Defining World Hunger

Abstract

Through a reading of policy texts centering upon food security published by the World Bank and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, I problematize the concept of food security by showing how its definition and its scale have changed over time. I use scale as an analytic frame to highlight how changing definitions of food security serve neoliberal ideology. The scaled definitions of food security move from an early emphasis upon the attainment of food security at the international and national levels to a micro-level focus upon households and gendered individuals. The most recent changes link individuals to global modalities of governance with an emphasis upon the instrumentality of agricultural productivity in economic development strategies. Considering the contested and dynamic construction of scale in relation to the changing definitions of international food security reveals the political and ideological dimensions of these dynamics and their contradictions with the material history of hunger over the last thirty years.

Keywords:

• scale
• food security
• development
• discourse

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lucy Jarosz

Lucy Jarosz is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Washington. She teaches and does research on agri-food systems and on the politics of world hunger and poverty. Her recent projects include studies of rural poverty in the American West, the emergence and development of alternative food systems in metropolitan areas, and the role of community gardens in addressing hunger. Department of Geography, Box 353550, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195, USA ([email protected]).