This chapter examines the topic of food in everyday international political economy (IPE). It primarily focuses on the international trade of agricultural commodities and its developmental implications within the Global South. It explains the concepts of governmentality and the global value chain. The chapter begins by looking at corporate brands behind the globalization of chocolate, the associated transformation of dietary patterns, and the attempts to manage the exploitation that persists in the cocoa industry. It shows how these trends can be drawn together conceptually with reference to neoliberalism, a key term in IPE and in food studies generally. The chapter then analyses the meaning of food security, looks at how diets are governed, and looks at where value is distributed in the agri-food sector. It also considers how autoethnography and foodscaping can be used to reflect theoretically on daily diet and the moral economy of veganism.
Chapter
3. Food
Chapter
5. Hunger and Famine
Tim Allen, Shun-Nan Chiang, and Ben Crow
This chapter focuses on hunger and famine. Chronic hunger, famine, and malnutrition are related concepts with different causes. Multiple forms of malnutrition coexisting in most countries require governing bodies to carefully design policies which consider linkages among different types of malnutrition. While 'food security' is still a popular framework to guide the interventions of development agencies and governments, other concepts help us to focus on different underlying causes of hunger. The Green Revolution helped increase global food security in some respects but made many populations more vulnerable. Meanwhile, the entitlement approach helped clarify the cause of famine in some circumstances, but recent famines are mostly a consequence of war and the choices made by governments. Famine mortality has declined dramatically, in large part because of better monitoring and more effective humanitarian assistance. However, acute hunger remains a massive problem.
Chapter
2. Globalization and global politics
Anthony McGrew
This chapter examines the characteristics of contemporary globalization and how they are reshaping world politics. It argues that both the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change are indicative of just how deeply enmeshed the fate of communities and societies across the world has become, not to mention how globalization simultaneously unifies and divides the world. It explains why globalization challenges some of our traditional ways of thinking and theorizing about world politics. It asks whether there are limits to globalization or whether it is inevitable. It also considers the extent to which globalization is responsible for the emerging shift in the structure of world power, namely the ‘decline of the West’ and the ‘rise of the rest’. Two case studies are presented: one is about global food security and the other is about multicentric globalization.
