Hunger in War Economies: Geo-Strategic Burden Shifting and the Politics of Faminogenesis

Speaker: Professor Alex de Waal (World Peace Foundation, Tufts University)

Abstract

Hunger is an instrument of war in diverse ways. This lecture examines contemporary world food crises as a product of three distinct kinds of war economy. At a geo-strategic level, the instruments used by the G-7 and its Chinese and Russian-led rivals are shifting the burden of war financing onto the Global South, in different ways. Rulers in poor countries, unable to deliver developmental outcomes, are reverting to the transactional politics of regime survival including seeking strategic patrons. This is akin to a war economy that deepens livelihood crisis and tolerates weaponized starvation.

Speaker biography

Alex de Waal is executive director of the World Peace Foundation, Research Professor at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. He has worked on the Horn of Africa, and on conflict, food security and related issues since the 1980s as a researcher and practitioner. He served as a senior advisor to the African Union High Level Panel on Sudan and South Sudan. He was listed among Foreign Policy’s 100 most influential international intellectuals in 2008 and Atlantic’s 29 ‘brave thinkers’ in 2009. De Waal’s recent books include: The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power (Polity 2015), Mass Starvation: The history and future of famine (Polity 2018), and New Pandemics, Old Politics: 200 years of the war on disease and its alternatives (Polity 2021).

Registration

This event is free and open to public. If you would like to attend the event in person, please register via Eventbrite.

This event will be followed by a wine reception to which you are warmly welcome.

For more information about the event, please contact Lizzie Hull: e.hull@soas.ac.uk

Organiser: SOAS Food Studies Centre