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nutrient imbalance and illness/disease. All of
these conditions – typically measured through
key indicators such as infant growth, weight for
height, body mass, birth weights, dietary energy
supply and so on – can be the result of differing
sorts of foodsecurity. Some of the rural poor
maybehungryforshortorlongperiods,butthey
are relatively secure that things will not deterior-
ate (starvation); others may have adequate
nutrition or food intake but are food insecure –
however, their conditions may change very rap-
idly and throw them into abject hunger. These
differing forms of security and vulnerability are
intimately wrapped up with the sorts of entitle-
ments and protections afforded to different
classes,genders, ages and social groups.
Currently, global food consumption pro-
vided 2720 dietary calories per person, which
would have been sufficient if distributed in pro-
portion to requirements. In global terms, then,
food consumption is so unequal that caloric
undernourishment is serious. It is true that
the proportion of malnourished people has
fallen greatly (more in the past 50 years than
in the previous 3000) but hunger and under-
nourishment remains endemic in some regions
(notably sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia).
Paradoxically, there is much evidence to suggest
growing hunger in some of the North Atlantic
economies and withina number ofpost-socialist
societies. According to the International Food
Policy Research Institute (see Von Braun,
Serova, tho Seeth and Mely 1996), agricultural
production fell by 30 per cent in Russia between
1989 and 1994 and hunger was widespread
during the 1990s. In California (a place where
the more affluent are seemingly obsessed by
eating less and losing weight), the reform of
‘welfareasweknowit’,hasproduced8.4million
who were ‘food insecure’ by 2000.
A conventional way to think about hunger is
in terms of output or gross availability. Food
securitydecreasesaccordinglyasfoodavailabil-
ity declines.famine, an extreme case of food
insecurity, is a function of a massive collapse of
food availability, a sort of Malthusian event. In
contrast to the Malthusian and demographic
approach, in which food insecurity arises as
food output is incapable of keeping up with
population growth (seemalthusian model),
Amartya Sen (1981) approaches hunger, and
most especially how hunger and food insecurity
can degenerate into famine, from a micro-eco-
nomic vantage point and entitlements. Sen is
able to show how gross food insecurity may
occur without a decline in food availability,
and how entitlements attached to individuals
through a generalization of the exchangeeconomy – throughmarkets– may shift in
complex ways among differing classes, occupa-
tional groups and sections of the population.
Sen begins with the individual endowment,
which is mapped into a bundle of entitle-
ments, the latter understood as ‘the set of
alternativecommoditybundles that a person
can command’ (1981, p. 46) through the use
of variouslegalchannels of acquirement open
to someone of his or her position. Such en-
titlement bundles confer particular capabilities
that ultimately underline well-being.
Central to Sen’s account of why hunger ex-
ists is the process of transforming endowments
into entitlements, so-calledE-mapping. The
sorts of entitlements that Sen details are re-
wards to labour, production, inheritance or
asset transfer, andstateprovisioning (trans-
fers), typically through social security and
food relief policies (i.e. anti-famine policies, of
which the Indian Famine Codes are customar-
ily seen as a model: Dreze and Sen, 1989).
Insofar as an individual’s entitlement set is the
consequence of E-mapping on the endowment
set, entitlements can only change through
transformations in the endowment or
E-mapping. Hunger and shortage occurs
through a collapse or adverse change in endow-
ment or E-mapping, or both (Sen, 1981).
Entitlement, in contrast to other theories,
‘draws our attention to such variables as own-
ership patterns, unemployment, relative prices,
wage-price rations, and so on’ (1993, p. 30).
Sen situates hunger, then, on alandscape,
irreduciblysocial,ofthecapabilitiesthatindivid-
uals, and potentially classes, may mobilize. By
examiningmappingasanactiveandtransforma-
tive process – how the capacity to labour, or
access to land, can generate an entitlement – it
dislodges a concern with outputper seand fo-
cusesonaccesstoandcontroloverfood.Itoffers
aproximatesort of causal analysis predicated on
what immediate or conjunctural forces might
shift such forms of access and control, and per-
mits a social mapping of such shifts to under-
stand who dies or starves (say, artisanal
craftsmen versuspeasants)andwhy. Entitle-
ments–thecentralmechanisminhisintellectual
architecture – are individually assigned in virtue
of a largely unexamined endowment, and are
legally derived from state law (ownership,prop-
ertyrights, contract). Entitlements necessitate
making legitimate claims; that is to say, rights
resting on the foundations ofpower(opportun-
ity or actual command) andlaw(legitimacyand
protection). A concern with entitlement failure
in market circumstances leads Sen to emphasize
public action through entitlement protectionGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_H Final Proof page 360 1.4.2009 3:18pmHUNGER