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.

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.

Reviews

The book is ethnographically rich and presents us with new ways of thinking about development practices and environmental politics broadly defined. More importantly, An Ethnography of Hunger makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the relationship between power, politics and the environment. The book, for many years to come, will provoke intellectual debate about the place of politics and the environment in Tanzania, Africa, and beyond.

* Political and Legal Anthrology Review *

Recommended.

* Choice *

Phillips's nuanced analysis of the lived experience of hunger, its embeddedness in social relationships, and its impact on political subjectivity are truly original and set this book apart from other anthropological studies of hunger, subsistence farming, or political subjectivity.

-- Jennie E. Gurnet - Georgia State University * African Studies Review *


Awards
Winner of SEA Book Prize 2020 (United States).



Book Information
ISBN 9780253038371
Author Kristin Phillips
Format Paperback
Page Count 242
Imprint Indiana University Press
Publisher Indiana University Press