Maize and the politics of provisioning in South Africa
- Date & time
- –
- Speaker
- Dr Elizabeth Hull (SOAS, University of London)
- Host
- Oxford Martin School (Unit)
- Series
- Lexi Earl
- Location
- Oxford Martin School - Seminar room 1 (ground floor), Seminar room 1 (ground floor) Oxford Martin School 35 Broad Street Oxford Oxfordshire OX1 3BD United Kingdom
- Organisation
- Oxford
Topics
About this talk
In rural South Africa, rising maize prices have contributed to growing hunger and political tensions. In Jozini, where maize is a staple food, the phrase isisu asikweletwa ('the stomach cannot be owed') captures the embodied experience of crisis and the limits of debt-mediated survival in a financialised food system. Drawing on long-term ethnographic work and recent interviews in the wake of price hikes, the paper explores how maize has become a focus of contestation over access to food. It argues that conceptualising food provisioning as a political field shaped by conflicts, obligations and claims, helps rethink the boundaries between every day politics and form politics in a context of weakening democracy.
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