142009 SE Political Economy of Hunger in South Asia (2022W)
Continuous assessment of course work
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Registration/Deregistration
Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).
- Registration is open from Mo 29.08.2022 08:00 to We 28.09.2022 10:00
- Deregistration possible until Mo 31.10.2022 23:59
Details
max. 24 participants
Language: English
Lecturers
Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N
- Tuesday 04.10. 11:00 - 13:00 Seminarraum 5 ISTB UniCampus Hof 4 2C-O1-34
- Tuesday 11.10. 11:00 - 13:00 Seminarraum 5 ISTB UniCampus Hof 4 2C-O1-34
- Tuesday 18.10. 11:00 - 13:00 Seminarraum 5 ISTB UniCampus Hof 4 2C-O1-34
- Tuesday 25.10. 11:00 - 13:00 Seminarraum 5 ISTB UniCampus Hof 4 2C-O1-34
- Tuesday 08.11. 11:00 - 13:00 Seminarraum 5 ISTB UniCampus Hof 4 2C-O1-34
- Tuesday 15.11. 11:00 - 13:00 Seminarraum 5 ISTB UniCampus Hof 4 2C-O1-34
- Tuesday 22.11. 11:00 - 13:00 Seminarraum 5 ISTB UniCampus Hof 4 2C-O1-34
- Tuesday 29.11. 11:00 - 13:00 Seminarraum 5 ISTB UniCampus Hof 4 2C-O1-34
- Tuesday 06.12. 11:00 - 13:00 Seminarraum 5 ISTB UniCampus Hof 4 2C-O1-34
- Tuesday 13.12. 11:00 - 13:00 Seminarraum 5 ISTB UniCampus Hof 4 2C-O1-34
Information
Aims, contents and method of the course
The title of this seminar is a reference to an important volume edited by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen (1990). Drèze and Sen are among today’s most important development economists and philosophers who made contributions to topics like economic and social justice or hunger and famines. Sen grew up in West Bengal, a region that experienced a devastating famine in 1943, when millions died due to hunger and starvation. Sen personally experienced this famine as a child – an experience that certainly shaped his academic interests.Colonial rule, one could say, not only ended with a terrible famine, but it also started with one: the famine of 1769–70, also in Bengal, which killed an estimated third of this province’s total population. And there were of course numerous other severe famines throughout the duration of British rule. Since independence in 1947, however, there has been no famine in India. Furthermore, there is little archival evidence for large-scale famines in pre-colonial India. This suggests that famine was not simply a ‘naturally’ recurring event on the subcontinent, as some colonial administrators suggested, but closely related to colonialism and its impact on South Asia’s economy and society. The first major aim of this seminar is to familiarize students with famines in South Asia in the colonial period, since this was a period of frequent and severe famines covering large parts of the subcontinent. We will discuss the factors that have the potential to turn a food crisis into a famine, including extreme weather events, failing markets or erroneous public responses. Also, we will discuss what had made the people of South Asia so vulnerable to famines in the first place.Secondly, we study issues of food security and food sovereignty in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. South Asia was a central arena of the so-called Green Revolution, a massive transformation of agriculture that began in the 1960s. New high yielding variety seeds, pesticides and irrigation technology rapidly increased agricultural productivity and helped to alleviate the problem of food scarcity – at least in the short run. In the long run the Green Revolution caused new problems, such as declining soil fertility, the emptying of ground water or dependencies on external agents such as seed corporations. Recently, numerous governments, development agencies and scholars have called for a ‘New Green Revolution.’ Biotechnology, they hope, can combat climate change and hunger. Not only could biotechnology further increase harvest yields, but might help to continue agricultural production in harsh ecological conditions – conditions which otherwise become increasingly difficult for agricultural production due to the climate crisis. Studying the long-term impacts of the first Green Revolution in South Asia, might help us to understand the possible implications of a ‘New Green Revolution’ on the Subcontinent.
Assessment and permitted materials
- Reading: Read the texts provided for each session- Writing: You have to post short reading responses in the forum on Moodle- Presentation: Present the draft of the seminar paper in on of the last sessions of the seminar- Seminar paper: Write a seminar paper (15–20 pages). You can write the paper in English or German. Submit the paper until 28 February 2023
Minimum requirements and assessment criteria
The ability to read and communicate in English is essential.You can miss class max. 2 times.// Grading:1) Active participation in classroom // 15%
2) Reading Responses // 20%
3) Presentation // 15%
4) Final Seminar paper, 15 pages // 50%>= 87,5% very good (1)
>= 75% good (2)
>= 62,5% satisfactory (3)
>= 50% sufficient (4)
< 50% deficient (5)
2) Reading Responses // 20%
3) Presentation // 15%
4) Final Seminar paper, 15 pages // 50%>= 87,5% very good (1)
>= 75% good (2)
>= 62,5% satisfactory (3)
>= 50% sufficient (4)
< 50% deficient (5)
Examination topics
Reading list
Alamgir, Mohiuddin. Famine in South Asia: Political Economy of Mass Starvation. Cambridge: Oelgeschlage, Gunn & Hain, 1980.Arnold, David. Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change. Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1988.Basu, Pratyusha, and Bruce A. Scholten. ‘Technological and Social Dimensions of the Green Revolution: Connecting Pasts and Futures’. International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability 10, no. 2 (1 May 2012): 109–16.Bhatia, B. M. Famines in India: A Study in Some Aspects of the Economic History of India (1860-1965). London: Asia Publishing House, 1967.Chakrabarti, Malabika. The Famine of 1896-1897 in Bengal: Availability or Entitlement Crisis? Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2004.Davis, Mike. Late Victorian Holocausts. El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. London: Verso, 2001.Drèze, Jean, and Amartya Sen. The Political Economy of Hunger. Volume 1: Entitlement and Well-Being. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990.Dutt, Romesh. Indian Famines. Their Causes and Prevention. London: P. S. King & Son, 1901.Dyson, Tim. ‘Famine in Berar, 1896–97 and 1899–1900: Echoes and Chain Reactions’. In Famine Demography. Perspectives from the Present and the Past, edited by Tim Dyson and Cormac Ó Gráda, 93–112. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.Evenson, R. E., and D. Gollin. ‘Assessing the Impact of the Green Revolution, 1960 to 2000’. Science 300, no. 5620 (2 May 2003): 758–62.Everest, Robert. ‘On the Famines That Have Devastated India, and on the Probability of Their Being Periodical’. Journal of the Statistical Society of London 6, no. 3 (1843): 246–48.Glaeser, Bernhard. The Green Revolution Revisited: Critique and Alternatives. 1st ed.. Routledge Library Editions: Development Ser. London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2011.Ghose, Ajit Kumar. ‘Food Supply and Starvation: A Study of Famines with Reference to the Indian Subcontinent’. Oxford Economic Papers 34, no. 2 (1982): 368–89.Ghosh, Kali Charan. Famines in Bengal, 1770-1943. Calcutta: Indian Associated Publishing, 1944.Hall-Matthews, David. ‘Historical Roots of Famine Relief Paradigms: Ideas on Dependency and Free Trade in India in the 1870s’. Disasters 20, no. 3 (1996): 216–30.Hurt, R. Douglas. The Green Revolution in the Global South : Science, Politics, and Unintended Consequences /. Nexus. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2020.Jodhka, Surinder S. ‘Why Are the Farmers of Punjab Protesting?’ The Journal of Peasant Studies 48, no. 7 (10 November 2021): 1356–70.Loveday, Alexander. The History and Economics of Indian Famines. London: Bell and Sons, 1914.MacAlpin, Michelle B. Subject to Famine, Food Crises and Economic Change in Western India, 1860–1920. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.Mishra, H. K. Famines and Poverty in India. New Delhi: Ashish Publishing House, 1991.Mishra, Vimal, Amar Deep Tiwari, Saran Aadhar, Reepal Shah, Mu Xiao, D. S. Pai, and Dennis Lettenmaier. ‘Drought and Famine in India, 1870–2016’. Geophysical Research Letters 46, no. 4 (2019): 2075–83.Ó Gráda, Cormac. Famine. A Short History. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009.Patel, Raj. ‘The Long Green Revolution’. The Journal of Peasant Studies 40, no. 1 (2013): 1–63.Perkins, John H. Geopolitics and the Green Revolution: Wheat, Genes, and the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.Roy, Tirthankar. Natural Disasters and Indian History. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2012.Satya, Laxman D. Cotton and Famine in Berar, 1850–1990. New Delhi: Manohar, 1997.Sharma, Sanjay. Famine, Philanthropy and the Colonial State. North India in the Early Nineteenth Century. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001.Siegel, Benjamin Robert. Hungry Nation Food, Famine, and the Making of Modern India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.Srivastava, H. S. History of Indian Famines and Development of Famine Policy, 1858–1918. Agra: Sri Ram Mehra and Co, 1966.
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Last modified: Tu 27.09.2022 09:08