Hunger and Food in the History of the Global South (long 20th century) Call for Papers Guest Editors:
Rômulo de Paula Andrade (FIOCRUZ, Brasil)
Stefan Pohl-Valero (Universidad del Rosario, Colombia)
This special issue will be published in the journal
Estudos Históricos (Qualis A1 / Scopus Q1) by the end of 2024.
Hunger and malnutrition have ceased to be complementary topics in history books and have become central objects of study. Changes in eating habits and the contexts surrounding them involve the correlation of numerous factors, which in recent decades have begun to attract the attention of historians and social scientists. This special issue aims to bring together articles that address the complex relationships between food, health, and environment over the last century in Latin America and the Global South. We want to focus on the processes of production, circulation, appropriation and application of knowledge and scientific instruments to understand and intervene in the problems related to these issues. From agricultural experimentation, promotion and extension to nutritional research and education and food control and assistance, various experts, institutions, and organizations (national and international) have tried to intervene in the way food is produced, distributed, and consumed. Knowledge and procedures from the health and nutrition sciences, agricultural sciences and social sciences have been mobilized in an interconnected manner in projects to combat hunger, infant mortality, and deficiency diseases, and in efforts to transform the eating habits and cultivation practices of the urban and rural poor and indigenous communities.
Since the end of the 19th century, and in contexts of incipient consolidation of nation-states in Latin America and new imperialisms in Africa and Asia, these processes of understanding and intervening in the food system of local populations have begun to gain greater scientific and political interest. The two World Wars, the processes of decolonization and international promotion of economic development, the Cold War and the rapid demographic growth of poor countries, and various food crises, are some of the geopolitical and environmental factors, which together with new scientific and technological developments related to food, catapulted the conception that hunger and malnutrition were global problems that required more decisive and multisectoral interventions.
Although there is a growing body of historical work that has analyzed some of the major international and philanthropic organizations involved in these processes throughout the 20th century (League of Nations, International Labor Organization, WHO, FAO, UNICEF, Rockefeller Foundation, etc. ) there is still little research that pays real attention to the role of local experts and institutions in the global South in the ways in which food problems are conceived and addressed, to the effective functioning of the policies and programs deployed, and to the experiences and agency of both the field workers involved and the communities intervened.
Without exhausting the type of inquiries we wish to explore, some of the questions this special issue sets out to answer are:
· In what ways did experts and institutions in the Global South construct, circulate, appropriate, and negotiate ideas and strategies for understanding and intervening on issues of population control, food, diet, and poverty?
· What role has social science played in the processes of studying and "modernizing" the food habits of traditional communities and indigenous peoples in the Global South?
· In what historical contexts has the fight against hunger and food insecurity come to be seen as the responsibility of nation states of the Global South and the object of public policy?
· How have philanthropy and charity acted in different contexts in the fight against infant mortality, poverty assistance and food distribution?
· How have hunger and poverty been constituted as important elements for social movements, popular mobilizations, and non-governmental organizations in the Global South?
· What have been the official intentions and/or social demands upon which popular restaurants, school canteens and gardens, and other food assistance institutions in the Global South have been structured?
· To what extent were the logics and strategies for dealing with food issues transformed, re-signified, and/or resisted by the field workers involved in the actual deployment of the campaigns and by the communities intervened?
Interested authors should submit a 300-word abstract and a short bio (max. 2 pages) by e-mail to the guest editors of this special issue (contact below). Abstract and bio can be written in Portuguese, English or Spanish.
Abstracts will be accepted
until May 15, 2023. Decisions will be communicated by May 31.
We aim for a special issue of 8-10 original articles, preceded by an introduction by the editors.
Manuscript submissions are due between February 1, 2024 and May 1, 2024 via the journal’s portal. Please, follow the journal’s
Guidelines for Authors. The journal accepts manuscripts written in Portuguese, English or Spanish.
Guest editors’ mail:
romulo.andrade@fiocruz.br;
stefan.pohl@urosario.edu.co
