Description:
1. This book tells a complex story about food security, rural livelihoods, and community development among subsistence farmers in Tanzania. It tells a powerful story about tenacious survival.
2. A secondary storyline in the book is the coming to power of Tanzania's most controversial opposition politician, Tundu Lissu, in 2010 (currently Chief Opposition Whip in Parliament), in a relatively obscure pro-ruling party constituency in Central Tanzania (Singida East). This story has not been told widely elsewhere and it is growing in significance with Lissu's continually increasing influence and fame. There was an assassination attempt on Lissu in September 2017, which is raising questions about the current direction of Tanzanian politics under current President Magufuli.
3. In addition to a broad audience among scholars in contemporary African studies, anthropologists working on humanitarianism, hunger, NGOs, Africa, and globalization, and international studies scholars, this book is written to be accessible for undergraduate students and has strong potential for course adoption sales.
Review Quotes:
"Kristin Phillips has written a compelling, compassionate exploration of the social life of food and hunger in rural Tanzania. She masterfully evokes the voices and visions of everyday people seeking economic security and political justice in the face of deepening inequalities, a negligent state, and exploitative development projects. An Ethnography of Hunger should be read by anyone interested in the intersections of food, power, and sociality in agrarian communities."--Dorothy L. Hodgson, author of Gender, Justice and the Problem of Culture: From Customary Law to Human Rights in Tanzania
"This book presents an empirically detailed and powerfully argued analysis of how rural communities negotiate precarious livelihoods amidst pressures to participate in local development."--Lisa Cliggett, author of Grains from Grass: Aging, Gender, and Famine in Rural Africa
"The book is ethnographically rich and presents us with new ways of thinking about development practices and environmental politics broadly defined. More importantly, An Ethnography of Hunger makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the relationship between power, politics and the environment. The book, for many years to come, will provoke intellectual debate about the place of politics and the environment in Tanzania, Africa, and beyond."--Political and Legal Anthrology Review
"Recommended."--Choice
"Phillips's nuanced analysis of the lived experience of hunger, its embeddedness in social relationships, and its impact on political subjectivity are truly original and set this book apart from other anthropological studies of hunger, subsistence farming, or political subjectivity."--Jennie E. Gurnet - Georgia State University, African Studies Review