On an Empty Stomach: Two Hundred Years of Hunger Relief

On an Empty Stomach examines the practical techniques humanitarians have used to manage and measure starvation, from Victorian "scientific" soup kitchens to space-age, high-protein foods. Tracing the evolution of these techniques since the start of the nineteenth century, Tom Scott-Smith argues that humanitarianism is not a simple story of progress and improvement, but rather is profoundly shaped by sociopolitical conditions. Aid is often presented as an apolitical and technical project, but the way humanitarians conceive and tackle human needs has always been deeply influenced by culture, politics, and society. Txhese influences extend down to the most detailed mechanisms for measuring malnutrition and providing sustenance.

As Scott-Smith shows, over the past century, the humanitarian approach to hunger has redefined food as nutrients and hunger as a medical condition. Aid has become more individualized, medicalized, and rationalized, shaped by modernism in bureaucracy, commerce, and food technology. On an Empty Stomach focuses on the gains and losses that result, examining the complex compromises that arise between efficiency of distribution and quality of care. Scott-Smith concludes that humanitarian groups have developed an approach to the empty stomach that is dependent on compact, commercially produced devices and is often paternalistic and culturally insensitive.

Introduction: Humanitarian Approaches to Hunger
1. From the Classical Soup Kitchen to the Irish Famine
2. Justus Liebig and the Rise of Nutritional Science
3. Governing the Diet in Victorian Institutions
4. Colonialism and Communal Strength
5. Social Nutrition at the League of Nations
6. Military Feeding during World War II
7. The Medicalization of Hunger and the Postwar Period
8. High Modernism and the Development Decade
9. Low Modernism after Biafra
10. Small-Scale Devices and the Low Modernist Legacy
Conclusion: On an Empty Stomach

Tom Scott-Smith is Associate Professor of Refugee Studies and Forced Migration at the Department of International Development, University of Oxford. He previously worked as a professional in humanitarian and development organizations. Follow him on X @tomscottsmith.

This is an excellent book on the shifts in the provision of food and nutrients in the global aid industry. On an Empty Stomach is both engaging and well written. The book makes us wiser, and deserves to be read by a wide audience.

The exceptional range of material treated in this modern history, alongside Scott-Smith's unfailingly sharp analytical lens, render this an essential primer on efforts to feed the hungry in the modern world.

[A]n interesting and, in many respects, revealing book.Scott-Smith is an evocative and clear writer, and his perspective is refreshing.

[T]he clear-cut framework proposed by Scott-Smith reflects an equilibrated and mindful attitude toward historical narrative. On an Empty Stomach is a book that commands attention in a field of study that has only recently started to develop and gain relevance. By proving himself able to bridge anthropology and history, but also driven by a sincere will to increase awareness among humanitarian nutritionists of the genealogy of their field of work, Tom Scott-Smith has written a convincing book, able to captivate a curious reader.

A lively, readable text. On an Empty Stomach is well written, meticulously detailed, teachable, and engaging. Grounded in close attention to the technologies and knowledges through which humanitarian food is delivered, it will appeal to scholars, students, and practitioners concerned with humanitarianism, development, nutrition, and health.

Scott-Smith's On an Empty Stomach is a very important contribution to both socio-cultural anthropology and history concerning food relief. This mature study reveals a complex web of circumstances, discoveries, innovations, individual agencies and collective ideologies which shaped the current forms of food relief and approach to human diet Heartily recommended