Project description
Understanding why famines persist
Famines are becoming more common and deadly. In 2022, 250 000 people experienced famine and 35 million were at risk. For decades, experts have agreed that famines are mainly caused by political failure, not just natural disasters. However, no political system has yet emerged to prevent them. As a result, they continue to devastate communities worldwide. With this in mind, the ERC-funded PolFam project focuses on the everyday politics of famine in communities rather than just national or global institutions. By studying local stories, memories and media in sites across South Sudan and Somalia, the project looks at how famines are normalised and blamed on natural causes or the victims themselves.
Objective
Famines are becoming more frequent and deadly, with 250,000 people experiencing famine in 2022 and 35 million people being on the edge of famine. For decades there has been a scholarly consensus that famine is the result of political failure or design, and never solely the result of natural disasters. However, a political culture that makes famine politically unconscionable and that ends famine has not emerged. To understand why famines persist we need to deepen our understanding of famine politics; so far scholarship on the politics of famine has focus on national and international institutions, and the instrumental use of famine by actors and institutions. My research will produce a ground-breaking shift in the science of famine politics by focusing on the everyday politics of famine in communities where it occurs. I am interested in how discourses and the regime of truth about famine disperse throughout the social body (in Foucaults words). In particular, I am interested in how new deadly famines come to be normalised, preventing political rupture. Plus, I am interested in how these discourses can shift blame for famine suffering away from governments, warring parties and actors in global economies, and instead place blame on natural causes and the families of those who suffer and die. To achieve this, I will conduct an ethnographically-informed comparative study across four sites in South Sudan and in Somalia. Initial ethnographic insights have made me structure the research around four cross-case-study research strands: histories and musical memories of past famine; community-narratives that enforce social networks; burial and posthumous practices; and media and social medias role in anti-famine politics. This ambitious project is feasible because of my previous experience and networks, and because I have carefully built the capacity and track record of a team Somali and South Sudanese dominated research team.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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(opens in new window) ERC-2024-STG
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BA2 7AY BATH
United Kingdom
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