food and food aid are, and have been, regularly deployed as weapons—but the
larger point is that food entitlements and food delivery are themselves political. Some
of the most compelling work on famine of late extends politics beyond the boundar-
iesofAfricancivilwarandconlictandlocatesthecrisesofaccountabilitywithinthe
vorticesofstatepower.Mukerjee's(2010)analysisofChurchill'ssecretwaronIndia,
FrankDikotter(2011)andYangJisheng's(2012)extraordinaryaccountingoftheinter-
nalpoliticalstrugglessurroundingtheGreatLeapForwardandthedevastatingChinese
famine(1958-1962),andnotleastLizzieCollingham's(2011)brilliantexaminationof
the global reverberations of the Second World War, which resulted in the starvation of
over20 millionpeople(including,ofcourse,theGreatBengalFamine)areoutstand-
ing exemplars of the genre. Each of these studies can perhaps be best seen bookends
totheremarkable—anddevastating—picturepaintedbyMikeDavisofthegreatforc-
ing house of starvation produced by the intersection of two global processes: telekinetic
activityintheworld'sclimatecellsthroughtheElNiñoSouthernOscilliation(ENSO),
andthelatenineteenth-centuryimperialismthatHannaArendt(1948)calledthepoliti-
cal emancipation of the bourgeoisie. The violence of primitive accumulation (draped in