Ground Level: Food and War w/ Nadine Bahour

Everyday life is often described as common, usual, uneventful, slow, and mundane, yet it can easily become unpredictable, anxious, and traumatic. This episode explores contexts in which war and political violence closely interact with everyday life. 

To discuss the everyday political economy of state-mandated violence, we focus on survival. Where critical political economy frames survival as part of everyday resistance connected to labour agency, we move to discuss the political economy of actual survival as represented by gathering food when supply chains become instruments for violence and repression. 

We discuss the political economy of survival by exploring the sources of food insecurity in Palestine and the food-related abuses employed by the Israeli state, first as part of its colonial project and after October 2023 as part of the genocide of the Palestinian people. 

Concepts discussed: survival, social reproduction, genocide, violence, resistance, starvation, humanitarianism. 

Hosts:

Dr Frank Maracchione, SOAS University of London.

Gwilym Evans, University of Sheffield.

Speakers: Nadine Bahour is the Research Program Coordinator for the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University. Nadine is originally from Ramallah, Palestine, and her work studies the impact of settler colonialism on healthcare access and quality. 

Material discussed in the episode: 

Bahour, N., Anabtawi, O., Muhareb, R., Wispelwey, B., Asi, Y., Hammoudeh, W., Bassett, M. T., Mills, D., & Tanous, O. (2025). Food insecurity, starvation and malnutrition in the Gaza Strip. Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, 31(4), 281–284. https://doi.org/10.26719/2025.31.4.281

Gisha. (2012). Reader: "Food Consumption in the Gaza Strip - Red Lines". Gisha - Legal Centre for Freedom of Movement. https://www.gisha.org/UserFiles/File/publications/redlines/redlines-position-paper-eng.pdf 

Ross, A. (2021). Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel. Verso Books.

Further readings: 

Abusalim, J., Bing, J. and M. Marryman-Lotze. (2022). Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire. Chicago: Haymarket Books. 

Devereux, S. (2024). Was There a Famine in Gaza in 2024? IDS Working Paper 613. Brighton: Institute of Development Studies. https://doi.org/10.19088/IDS.2024.042. 

El Masri, Y. (2024). 12: Food-Making in the Sisterhoods of Bourj Albarajenah Refugee Camp: Towards Radical Food Geographies of Displacement. In: Hammelman, C., Levkoe, C.Z. and Kristin Reynolds. (Eds). Radical Food Geographies. Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.51952/9781529233445.ch012

IPC - Integrated Food Security Phase Classification. (2025). GAZA STRIP: Famine confirmed in Gaza Governorate, projected to expand | 1 July – 30 September 2025. 22 August. https://www.ipcinfo.org/fileadmin/user_upload/ipcinfo/docs/IPC_Gaza_Strip_Acute_Food_Insecurity_Malnutrition_July_Sept2025_Special_Snapshot.pdf 

Nimer, F. (2024). Food Sovereignty in a Palestinian Economy of Resistance. Al-Shabaka’s Palestine, 27 August. https://al-shabaka.org/briefs/food-sovereignty-in-a-palestinian-economy-of-resistance/ 

Pearce, F. (2025). As War Halts, the Environmental Devastation in Gaza Runs Deep. Yale Environment 360, 6 February. https://e360.yale.edu/features/gaza-war-environment 

Roy, S. (2023). The Long War on Gaza. The New York Review of Books, 19 December. https://www.nybooks.com/online/2023/12/19/the-long-war-on-gaza/ 

Seidel, T. (2021). Settler Colonialism and Land-Based Struggle in Palestine: Toward a Decolonial Political Economy. In: Tartir, A., Dana, T., Seidel, T. (eds) Political Economy of Palestine. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-68643-7_4

This episode is produced by the SPERI Presents… committee, including Chris Saltmarsh, Josh White, Frank Maracchione, and Andrew Hindmoor. This episode was edited by Frank Maracchione with support from Chris Saltmarsh. Music and audio by Andy_Gambino. Hosted on Acast. See https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.