This Brief provides some answers as to why famines continue to torment humankind here in the 21st century despite all our progress in food production, logistics, information dissemination and relief work. Contemporary famines are inherently political, and so the interesting question is not how famines can be prevented, but why they are allowed to develop in the first place; only by understanding the latter, is there hope to eradicate major famines.
The Brief assesses the various analytical approaches to the understanding of famine, from the classical approaches inspired by Thomas Malthus...

Famine is the most extreme manifestation of the existence of poverty, inequality and political apathy. Whereas poverty, hunger and diseases are not easily eradicated in the world today, famines are often perceived to be relatively simple to avert. However, the political incentives to prevent famines are not always present.

Inspired by the work of Amartya Sen, whose influential hypothesis that democratic institutions together with a free press provide effective protection from famine, Democracy and Famine is a study combining qualitative and quantitative evidence, analysing...

Given the tendency of books on disasters to predominantly focus on strong geophysical or descriptive perspectives and in-depth accounts of particular catastrophes, Disaster Research provides a much-needed multidisciplinary perspective of the area.

This book is is structured thematically around key approaches to disaster research from a range of different, but often complementary academic disciplines. Each chapter presents distinct approaches to disaster research that is anchored in a particular discipline; ranging from the law of disasters and disaster historiography to...