Food Riots and Protest: Agrarian Modernizations and Structural Crises

Food riots in the developing world have (re)gained momentum coinciding with converging financial, food, and global energy crises of 2007–08. High staple food prices across the world, and increasingly un-regulated food markets, have highlighted among other things the political dimensions of food-related protests. This has been the case especially in the MENA region but also in Sub Saharan Africa, East Asia, and Latin America where food-related protests have often been catalysts to contest wider processes of dissatisfaction with authoritarian and corrupt regimes. After many years of silence, food-related struggles have begun to receive more attention in the academic literature. This has mostly been in the context of emerging debates on land grabbing, food security/sovereignty, and social movements. Yet there have been few attempts to provide a systematic enquiry of existing analytical perspectives and debates, or a clear assessment of what some of the political and economic implications may be, for what now seem to be persistent food protests and social struggles. This article tries to fill this gap by mapping and reviewing the existing and emerging literature on urban and rural food-related protests. It also explores theories and methodologies that have shaped debate by locating these in an alternative world-historical analysis of political economy. The article includes, but also goes beyond, a critical review of the following authors and their important contribution to ongoing debate; Farshad Araghi; Henry Bernstein; Henrietta Friedmann and Philip McMichael; Jason Moore; Vandana Shiva, the World Bank and FAO publications and recent special issues of Review, Journal of Agrarian Change and Journal of Peasant Studies.