Food Riots and the Politics of Provisions in World History

Abstract

SummaryThe food riots of 2007-8 in dozens of developing countries placed food security on the agendas of the global political economy. Material outcomes remain to be assessed. The problematic of the politics of provisions is: Under what circumstances do the common people's necessities create a political necessity for their rulers to act? What combination of ingredients gives them political leverage (or not)? Food riots (crowd violence: usually seizing food, intercepting carts and barges, or setting prices) set in motion political processes that often led to food relief and/or repression. To riot about food, rioters needed much more than motivations of hunger and outrage, or else world history would consist mostly of food riots. In addition rioters needed both sufficient solidarities to be able to act collectively, and sufficient confidence that the benefits (getting food, both immediately and in more sustained supply) would outweigh the risks and costs of repression and punishment. The latter would be based on reciprocal relationships with the rulers. The outcomes of such 'trials-by-ordeal' were then entered into social memory to be consulted in the next crisis. Of course rulers also had their social memories and political calculations. So the 'politics of provisions' -the political economy of food crises and their resolutions -has typically included such components as: political, social, and economic structures; the players' sociopolitical assets, capacities, and relationships; shared ideologies; strategic bargaining in the moment between chief actors; and accidental factors. Those components vary from one time and place to another, so this paper compares the politics of provisions in: pre-modern England and France; famines in Ireland and India; 'famine-proofed' Ming and Qing China; Mao's Great Leap Forward Famine; the IMF austerity riots of the 1970s and 80s; and the food riots of 2008, particularly in Egypt, West Africa, and Haiti. The point of such comparisons is not to construct a unified theory of provision politics, but to illuminate significant parameters that shape policies and conflicts over food.

Riots and resources: How food access affects collective violence

“…While not the focus of media reports, the political nature of food riots should come as no surprise to scholars of food riots or contentious politics. Literature on food riots from 18th-century Europe focuses on political, economic, and social factors, including state centralization, war-making, and industrialization, which interacted with food availability to mobilize action (Thompson, 1963;Stern, 1964;Tilly, 1971;Booth, 1977;Bouton, 1993;Bohstedt, 2014). And indeed, scholars have highlighted the ways that the contemporary food riot is also 'not simply about the price and accessibility of staple foods, but is a more complex phenomenon, and concerns the political economy of food provisioning' (Patel & McMichael, 2009: 11).…”

Precarious Lives: Work, food and care after the global food crisis

“…Whether or not people believed markets were being deliberately manipulated, relentlessly rising staple prices triggered a wave of so-called 'food riots', as (mainly) urban populations experiencing rapid increases in the cost of living protested against failures to stabilise prices and, in some cases, official efforts to withdraw consumer subsidies (Schneider 2008;Bohstedt 2014;Patel and McMichael 2009;Berazneva and Lee 2013).…”

“…It offered the prospect of being a provider for oneself and one's family, worthy of being provided for in the contemporary politics of provision (Bohstedt 2014). While the value of such a shift was questioned by older people in many communities, it was a move that fitted squarely within global norms that gave primacy to economic growth for status and power, and which had ushered in a 'corporate food regime' by which food 'from nowhere' was (and still is) valorised in a process that has included dispossession of small farmers, fisherfolk and pastoralists (McMichael 2009a: 147).…”

“…At times of fundamental economic transition on a global scale -as in the eighteenth century and, arguably, during our study period -the moral economy comes into view. When the behaviour of elites or richer members of society fails to conform to the expectations of people who are hungry or at risk of hunger, the politics of provision are provoked into reaction and there will be widespread complaints and protests (Bohstedt 2014;Scott 1977;Edelman 2005;Hossain and Kalita 2014).…”

Trends and Food Technology Gap in Global Food Policy

“…Economic manipulation was also one of the main causes in the famine that occur in India, Ireland and North Korea (Kinealy, 2001;Meena, 2015;Natsios, 1999). The downside of the trend is notified and documented (Bohstedt, 2014;Headey, 2011;Robert Kenner, 2008), but there was not much we can do since global market had already invested fully to this economic activity. There are calls for reforms and enactment of policy changes but the challenge was enormous and it is an ongoing fighting to this day (Robert Kenner, 2008).…”