The intransigence of food insecurity: questioning the realities

Tim Lang

Chapter 24 in Handbook of Food Security and Society, 2023, pp 334-352 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Four questions are addressed. Q1 considers the fluidity of food insecurity and agrees that current conceptions are correct to see food insecurity not as a state of existence but as a process which may take different forms. Q2 asks if the term is too fluid. It concludes that as a social construct, its value lies in what use people, particularly policymakers, politicians, and social movements make of the term but too often it’s lost its ‘edge’. Q3 asks what would be required for food security (the reality not the term) to be made obsolete. In a food system and world fissured by gross inequalities this may not be likely, but it could and should be conceived. Daring to ask this leads to a critique of how institutions and political goals nominally working for its resolution actually operate. Q4 asks whether it is utopian to conceive of a world without food insecurity. It is but nothing less deserves our moral support. Policy options and room for manoeuvre are explored.

Keywords: Business and Management; Development Studies; Law - Academic; Politics and Public Policy Sociology and Social Policy; Sustainable Development Goals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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