"No One can solve this Problem but God"

: Counter Discourses of Food Security

Abstract

Studies on food security often eschew questions of politics. Work on food security in the Arab region, for example, has represented the area in a reductive fashion, characterizing it primarily as drought-prone and a ‘natural importer’ of basic food staples without paying attention to the social construction of agricultural relations and notions of ‘food insecurity’ and ‘scarcity’. This study criticises such a representation and draws upon Gramscian theoretical concepts to advance an understanding of food and agricultural relations in the Arab region that privileges their political dimension. In doing so, the thesis shows that the ability to influence food and agricultural relations is central to the exercise of power and the production of hegemony. Having established the relevance of a Gramscian approach to the study of the politics of food, the thesis uses this framework to explore competing discourse and practices of food security and food sovereignty in Jordan. The empirical chapters show how charitable modes of food provisioning are central to the reproduction of elite relations but also that Jordan-based actors challenge conventional food system relations based upon a variety of rationales. Using Gramsci’s concept of (counter-)hegemony as orientation, the thesis investigates the counter-hegemonic potential of such discourses and practices. It concludes that the potential for organising food system relations differently in Jordan depends on the development of democratic strategies at national level and within institutions of global governance. In conjunction t this argument, however, the thesis makes clear that the role of international capitalism and how it relates to the development of counter-hegemonies in the domain of food remains under-theorised.

Date of Award	2017
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Aberystwyth University
Supervisor	Michael Woods (Supervisor) & Jean-Francois Bridoux (Supervisor)