The Unending Hunger: Tracing Women and Food Insecurity Across Borders

"The Unending Hunger is a lucid, hard-hittting, and gripping ethnography of Mexican and Central American women migrants in Santa Barbara County, California. Carney unveils the harsh indignities and structural causes of their food insecurity as well as their creative and defiant struggles to eat and live well."and#151;Carole Counihan, coeditor of Food Activism: Agency, Democracy, and Economy

"In this beautiful and incisive ethnography, Carney debunks common conceptualizations about food security and insecurity; in the process, she exposes immigrant womenand#8217;s formidable capacity to survive structural constraints, deep social inequalities, and assaults from neoliberal politics and the inhospitable contexts where they arrive. This is an important and highly recommended book."and#151;Cecilia Menjand#237;var, author of Enduring Violence: Ladina Womenand#8217;s Lives in Guatemala

"In this beautifully crafted book, Megan Carney gives voice to the suffering of immigrant Latinas expected to provide care for their families while being systematically denied the means to do so. At once a theoretical intervention in the debates on the biopolitics of food in/security and a passionate call for a new, gender-sensitive politics of food, Carneyand#8217;s book represents the best of the new ethnographies of migration, food politics, and slow death of vulnerable populations in our neoliberal times."and#151;Susan Greenhalgh, Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University and author of My BMI, My Self: The Hidden Costs of Americaand#8217;s War on Fat

"Incisive, empathetic, and engaging . . .and#160;The rich data Dr. Carney has obtained through her engaged anthropology are a compelling indictment of the human failings of our national food system."

Based on ethnographic fieldwork from Santa Barbara, California, this book sheds light on the ways that food insecurity prevails in womenand#8217;s experiences of migration from Mexico and Central America to the United States. As women grapple with the pervasive conditions of poverty that hinder efforts at getting enough to eat, they find few options for alleviating the various forms of suffering that accompany food insecurity. Examining how constraints on eating and feeding translate to the uneven distribution of life chances across borders and how and#147;food securityand#8221; comes to dominate national policy in the United States, this book argues for understanding womenand#8217;s relations to these processes as inherently biopolitical.

Megan A. Carney is a Lecturer in Anthropology and in the Latin American and Caribbean Studies program at the University of Washington. She is also a Visiting Scholar at Arizona State University. Carney received her doctorate in anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. As a food activist, she was a cofounder of the Santa Barbara County Food Policy Council and served as a Sustainable Food Coordinator for UC, Santa Barbara.

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. and#147;We Had Nothing to Eatand#8221;: The Biopolitics of Food Insecurity

2. Caring Through Food: and#147;La Lucha Diariaand#8221;

3. Nourishing Neoliberalism? Narratives of and#147;Sufrimientoand#8221;

4. Disciplining Caring Subjects: Food Security as a Biopolitical Project

5. Managing Care: Strategies of Resistance and Healing

Conclusion

Epilogue

Appendix A

Appendix B

Notes

References