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"We see famine and look for the likely causes: poor food distribution, unstable regimes, caprices of weather. A technical problem, we tell ourselves, one that modern social and natural science will someday resolve. Jenny Edkins responds to the contrary: famine in the contemporary world is not the antithesis of modernity but its symptom. A critical investigation of hunger, famine, and aid practices in international politics, Whose Hunger? shows how modernity frames our understanding of famine--and, consequently, shapes our responses. Edkins examines Malthus and the origins of famine theory in notions of scarcity. Drawing on the work of Lacan, de Waal, Foucault, Zizek, and particularly Derrida, she considers Amartya Sen's entitlement approach, the Band Aid/Live Aid events, and food for work projects in Eritrea as examples of the technologization and repoliticization of famine. From the politics of famine to the practices of aid, from the theories of modernity to the complex emergencies of modern life, from the broad view to the telling detail, this searching book takes us closer to a clear understanding of some of the worst ravages of our time"--Provided by publisher

Traumatic events demand a response that recognizes their impact rather than one that moves rapidly to forgetting the trauma or incorporating it into existing narratives. This article explores four reactions to the events of September 11: securitization, criminalization, aestheticization and politicization. Securitization represents the rapid reinstatement of state power and sovereign control in the face of a traumatic challenge to the state's monopolization of the instrumentalization of human life. While criminalization is less dangerous, it nevertheless involves the depoliticization of opposition and risks outlawing citizen dissent. Aestheticization can be a party to the rebuilding of narratives of nation and heroism in support of state action, but it can also provide a site for critical engagement with the reality of trauma and an acknowledgement of the impossibility of its domestication. Politicization demands a refusal of the easy categories and accepted agendas of what we call `politics' and calls for an engagement with the complexity of the events themselves in all their specificity.

Traumatic events demand a response that recognizes their impact rather than one that moves rapidly to forgetting the trauma or incorporating it into existing narratives. This article explores four reactions to the events of September 11: securitization, criminalization, aestheticization & politicization. Securitization represents the rapid reinstatement of state power & sovereign control in the face of a traumatic challenge to the state's monopolization of the instrumentalization of human life. While criminalization is less dangerous, it nevertheless involves the depoliticization of opposition & risks outlawing citizen dissent. Aestheticization can be a party to the rebuilding of narratives of nation & heroism in support of state action, but it can also provide a site for critical engagement with the reality of trauma & an acknowledgement of the impossibility of its domestication. Politicization demands a refusal of the easy categories & accepted agendas of what we call 'politics' & calls for an engagement with the complexity of the events themselves in all their specificity. [Copyright 2002 Sage Publications Ltd.]