Global History and Politics of Food Security. Interdisciplinary Approaches
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Type: Physical (7th November 2026 - 8th November 2026)
Location: University of Hamburg
ECTS: 3+ (3 ECTS for participation, more upon completion of a term paper of different lengths, according to respective curricula)
Target groups: Undergraduate students, Master Students (with coursework and assessment requirements appropriate to each level)
Description: Against the backdrop of an escalating global food crisis – marked by conflict, poverty, and the climate crisis – this class examines the global history and politics of food security since the late nineteenth century, bringing together approaches from history, anthropology and the social and political sciences. We trace how understandings of hunger shifted with the rise of modern nutrition science, when a lack of food came to be defined in terms of caloric or nutrient deficiency. This reframing rendered malnutrition measurable, comparable, and – crucially –governable as a universal problem across diverse populations and food cultures. In this moment, the very concept of global food in/security emerged. Over the course of the twentieth century, various international actors developed competing ways of measuring and diagnosing food in/security, often arriving at divergent assessments – and even disagreeing over whether a famine existed at all.
