Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T00:45:26.290Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The World Politics of World Hunger: A Study in Biopolitical Interactions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

James N. Schubert*
Affiliation:
Division of Social Sciences, Alfred University, Alfred, New York 14802
Get access

Extract

Human nutrition provides a subject area in which biology and politics interact in two respects. First, nutrition is a factor in human political behavior that may affect both individual decision-making performance and mass participation. Specific conditions, such as hypoglycemia, may affect individual performance, while inadequate energy intakes and qualitative deficiencies may influence mass behavior. Second, public policy affects the nutritional status of individuals and populations. Agricultural policy, food trade policy, nutritional intervention programs, foreign and domestic food aid, and social welfare policies are among the categories of governmental outputs that help determine nutritional conditions in populations and their component groups. Nutritional status, in turn, has feedback effects through mass behavior on political inputs. Thus, human nutrition presents a problem of biopolitical interactions that involves a mutually interdependent relationship with cybernetic properties.

Type
Research in Progress
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Schubert, James N. (1979) “The Politics of Malnutrition.” Paper presented at the meeting of the International Studies Association, Toronto, Canada.Google Scholar
Schubert, James N. (1981a) “Development, Dependence and Health Status in Latin America.” Paper presented at the meeting of the International Studies Association, Philadelphia, Pa.Google Scholar
Schubert, James N. (1981b) “The Impact of Food Aid on World Malnutrition.” International Organization.Google Scholar
Schubert, James N. (1981c) “Malnutrition and Political Violence: Frustration–aggression or Anemia–passivity.” Paper presented at the meeting of the Western Political Science Association.Google Scholar
Schubert, James N. (1981d) “The Politics of Famine: Political Adaptation in Populations under Short Term Nutritional Stress.” Paper presented at the meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York.Google Scholar
Schubert, James N. (1982) “Food for Peace? The Political Impact of Food Aid.” Paper presented at the meeting of the International Studies Association, Cincinnati, Ohio.Google Scholar
Schubert, James N. (1982b) “Malnutrition and Political Violence in the 1970s: Synchronic and Diachronic Analyses.” Paper presented at the meeting of the International Political Science Association, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.Google Scholar
Schubert, James N.(Forthcoming)“Famine and Politics.” in Flohr, Heiner (ed.) Biologie und Politik.Google Scholar