Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
On an Empty Stomach : Two Hundred Years of Hunger Relief - Tom Scott-Smith

On an Empty Stomach

Two Hundred Years of Hunger Relief

By: Tom Scott-Smith

eBook | 15 March 2020

At a Glance

eBook


RRP $28.79

$27.99

or 4 interest-free payments of $7.00 with

Instant Digital Delivery to your Kobo Reader App

On an Empty Stomach examines the practical techniques humanitarians have used to manage and measure starvation, from Victorian "scientific" soup kitchens to space-age, high-protein foods. Tracing the evolution of these techniques since the start of the nineteenth century, Tom Scott-Smith argues that humanitarianism is not a simple story of progress and improvement, but rather is profoundly shaped by sociopolitical conditions. Aid is often presented as an apolitical and technical project, but the way humanitarians conceive and tackle human needs has always been deeply influenced by culture, politics, and society. Txhese influences extend down to the most detailed mechanisms for measuring malnutrition and providing sustenance.

As Scott-Smith shows, over the past century, the humanitarian approach to hunger has redefined food as nutrients and hunger as a medical condition. Aid has become more individualized, medicalized, and rationalized, shaped by modernism in bureaucracy, commerce, and food technology. On an Empty Stomach focuses on the gains and losses that result, examining the complex compromises that arise between efficiency of distribution and quality of care. Scott-Smith concludes that humanitarian groups have developed an approach to the empty stomach that is dependent on compact, commercially produced devices and is often paternalistic and culturally insensitive.

on

More in Central Government Policies

America : Our Next Chapter - Chuck Hagel

eBOOK

RRP $25.99

$20.99

19%
OFF
Chain of Command : The Road from 9/11 to Abu Ghraib - Seymour M. Hersh

eBOOK

American Passage : The History of Ellis Island - Vincent J. Cannato

eBOOK

The Big Scrum : How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football - John J. Miller

eBOOK