Overview

Egyptians often say that bread is life; most eat this staple multiple times a day, many relying on the cheap bread subsidized by the government. In Staple Security, Jessica Barnes explores the process of sourcing domestic and foreign wheat for the production of bread and its consumption across urban and rural settings. She traces the anxiety that pervades Egyptian society surrounding the possibility that the nation could run out of wheat or that people might not have enough good bread to eat, and the daily efforts to ensure that this does not happen. With rich ethnographic detail, she takes us into the worlds of cultivating wheat, trading grain, and baking, buying, and eating bread. Linking global flows of grain and a national bread subsidy program with everyday household practices, Barnes theorizes the nexus between food and security, drawing attention to staples and the lengths to which people go to secure their consistent availability and quality.

Full Product Details

9781478015864

Table of Contents

Reviews

"""The book’s forte lies in the wider use of a range of sources, including ethnography, interviews with various actors in Egypt, participant observation, newspapers and archival materials. . . . Another strength is how the book draws connections with issues of staple security in countries in Africa but also from other continents. Barnes also provides extensive illustrations that are well linked to the content of each chapter. The concept of staple security is of value to anyone interested in the subject of food and politics as well as food histories."" -- Chama Kaluba Jickson * H-Environment * ""Barnes’s Staple Security is an important contribution to the existing literature that unravels the myriad relationships, histories, and politics coalescing around one commodity or staple, similar, for example, to studies of sugar, coffee, and rice. One could imagine scholars and students from agrifood studies, Middle East and North Africa studies, anthropology, and geography finding much value in this text."" -- Megan A. Carney * American Anthropologist * ""A timely contribution to critical food studies, bringing global attention to the vulnerabilities within grain supply chains and their impact on ordinary people’s lives. . . . The evocative writing, along with numerous images, maps, and wonderful full-page photographs between each chapter, transport the reader to the worlds of bread and wheat in Egypt."" -- Mona Atia * AAG Review of Books * ""Staple Security is a masterpiece of rich ethnographic detail and collaborative research about the cornerstone of the Egyptian diet: bread and wheat. . . . A major strength of this book is methodological: It provides a blueprint of how to study the human experience of a staple, from its cultivation to consumption."" -- Katie Meehan * AAG Review of Books * ""A concise, focused, and illuminating book. Staple Security makes a valuable contribution to the existing literature on food security by exploring the ways in which people actually understand their own sense of security vis-à-vis food, and how they then go about achieving and safeguarding that security. For these reasons, it is necessary reading for all those concerned with issues of food production, policy, and procurement, not just in Egypt or the Middle East, but in the Global South more broadly."" -- Timothy Gorman * AAG Review of Books * “Barnes deftly weaves together interviews and ethnographic observations with statistics and newspaper headlines to build her case throughout the book . . . An ambitious accounting of complex processes for ensuring security at multiple scales, from the household to the nation.” -- Kimberley G. Connor * Medical Anthropology Quarterly *"

"""The book’s forte lies in the wider use of a range of sources, including ethnography, interviews with various actors in Egypt, participant observation, newspapers and archival materials. . . . Another strength is how the book draws connections with issues of staple security in countries in Africa but also from other continents. Barnes also provides extensive illustrations that are well linked to the content of each chapter. The concept of staple security is of value to anyone interested in the subject of food and politics as well as food histories."" -- Chama Kaluba Jickson * H-Environment *"

Author Information

Jessica Barnes is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and the School of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at the University of South Carolina. She is author of Cultivating the Nile: The Everyday Politics of Water in Egypt, also published by Duke University Press, and coeditor of Climate Cultures: Anthropological Perspectives on Climate Change.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available