‘Food security’ is a constant feature of public discourse today. Journalists, scholars, charitable organisations, governments, philanthropic foundations, NGOs, and agribusinesses all employ the concept to justify and give sense to their activities. Despite the concept’s political currency remarkably little research has been devoted to unpacking the various meanings and policy prescription enrolled in the term. The impression left is that ‘food security’ is an ideologically neutral concept, a pre-political idea that is also, moreover, a global good.
By contrast this project examines food security as an epistemological object. In particular, the project looks at how the problem of hunger is constructed through the lens of ‘food security’ and how this knowledge-power constellation authorizes policy interventions sanctioned in the name of a higher ‘moral’ purpose. At the broadest level, this research asks who defines what ‘hunger’ is, where it exists, and how best to oversee and manage its remediation?
Publications
- Nally, D. and Kearns, G., 2020. Vegetative States: Potatoes, Affordances, and Survival Ecologies. Antipode, v. 52, p.1373-1392. doi:10.1111/anti.12652
- Nally, D., 2016. Against food security: On forms of care and fields of violence. Global Society, v. 30, p.558-582. doi:10.1080/13600826.2016.1158700
- Nally, D. ‘Governing Precarious Lives: Land Grabs, Geopolitics and the Rhetoric of “Food Security”‘ The Geographical Journal 2014 doi:10.1111/geoj/12063.
- Nally, D. ‘Trajectories of Development, Modalities of Enclosure: Land Grabs and the Struggle Over Geography.’ Patrick J. Duffy and William Nolan (Eds). At the Anvil: Essays in Honour of William J. Smyth. Dublin: Geography Publications, 2012 pp 653-676.
- Nally, D. ‘Hunger in an Era of Global Food Security.’ Carlos Antonio Soares Ribeiro, Carlos Antônio Moreira Leite, Douglas Mansur da Silva et al (Eds). 1st International Symposium on Food Security and Poverty Reduction. Viçosa: Universidade Federal de Viçosa, 2011 pp 17-28.
- Nally, D. and Kearns G. ‘A Closer Look at Famine: Drought is only Part of What’s Happening in East Africa.’ The Chronicle of Higher Education, 58(9) Section B, October 21, 2011 pp 10-12.