Hunger: The Biology and Politics of Starvation

[2] The Framework of Understanding

[2] The Framework of Understanding In this chapter we create a framework for our analysis. Like academics everywhere we start with definitions, which we believe give us a common language and help us to identify and define a problem. Definitions, in turn, enable policy makers to bring institutional responses to address them. If we can say definitively that “starvation” is sweeping across the mountains of Ethiopia, for example , we can then demand that action be taken to feed and aid those who are afflicted. Along with the definitions we suggest further diagnostic “tools” to help us understand the principal or predisposing causes of starvation or famine, the catalytic events that trigger them, and the actual medical reasons people die from hunger or proximate causes of death (poverty being the ultimate cause). From that base, we discuss the two defining theories—from Malthus and Sen—concerning hunger, starvation, and famine. They, in turn, inform our definitions and principal causes of starvation and famine, and play significant roles in determining our responses. For example, if policy makers in the donor countries believe that rapid population growth impacted by drought has caused a starvation, their response is likely to be short-term emergency food aid and then perhaps longer-term attention to population stabilization and reduction. But if policy makers see the same drought as a triggering event, with poverty as the underlying principal cause of the starvation, then short-term emergency food relief will be followed with long-term poverty-alleviation measures such as employment efforts and inputs to farmers. Therefore, definitions, analytical tools, and theories help us to identify the causes of and responses to hunger, starvation, and famine. They create frameworks for policy action. They are instruments to relieve suffering. None of this is as precise as the sciences of anatomy or physiology. But it is very helpful in determining when, where, how, and especially why people starve. Definitions: Chronic Hunger, Malnutrition, Starvation, and Famine A definition is important for diagnostic purposes. Medical definitions tell us about the body’s functions and responses. In terms of this book social science definitions tell us of conditions on the ground: who is suffering, how many 28 [] platform of understanding there are, what their social and economic status might be, what actions they are taking. As mentioned, these definitions also facilitate responses by state, regional, and international actors. How you define something determines how you will act on it. Here we define chronic hunger, malnutrition, starvation, and famine, and some of their variations. We regard the process leading to famine as a continuum : hunger to malnutrition to starvation to famine. Impoverished people are almost always in one condition or another, and one condition often progresses to the other; sometimes there is a sudden collapse of a community, for example, from chronic hunger into starvation, and even a swing back. This continuum may shift from being a “silent emergency” to a “loud emergency .” A “silent” event, unknown beyond remote communities, may become a “loud” emergency when brought, or forced on, others outside the region and even overseas. When these episodes end, however, the survivors often slip back into their previous condition, usually one of seasonal hunger and chronic malnutrition, in silence. Here is the spectrum of definitions we use in creating this analytical framework : Hunger is a recurrent, involuntary lack of access to food. “Hunger occurs when people do not have enough to eat for a healthy, active life.”1 There may be frequent episodes of hunger—such as seasonal hunger before a harvest in developing countries, when food stocks from the previous year’s harvest have run out, prices are high, and purchasing power among the poor is weak. The un’s World Food Programme (wfp) regularly publishes alarms about seasonal hunger across southern Africa, for example, which it attributes to “the traditional lean season from January to March” when grain supplies are meager just before the harvests. Foodinsecuritywithhungeroccurswhentherearelimitedoruncertainamounts of safe (unspoiled) foods, a limited or uncertain ability to acquire available food without stealing it, or a lack of access to enough food to meet a person’s basic needs at all times. Chronic hunger does not end with a harvest but continues season to season, year to year. It is a condition that occurs daily and over a long period of time (a year or more). It is a significant measure of poverty. It creates physiological , emotional, and social conditions that make people and communities (even regions) vulnerable to events like...