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Neoliberalism, Food Security and Food Sovereignty

Questions to Consider While Reading


What do scholars mean by neoliberalism? What is biopower (or biopolitics)?

Explain the emergence of the concepts of food security and food sovereignty.

Where is the problem of food security located—at the global level, at the national level, at the level of the household, or with individuals?

Do people have a 'right' to food?

Readings

Please read two of the following:

Atkins, Peter, 'Food Security, Safety, and Crises, 1920-2000', A Cultural History of Food in the Modern Age, ed. Amy Bentley, Bloomsbury (London, 2014).

Carlile, Rachel, Matthew Kessler and Tara Garnett, 'What is Food Sovereignty?', 25 May 2021, TABLE, https://tabledebates.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/TABLE%20Explainer%20-%20What%20is%20food%20sovereignty_final_0.pdf

Carney, Megan A., and Alyshia Gálvez, ‘The International Politics of Gut Health: For immigrants to the U.S., we need to focus on political and economic structures that ultimately affect the microbiome’, Scientific American Blogs, 14 March 2019.

Jarosz, Lucy, ‘Defining World Hunger: Scale and Neoliberal Ideology in International Food Security Policy Discourse', Food, Culture & Society 14:1 (2011).*

Kish, Zenia, ‘Food Sovereignty’, Encyclopedia of Global Justice, ed. Deen Chatterjee (2011), Springer Online.*

Nally, David, ‘The Biopolitics of Food Provisioning’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36 (2011).

To Learn More:

Baro, Mamadou , and Tara Deubel, 'Persistent Hunger: Perspectives on Vulnerability, Famine, and Food Security in Sub-Saharan Africa', Annual Review of Anthropology 35 (2006).

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations website
Maxwell, Simon, ‘Food Security: A Post-Modern Perspective’, Food Policy 21:2 (1996).*
Midgley, Jane, 'Food (In)Security in the Global 'North' and 'South', The Handbook of Food Research, eds. Anne Murcott, Warren Belasco and Peter Jackson (London, 2013).

Nally, David, 'Governing Precarious Lives: Land Grabs, Geopolitics, and 'Food Security'', Geographical Journal 181:4 (2015).

Rome Declaration on World Food Security, Rome, 13 Nov. 1996.
Schanbacer, William, The Politics of Food: The Global Conflict between Food Security and Food Sovereignty (Santa Barbara, 2010), Introduction.*
Shaw, David John, World Food Security: A History Since 1945 (London, 2007), Introduction.*

Timmer, C. Peter. Food Security and Scarcity: Why Ending Hunger Is So Hard (Philadelphia, 2015).

Viewpoints: “What are the most important constraints to achieving food security in various parts of Africa”, Natural Resources Forum 38 (2008):

Wittman, Hannah, Annette Aurélie Desmarais and Nettie Wiebe, Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community (Oakland, 2010).

*Sign into the Warwick Library catalogue to access the electronic version.