Social Responses During Severe Food Shortages and Famine [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract

Although emergency food shortages and famines have been a prominent part of human experience for thousands of years and recur somewhere on our planet almost annually, data describing behavioral and organizational responses are few and scattered. Generalizations, when not speculative, tend to be vague and frequently contradictory. Practical, humanistic, and scientific concern with how people respond when overtaken by nutritional catastrophe provide compelling reason for development of a systematic, empirically based understanding of how social life changes amidst severe, protracted starvation. This paper surveys literature from several fields. By piecing together diverse observations and findings and paying close attention to the chronology of response, it is possible to infer the existence of a series of social transformation in which distinctive patterns of social interaction emerge as starvation progresses from stage to stage. Behavioral adaptations appearing in concert with the physiological alterations entailed by starvation lie at the root of this sequence. The degree of physiological stress and behavioral change experienced by individuals and groups depends on external (e.g., famine-causing events, relief-giving agencies, etc.) and internal (e.g., biological traits, social structures, etc.) factors. The latter are discussed in both intra- and interpopulational contexts. Sociocultural adaptations to famine consist of progressive and recursive traits. Progressive adaptations are selected as precautionary or preventive measures. Recursive adaptations unfold as a synchronous response to increasing scarcity. Recursive social adaptations seem to possess the same basic structure regardless of culture. This structure consists of a triphasic response pattern in which the rate of activity and the extent and frequency of positive reciprocities at first increase, later decreasing to near zero if the starving population remains unrelieved. The effects of this curvilinear pattern are examined in the context of household and interpersonal relations, political organization, and religious and ritual life. Existing images of famine-stricken people are summarized and found wanting. An alternative conception is developed with special emphasis on linking quantitative changes in behavior with qualitative changes in the organization of institutions.

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