An Ethnography of Hunger: Politics, Subsistence, and the Unpredictable Grace of the Sun

By Kristin Phillips

In An Ethnography of Hunger Kristin D. Phillips examines how rural farmers in central Tanzania negotiate the interconnected projects of subsistence, politics, and rural development. Writing against stereotypical Western media images of spectacular famine in Africa, she examines how people live with—rather than die from—hunger. Through tracing the seasonal cycles of drought, plenty, and suffering and the political cycles of elections, development, and state extraction, Phillips studies hunger as a pattern of relationships and practices that organizes access to food and profoundly shapes agrarian lives and livelihoods. Amid extreme inequality and unpredictability, rural people pursue subsistence by alternating between—and sometimes combining—rights and reciprocity, a political form that she calls "subsistence citizenship." Phillips argues that studying subsistence is essential to understanding the persistence of global poverty, how people vote, and why development projects succeed or fail.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Release date: Aug 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9780253038401

Kristin Phillips

Kristin Phillips is an educator and retired elementary school principal with a passion for educational change. She has worked closely with teachers and administrators at the school and board levels to bring about pedagogical reforms based on current research and practices. Her blog, Edubits, is read internationally. A TEDx talk, Spiraling the Curriculum, presented in 2016 in Kitchener, Ontario, engages the audience in learning how to develop curriculum that “sticks.” She is close to her three adult children and they still enjoy pizza on Friday nights. She lives in Toronto, Ontario. Visit her online at KristinPhillipsAuthor.com.

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