Dunn chapter Nutritional Anthropology
The people in Georgia experienced a period of great strife when they were separated from their families, and others killed their properties razed to the ground and were left without homes. Many of them had properties and beautiful homes with lawns and beautiful gardens. A section from Dunn’s article indicates how the people perceived the aid from the government, such as macaroni to be nothing. It essentially means that in the past times before the eruption of the war, the people had everything they needed and they lost all that I the battle. Macaroni was a little gesture compared to the plenty they had, and it elicits bitter memories as Dunn puts it from the interview he had with the little girl who was preparing coffee. The nothingness concept comes in as a result of harboring the memories from the past, which when compared to what the government and the NGOs was offering them was nothing compared to what they had before the war. Nothingness also comes as a result of traumatic events, and this is seen by the circumstances the people in Georgia passed through where some people lost property, including their loved ones (Dunn, 2011).
There is nothing that can replace the things that gave reason to a person’s life those which they acquired through sweat and hard work. People from such situations perceive the help to mean nothing in comparison to what they owned. They feel a state of nothingness, and this is highlighted in Dunn’s article where the Georgian IDPs say the government and NGOs have given them nothing when more than $3.4 billion of aid has been granted. Houses have been built for them, but still, it is not enough to fill the void the war created. The concept of bare life is when people feel like they have nothing to live for, and all were taken. It is having the perception that a person has been left at the mercy of whatever is to happen to them, and it elicits hollowness and a feeling of despair. As pointed out in the article, some of the people who were adversely affected by the war live a life of not caring about anything and engage in the drinking of alcohol and a life different from their previous. War changes people, and the aftermath of the impact is notable. Those affected by war do not integrate well into society due to the state of feeling nothingness and perceive themselves to have a bare life.
Summary of Week 2 Module 7 readings about the chapter by Dunn
Most of the countries that are offered aid are on the brink of starvation, and the only way they can survive is when they are provided food. Many countries such as Zambia refused in recent years to take food aid from the United States because it was GMO even though its population was suffering from acute food shortage (Clapp, 2006). They rejected the food because it will contaminate their local varieties if the farmers planted them and hinder export to other countries. It is a reflection on the people of Georgia because most of the countries being offered food aid prefer they preserve what is theirs even in the face of starvation because they want to hold on to that one thing that they perceive to be more valuable at all costs. What these people have in common is the rejection of aid in favor of what they own or owned.
Citations
Clapp, J. (2006). The political economy of food aid in an era of agricultural biotechnology. In The International Politics of Genetically Modified Food (pp. 85-99). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Dunn, E. (2011). The Food of Sorrow: Humanitarian Aid to Displaced People. Food: Ethnographic Encounters, 139-49.