DV467      Half Unit
Famine, Data skills and Analysis

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

This half unit course is intended to provide students with an opportunity to develop industry standard data visualisation skills and apply these techniques to real world case studies of food insecurity and famine.

Students will complete two digital skills laboratory courses and to use these skills to conduct an independent exploration of data sets relating to the onset of famines.  Using the food security literature to identify a range of processes and pathways thought to lead into or out of famine, students are asked to interrogate existing data sets and represent their findings as either confirming or altering these models through inductive inference.  The data sets are likely to derive from those provided by OCHA Humanitarian Data Exchange, FEWSNET, Development Initiatives, the OCHA Financial Tracking Service, Glofass and supported by data from relevant operational organisations (such as WFP, UNICEF and FAO as well as national capitals). Students can work independently or in teams of two or three (but with different outputs). This course will appeal to those wishing to pursue a career in combatting food insecurity.

The causes of famine are generally considered to be found in widespread food scarcity which may derive from a range of factors: crop failure, natural disaster, armed conflict, chronic poverty or the failure of national political or economic policies.  Famines ‘that kill’ (De Waal) are usually followed by ‘regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality.’  The onset of these type of events can be slow or fast but the more serious episodes tend to be ones that develop over a protracted period and are complex social and economic processes. Many of these processes are tracked by international organisations and national capitals and these data sets provide a rich and often untapped description of underlying processes and the various ways in which these situations unfold over time as the crisis deepens and broadens.

The corpus of literature identifies a range of supposedly causal pathways; but four particular models stand out. Historically the Malthusian idea of sharp and sudden ‘food availability decline’ has tended to dominate analysis. But following the work of Amartya Sen in the early 1980s, authors have identified a range of other processes ranging from the collapse of household ‘entitlements’, through to patterns of progressive impoverishment, and narratives which focus on reductions in access to livelihoods and food, resulting first in displacement and then chronic public health crises. Equally the pathways out of famine have become more sophisticated; beginning with the provision of food commodities and water during throughout much of the Cold War but eventually evolving into far more complex livelihood, market based and food security interventions thereafter. The course will explore the various claims made by theorists in order to determine ‘frames’ for considering the evolution of such crises.

21 hours of seminars and 20 hours of computer workshops in the Autumn Term.
4.5 hours of workshops and 20 hours of computer workshops in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn and Winter Term.

9 X 2-hour Harvard style seminars in AT taught by Prof Gordon.

1 X 3-hour seminar in AT week 11 (Students will present inception reports at this time) taught by Prof Gordon.

Final presentations in WT in weeks 9, 10 or 11 taught by Prof Gordon.

10 x 2-hour computer workshop in AT and 10 x 2-hour computer workshop in WT taught by a member of  the Digital Skills Lab (drawn from Power BI, STATA, R, Python, Tableau, Excel with individual advice to students on aspirations and suitability of courses from DSL - these vary in length but are approx. 5 days each)

Students on this course will have a reading week in Week 6.

Presentation in Autumn Term Week 11

Formative work will be based on a 5-minute inception presentation outlining the approach being taken to the research as well as formative work agreed with the Digital Skills Lab, which differ by digital course.

• Alex de Waal, Catriona Murdoch and Wayne Jordash (eds.), Accountability for Mass Starvation: Testing the Limits of the Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1-30.
• Stephen Devereux, 2000, Famine in the Twentieth Century, IDS working paper no. 105, pp1-40. ISBN 1 85864 292 2
• Becker, Jasper. 1996. Hungry Ghosts: China’s Secret Famine. London: John Murray (chapter 8: “Henan: A Catastrophe of Lies”).
• Natsios, Andrew. 2001. “The Politics of Famine: The Battle in Washington”, chapter 7 in The Great North Korean Famine, Washington: United States Institute of Peace, pp. 141-164.
• Delamothe, Tony, 2011, “Thought for food: Commodity speculation, not micronutrient deficiency, is today’s most pressing problem”, BMJ (British Medical Journal), 342, p. 1060, May 14.)
• Sen, Amartya 1981. Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation, Oxford: Clarendon Press (reprinted 1984) (chapters 1 and 9) CC HC79.F3S47 pp1-8 & 131–153
• Rangasami, Amrita. 1985. “’Failure of Exchange Entitlements’ Theory of Famine: A Response”, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. XX, no. 41, October 12th and no. 42, October 19th pp 1747-51 &1797-1800 H8
• Keen, David. ‘A disaster for whom? Local interests and international donors during famine among the Dinka of Sudan’. Disasters, vol. 15, no. 2, 1991, pp. 58–73.
• De Waal, Alexander. 1989. Famine that Kills: Darfur, Sudan, 1984-85 (chapter 8, “Relief”), pp. 195-226. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Conley, Bridget, Alex de Waal, Catriona Murdoch and Wayne Jordash. 2021. “Introduction: Rendering Starvation Unthinkable – Preventing and Punishing Starvation Crimes”, in Bridget Conley

Presentation (20%)

Report (80%, 4000 words) in Winter Term Week 11

The final presentation, worth 20% of the overall mark, presented at the end of WT. This is a 10-minute presentation (per person) plus Q&A.

The final report, worth 80% of the overall mark, takes place at the end of WT. This comprises a report of 4,000 words.