Hunger famine and food aid
The anthropological concern with combining global and local variables is reflected in studies of hunger and famine. Thus, while most food crises share key features (e.g. upheaval, social differentiation, climatic disturbance) and develop along predictable lines,
each crisis must also be regarded as unique. It is for this reason that detailed famine ethnographies are encouraged (D'Souza 1988).
D'Souza argues that social scientists should go over, in some detail, the harrowing events which precede mass starvation and make the world better prepared in future (D'Souza 1988). Famine ethnographies should also look at the immediate post-famine recovery period, since the details there can be just as harrowing as the story of the famine itself (Pottier and Fairhead 1991).
Famine ethnographies focus on detailing famine coping strategies and fine-tuning Sen's fentitlement theory (Sen 1981). This theory shows that hunger and starvation result from the loss of entitlement to food, rather than from a decline in food availability. Famines therefore run through predictable stages and give rise to predictable responses. Coping mechanisms, however, may change over time, which requires continuous monitoring. Besides documenting patterns and changes, famine ethnographies must reveal the heterogeneity of responses at the community level; showing, for instance, how gender and class and agricultural cycles combine to determine which responses are open to which groups or individuals. This heterogeneity partly explains why all famines are different.
Aware of the significance of entitlement, relief organizations focus on how and when to intervene. Discussion here is marked by contradictory views on the timing of emergency aid. The first view is that farmers adjust to weather fluctuations by accumulating assets during good times and drawing down stocks in lean years. Proponents of this view believe that officials habitually misread farmers' 'adjustments' as distress signals and dispatch aid when it is not needed. The counterview contends that mortgaging land or liquidating productive capital to meet current needs are signals of acute distress and detrimental to recovery, so aid must arrive well before such desperate measures are taken.
To maximize the potential of food aid, anthropologists argue that donors should do more than simply throw grain at famine victims. Instead, emergency supplies must be utilized in ways that strengthen existing food channels and bolster the mechanisms for post-famine recovery. This could mean regulating livestock prices during and after famine through purchase-and-resale policies by government or outside agencies. Such policies can be effective in mitigating distress sales and enabling herds to be rebuilt, as Sperling reveals in her Samburu study of the 1984 famine and its aftermath (Sperling 1987). Cases of positive intervention through learning suggest that improved flows of detailed information create the potential for improved targeting and long-term recovery.
In addition to micro-level studies of hunger, famine and famine relief, anthropologists have developed an interest in the impact of broad food aid programmes. An excellent example is Doughty's study of how the 'Food for Peace' programme in Peru affected the lives of its beneficiaries (Doughty 1986).
Post a comment