Understanding food disasters and food traumas in the global food system: A conceptual framework

- Scholars in food studies have examined how periodic crises in global food supply has led to social instability and the rise of new food regimes.
- The current food regime, despite underlying contradictions and tensions, is characterized by largely stable, intractable, and enduring food relations.
- These underlying tensions have resulted in food disasters that produced significant trauma for vulnerable communities without manifesting “moments of crisis” leading to the dismantling of food systems.
- This paper explores how food vulnerabilities manifest themselves in largely stable food regimes. The proposed framework, “food disaster-food trauma framework (hereafter FD-FT) studies how food deprivations occur in stable food regimes.