On an Empty Stomach : : Two Hundred Years of Hunger Relief / / Tom Scott-Smith.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Complete eBook-Package 2020
• VerfasserIn: Scott-Smith, Tom,
• Place / Publishing House: Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2020]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (288 p.) :; 13 b&w halftones

On an Empty Stomach examines the practical techniques humanitarians have used to manage and measure starvation, from Victorian "scientific" soup kitchens to space-age, high-protein foods. Tracing the evolution of these techniques since the start of the nineteenth century, Tom Scott-Smith argues that humanitarianism is not a simple story of progress and improvement but is profoundly shaped by sociopolitical conditions. Aid is often presented as an apolitical and technical project, but the way humanitarians conceive and tackle human needs has always been deeply influenced by culture, politics, and society. These influences extend down to the most detailed mechanisms for measuring malnutrition and providing sustenance. As Scott-Smith shows, over the past century, the humanitarian approach to hunger has redefined food as nutrients and hunger as a medical condition. Aid has become more individualized, medicalized, and rationalized, shaped by modernism in bureaucracy, commerce, and food technology. On an Empty Stomach focuses on the gains and losses that result, examining the complex compromises that arise between efficiency of distribution and quality of care. Scott-Smith concludes that humanitarian groups have developed an approach to the empty stomach that is dependent on compact, commercially produced devices and that is often paternalistic and culturally insensitive.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Humanitarian Approaches to Hunger -- 1. From the Classical Soup Kitchen to the Irish Famine -- 2. Justus Liebig and the Rise of Nutritional Science -- 3. Governing the Diet in Victorian Institutions -- 4. Colonialism and Communal Strength -- 5. Social Nutrition at the League of Nations -- 6. Military Feeding during World War II -- 7. The Medicalization of Hunger and the Postwar Period -- 8. High Modernism and the Development Decade -- 9. Low Modernism after Biafra -- 10. Small-Scale Devices and the Low Modernist Legacy -- Conclusion: On an Empty Stomach -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index