Thinking the African Food Crisis - The Oxford Topic of Food, Politics, and Society - page 788

Resiliency is the calculative metric for a brave new world of turbulent capitalism, the
globaleconomicorder,andanewecologyofrule.heSahel's“bottombillion”providesa
laboratory in which the poor will be tested as the impacts of change manifest. Resiliency
has become a litmus test of the right to survive in the global order of things (Cooper
2010;O'Malley2010).Resiliencyisanapparatusofsecuritythatwilldeterminethepro-
cess of “letting die.” Africa, once again, is the testing ground for a vision of security and
careinwhichlifeisnothingmorethanpermanentreadinessandlexibleadaptiveness.
Assuch,itisadeeplyHayekianproject—anexpressionoftheneoliberalthoughtcollec-
tive—inwhichtheideaofaspontaneousmarketorderhasbecome,ironically,aformof
sustainable development. Building resilient peasants and resilient communities in the
West African Sahel turns on an amalgam of institutions and practices geared toward
individuals armed with improved and upgraded traditional knowledge and institu-
tionsbutrooted,asDillon(2008)says,inadistinctivemoralandbehavioraleconomy
of existence. The challenges of adapting to the radical uncertainties and perturbations
of global climate change produce a vision of Homo economicus for the new millennium;
theAfricanpeasant,asFoucault(2008,241) noted,becomes“anentrepreneurofhim-
self,” a hedge-fund manager for his own impoverished life.
Notes
1. Two-thirds of the hungry live in just seven countries (Bangladesh, China, Democratic
RepublicoftheCongo,Ethiopia,India,Indonesia,andPakistan),andover40percentlive
inChinaandIndiaalone(seeheWorldFoodProgram, Global Hunger Declining but Still
Unacceptably High ,Rome:FAO,September2010. http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/al390e/
al390e00.pdf. )
2. Devereux(2000,7) estimatesthatfaminemortalitiesincreasedeverydecadebeginningin
the1930stopeakinthe1960s;theyfellsharplythereater,withasmallupwardtrenddur-
ingthe1990s.Heestimatesthatover70 millionpeoplediedfromfamineduringthe20th
century.
3. hisimmediately,ofcourse,raisesthethornyquestionofhowpreciselyonedeinesfam-
ine. Famines are less aberrant events than extensions of the normal; behaviorally, many
famine victims do not regard excess mortality as the defining quality of famine, since
many famine mortalities are a function of disease rather than absolute food scarcity (see de
Waal1989andNally2011).Somefaminesareordinary,somearecatastrophicanddeadly.
As Devereux points out, “mass starvation is one possible outcome of the famine process”
(2000:4).
4. Only relatively recently have entitlement analyses begun to link different levels of inves-
tigation, focusing, for example, on household entitlements and their links to the state,
regions vis-a-vis nations, and national entitlements in relation to global food security; see
Devereux(1993)andPlatteau(1991).
5. In1976,KaitawaslocatedinNorth-CentralState;itbecamepartofthenewKatsinaState
in1996.
6. Oilrevenuesater1970cametodominatetheNigerianeconomy,constituting85 percent
ofstaterevenues,98 percentofexportearnings,andcloseto40 percentofGDP.Between