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(state-funded famine protection through food
for work or public food distribution)and promo-
tion(a public social security net).
Sen’sconcernwithentitlements,andrelatedly
the capabilities of individuals, can be extended
to better grasp the conditions under which
people become food secure. To begin with en-
titlements themselves,geographer Charles Gore
has noted that ‘command over food depends
upon something more than legal rights’ (1993,
p. 433). Extended entitlements, for example,
[, for example,] might includesocially determined
entitlements(amoraleconomy,indigenoussecur-
ity institutions),non-legal entitlements(foodriots,
demonstrations, theft) andnon-entitlement trans-
fers(charity). This highlights a rather different
way of thinking about E-mapping. First, entitle-
mentsaresociallyconstructed(notjustindividu-
ally conferred): they are forms of social process
and a type ofrepresentation. Second, like all
forms of representation, entitlements are com-
plex congeries of cultural, institutional and pol-
itical practice that are unstable: that is to say,
they are both constituted and reproduced
throughconflict,negotiationandstruggle.En-
titlements are, then, political and social achieve-
ments that are customarily fought over in the
course ofmodernization(in this sense, one
canthinkaboutthemeansbywhichentitlements
enter the political arena in the course of the
differing routes tomodernity). And, third, so-
cialentitlementsconfirmSen’sunelaboratedob-
servation that the relations between people and
food must be grasped as a ‘networkof entitle-
mentrelations’ (1981, p. 159; emphasis added).
Hungerorfamine-pronenessare the productsof
historically specificnetworks of social entitlements.
One of the great strengths of Sen’s approach
to food and hunger is that entitlements are part
ofa largerarchitecture ofthinking aboutdevel-
opmentas a state of well-being and choice or
freedom. In his language, the capability of a
person reflects the ‘alternative combinations
of functioning the person achieves and from
which he or she can choose one collection’
(1993, p. 3). Functionings represent parts of
the state of a person, and especially those things
that a person can do or be in leading a life. In
seeing poverty or hunger as a failure of capabil-
ities – rather than insufficient income, or inad-
equate primary goods as in the Rawlsian sense
of justice – Sen shows how the freedom to lead
differenttypesoflifeisareflectedintheperson’s
capabilities (see Sen, 1999). mwSuggested reading
Bread for the World (http://www.bread.org/
learn/hunger-basics/hunger-facts-international.html) and Hunger Notes (http://www.world
hunger.org/).hybridity A condition describing those
things and processes that transgress or dis-
concert binary terms that draw distinctions
between like and unlike categories of object –
such as self/other, culture/nature, animal/ma-
chine or mind/body. Hybridity has entered
popular parlance through the commercial mo-
bilization of techno-scientific innovations (e.g.
the cultivation of hybrid seeds and plants or
the proliferation of hybrid vehicles), or cul-
turalinnovationssuch as cyber-culture or
fusion music (seecyborg). As these examples
suggest, the mixing of properties ascribed to
opposingontologicalcategories established
through academic and everyday use inspires
both social anxiety and excitement.
Ingeographyand the wider social sciences
andhumanities, hybridity has come to be used
rather too loosely to mean any number of dif-
ferent kinds of mixing, such as the notion of
‘hybrid methods’ – which means little more
than combiningqualitativeandquantitative
methodsin the conduct of research, or what
used to be called multi-method approaches.
Such usages tend to treat hybridity as an in-
trinsically desirable quality or strategy. More
theoretically or philosophically rigorous ex-
plorations of hybridity are associated primarily
with two bodies of work: (i) cultural studies
(seecultural turn) andidentity politics,
particularly in the field of post-colonial studies
(e.g. Bhabha, 1994; seepost-colonialism)
and (ii)scienceand technology studies and
posthumanistpolitics (e.g. Latour, 1993).
In the case of post-colonial studies, hybridity
is associated with the interrogation of those
contact spaces in which cultural differences
are contingently and conflictually negotiated
(see Pratt, 1992; cf.transculturation). In
the case of science and technology studies, it is
enrolledasadevicetonegotiatethetemptations
of the ‘one plus one’ logic or ‘mixture of two
pure forms’ that pervade binary anddialect-
icalmodes of analysis ofnature–culturere-
lations (see Whatmore, 2002a). The problem
here, as Bruno Latour suggests, is that:
critical explanation always began from the
poles and headed toward the middle, which
was first the separation point and then the
conjunction point for opposing resources
... In this way the middle was simultan-
eously maintained and abolished, recognised
and denied, specified and silenced ... How?
By conceiving of every hybrid as a mixture of
two pure forms. (1993, pp. 77–8)Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_H Final Proof page 361 1.4.2009 3:18pmHYBRIDITY