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Famines have returned, most prominently in Sudan and Gaza. Mass starvation challenges political leaders, the public and the academy. Drawing on these and other cases, this lecture places social anthropologists in the centre of the story of how we have come to understand humanitarian emergency, famine and mass starvation. Three fields of study frame how we represent and respond to famine, each having distinct methods and frameworks, but each owing much to anthropology. One is positivist metrics for measuring food security, malnutrition and mortality, exemplified by the United Nationsaccredited Integrated food security Phase Classification initiative, which is today’s authoritative mechanism for determining ‘famine.’ Second is legal, political and economic analysis of policies, especially criminal acts, that cause mass starvation. Third is the ethnography of famine as experienced, also drawing upon history, memory studies and literature. Social anthropology is uniquely positioned to synthesize these approaches, leading to insights into famine as societal trauma, with implications for the academy, for policy, and listening to the voices of the hungry.

Speaker

Alexander William Lowndes de Waal

Alexander William Lowndes de Waal, a British researcher on African elite politics, is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. 

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