The fractured politics of food security: Maize, power, and hunger on a Zambian frontier

What is the relationship between the contemporary configuration of hunger and food insecurity in rural Zambia and the on-going efforts to promote "develop" in the region? More precisely, how do contemporary debates over the "appropriate" role of the state or the market in fostering rural development in Zambia shape the context within which farmers produce and access their staple food and what does this mean in terms of rural food security? Using maize, the staple food and primary cultivar in rural Zambia, I explore how the process of partial market liberalization in the agricultural sector- where the state continues to play a central role in the Zambian maize market, while remaining rhetorically committed to the notion of market-led development- reconfigures the ways in which people produce maize and access it in times of need. To explore this complex issue, I utilize a combination of qualitative research methods, including semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and surveys conducted over the course of one year in the rural region of Mayindi, located in southern Zambia. This dissertation argues that within the fractures created by competing ideas about rural development, particularly the competition between state-led and market-led views of development, local power systems based on notions of gender, kinship, and aging flourish in ways that exacerbate issues of hunger and food insecurity for many residents of Mayindi. By placing relationships of power and marginalization at the center of analysis, and locating these relations of power at multiple scales, this dissertation argues against the pervasive technocratic understandings of development and food insecurity, where power is often ignored in favor of technical solutions.