Food and Famine in Colonial Kenya

This book offers a genealogical critique of how food scarcity was governed in colonial Kenya. With an approach informed by the 'analysis of government', the study accounts for the emergence and persistence of dominant approaches to promoting food security in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa policies and practices that prioritize increased agricultural production as the principal means of achieving food security. Drawing on a range of archival sources, the book investigates how those tasked with governing colonial Kenya confronted food as a particular kind of problem. It emphasizes the ways in which that problem shifted in conjunction with the emergence and consolidation of the colonial state and economic relations in the territory. The book applies a novel conceptual approach to the historical study of African food systems and famine, and provides the first longitudinal and in-depth analysis of the dynamics of food scarcity and its government in Kenya.

Examines the history of food scarcity as a problem of government in Kenya Contributes to scholarship on the history of food, famine and colonial government in Africa Adds to current conceptual and methodological debates surrounding Foucauldian concepts

Autorentext
Daniel Inkoom, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana Mtafu Manda, Mzuzu University, Malawi Victor Onyebueke, University of Nigeria, Nigeria Christopher Anierobi, University of Nigeria, Nigeria Joy Ogbazi, University of Nigeria, Nigeria Ezeadichie Nkeiru, University of Nigeria, Nigeria Stephen Mukiibi, Makerere University, Uganda Sarah Charlton, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa Karina Landman, University of Pretoria, South Africa

Inhalt

1. Introduction.-2. Famine and Colonial Conquest.-3. Scarcity, State Control and the First World War.- 4. Scarcity and Settler Consolidation.- 5. Depression and Scarcity.- 6. Scarcity, State Control and War: Redux.- 7. Setting the Agenda.- 8. Conclusion.