An Ethnography of Hunger: Politics, Subsistence, and the Unpredictable Grace of the Sun

In An Ethnography of Hunger Kristin D. Phillips examines how rural farmers in central Tanzania negotiate the interconnected projects of subsistence, politics, and rural development. Writing against stereotypical Western media images of spectacular famine in Africa, she examines how people live with--rather than die from--hunger. Through tracing the seasonal cycles of drought, plenty, and suffering and the political cycles of elections, development, and state extraction, Phillips studies hunger as a pattern of relationships and practices that organizes access to food and profoundly shapes agrarian lives and livelihoods. Amid extreme inequality and unpredictability, rural people pursue subsistence by alternating between--and sometimes combining--rights and reciprocity, a political form that she calls subsistence citizenship. Phillips argues that studying subsistence is essential to understanding the persistence of global poverty, how people vote, and why development projects succeed or fail.

Author: Kristin Phillips
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 08/29/2018
Pages: 242
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.97lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.66d
ISBN: 9780253038371

Review Citation(s):
Choice 04/01/2019

About the Author

Kristin D. Phillips is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Emory University. Her work has appeared in African Studies Review, PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology, Comparative Education Review, and Critical Studies in Education.