Journal article
Geographic contingency, affective facts, and the politics of global nutrition policy
Geoforum, Vol.105, pp.179-190
10/2019
DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.05.021
Abstract
Global health organizations focused on nutrition have developed an intense focus on the first 1000-days of human life (from the point of conception to age 2) as the time where the right nutrition and care will determine personal health and global economic futures. Based on epidemiology and lab-based bioscience, this has led to a global policy consensus that promotes a set of 'essential interventions' focused on the bodies of mother to ensure productive global futures. Building on scholars arguments that 1000-days consensus is predicated on a logic of anticipatory action, this paper uses the two distinct orientations of the concept of contingency to understand both how this narrative has achieved global prominence, and how it has manifested in particular configurations within India. First, this paper investigates how the 1000-days discourse's ascendance has been achieved through the notion of future life as open-ended contingency. It argues that this specter of future/threat opportunity is then rendered governable through the use of affective practices that quantitatively imagine dystopic global futures of malnourished bodies and stagnant economies, and then makes hope-based appeals to biomedical, nutrition interventions to secure continued economic growth. Second, the paper analyzes qualitative data from Indian policy actors that demonstrates how the 1000-days discourse is refracted across India. I find that Indian responses to such a consensus have been mixed due to the particular socio-political legacies of India as a postcolonial space, and also to a certain level of happenstance and the socio-spatial intermingling of everyday life. This paper's main argument is that while the threat/opportunity of future contingency discursively drives 1000-days, it is simultaneously geographical contingency that complicates the ways it materializes in the particular space of India.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Geographic contingency, affective facts, and the politics of global nutrition policy
- Creators
- Carly E Nichols - University of Iowa
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Geoforum, Vol.105, pp.179-190
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.05.021
- ISSN
- 0016-7185
- eISSN
- 1872-9398
- Publisher
- Elsevier Ltd
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 10/2019
- Academic Unit
- Interdisciplinary Programs; Geographical and Sustainability Sciences
- Record Identifier
- 9984259386202771
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