IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jdevst/v55y2019i8p1633-1653.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Precarious State of Famine Research

Author

Listed:
  • Olivier Rubin

Abstract

In 2017 famine struck yet again. While famine continues to haunt many fragile countries, the paper reveals a faltering scholarly interest in famine research, particularly within the research tradition of development studies. Today, the research field is rather dominated by the research traditions of history and economics. Interestingly, the steepest decline in scholarly attention to famine coincided with Amartya Sen being awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998 in part for his work on famine. The paper points to three characteristics of famine research that might account for this rather puzzling development: (i) the field of contemporary famine research exhibits limited interest in theory-building; (ii) the field is impeded by inaccessibility to key research sites; and (iii) the field is weakened by a small and dispersed research community. The paper suggests remedies that might address these obstacles to contemporary famine research in development studies. To facilitate more theoretical development, scholars could engage with the recent call for a criminalisation of famine, and the broader field of disaster research could be used as an institutional catalyst for scholars of famine.

Suggested Citation

  • Olivier Rubin, 2019. "The Precarious State of Famine Research," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(8), pages 1633-1653, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:55:y:2019:i:8:p:1633-1653
    DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2018.1493196
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00220388.2018.1493196
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/00220388.2018.1493196?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Matthew Hoye, J., 2022. "Famine, remittances, and global justice," World Development Perspectives, Elsevier, vol. 27(C).
    2. Naomi Pendle, 2023. "Law and Famine: Learning from the Hunger Courts in South Sudan," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 54(3), pages 467-489, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jdevst:v:55:y:2019:i:8:p:1633-1653. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/FJDS20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.