The International Food Crisis: A Geographical Investigation of the Egyptain Context

This dissertation is a study of the link between international and national economic crises and food insecurity. This dissertation approaches food insecurity from the vantage point of a historical-geographical materialist approach to capitalist crisis and food insecurity. In doing so, this dissertation is divided into two parts; the first part is a conceptual review and development of food provisioning under capital accumulation and the second part is an empirical discussion of the general development of international food crisis of 2008 and the case study of Egypt and food insecurity. In the first part, this dissertation seeks to theoretically examine and conceptually develop a normative approach to the social theory of food needs that runs counter to the general assumptions of capitalist development. In addition, this dissertation reviews the major approaches to food insecurity in order to bring to forefront their approach to economic crises and food insecurity. In doing so, this dissertation develops a value-form analysis to the contradictions of global capital accumulation in the provisioning of general human needs and food needs. This conceptual task is to focus on fundamental contradictions involved in capital accumulation that cannot fully abolish food insecurity in its many forms. In the second part, this dissertation examines the contradictions of capital accumulation in the case study of the international food crisis of 2006-08 and in the Egyptian context. In both cases, this dissertation seeks to articulate the structural limitations faced by a number of food-importing dependent states in capital accumulation in general and the neoliberal period in particular.