Moral economy in a global era: the politics of provisions during contemporary food price spikes

Abstract

The wave of food riots since 2007 revived interest in why people protest in periods of dearth, yet research has to date failed to make sense of the political cultures of food protests. The concept of the moral economy in European history is explored here to make sense of contemporary political perspectives on how food markets should work in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Kenya and Zambia. The concrete expressions of these moral economies are localized and politically contingent, yet there are broad areas of common ground across settings. As with the moral economies of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe, there is strong popular feeling against speculation and collusion in food markets in times of dearth, and an emphasis on the responsibilities of public authorities to act. But whereas the moral economy in European histories focused on customary paternalistic obligations, the contemporary emphasis is on formal and electoral accountabilities as a means of triggering public action. The paper concludes with a discussion of a research agenda on the moral economy and the politics of provisions in globalised present-day food markets.

Keywords:

• food price spikes
• food riots
• food crisis
• moral economy
• politics of provisions
• Bangladesh
• Indonesia
• Kenya
• Zambia

This paper draws mainly on primary research conducted with Duncan Green, Rizki Fillaili, Ferdous Jahan, Grace Lubaale and Mwila Mulumbi, funded by Oxfam GB in 2011. The authors are very grateful for their permission to reuse this material here. The paper has also benefited from funding from DFID-ESRC grant reference ES/J018317/1 which has enabled literature review and discussions about the moral economy with partners on the Food Riots and Food Rights project, including Luis Brito, Ferdous Jahan, Anuradha Joshi, Celestine Nyamu-Musembi, Biraj Patnaik, Michael Sambo, Dipa Sinha, Patta Scott-Villiers and Alex Shankland. The paper has been greatly improved thanks to feedback from two anonymous reviewers. All errors remain those of the authors alone.

Notes

¹ Nearly 27 percent of non-agricultural daily labourer consumption was rice in the period prior to the food price spikes, so rapid price increases would most likely have meant a sharp decline in consumption among rickshaw-pullers and similar occupation groups (World Bank 2013). Rice prices are from the Food and Agricultural Organisation's Global Information and Early Warning System price tool, based on Government of Bangladesh data.

² Although there remains considerable debate about why the rural poor should in theory benefit from high food prices (Swinnen 2011) and, indeed, about whether the food price spike of 2008 resulted in a net increase in the numbers of hungry people (Headey 2013).

³ It seems more likely that good maize harvests in 2010–2011 helped explain lower staple prices; Zambia has a very low staple import dependency ratio of only five percent (according to FAO (2013)). However, 2011 electoral politics did play a role in food security: evidence shows that fertilizer subsidies were targeted to constituencies who voted for the ruling party in the previous election (Mason et al. 2013).

⁴ A number of outputs are available from this data. See Hossain et al. (2010), Hossain and Green (2011), Hossain and McGregor (2011) and Heltberg et al. (2012).

⁵ These protests have not been well documented to date, possibly because they have had limited, if any, success, in changing policies. See IRIN (n. d.) ‘Kenya's Unga Revolution’, and Reuters (2013).

⁶ For instance, the 2008 food price spike appears to have had a direct and substantial impact on many African countries’ food prices, even though few displayed close associations between global and national food prices in the previous period (Minot 2011).

⁷ But see Ghosh (2010) and Ghosh et al. (2011).

⁸ This paper draws on initial literature review for that project, funded by DFID-ESRC (United Kingdom Department for International Development-Economic and Social Research Council Grant Reference ES/J018317/1) entitled ‘Food riots and food rights: the moral and political economy of accountability for hunger’. It also draws on research undertaken as part of the ongoing Life in a time of food price volatility project, funded by UK Aid and Irish Aid.

Additional information

Naomi Hossain is a political sociologist and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex, currently based in Jakarta. She previously worked at BRAC Research and Evaluation Division in Dhaka. She researches the politics of poverty, including to date elite perceptions of poverty, informal or ‘rude’ forms of accountability in frontline service delivery, women's empowerment and unruly politics. She is presently leading two projects studying the social and political dimensions of food price volatility.

Devangana Kalita has a BA (Hon) degree in English Literature from Miranda House College, University of Delhi (India) and an MA in Gender and Development from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, UK. She is based in India and works as an independent activist. She also works as a part-time Research Assistant on the Food riots and food rights: the moral and political economy of accountability for hunger project.