Staple Security: Bread and Wheat in Egypt with Jessie Barnes and Graham Pitts
Thursday, October 20 at 2:15pm Eastern
This event will be held in person at:
1957 E St NW (Elliott School of International Affairs)
Room 505
Washington, DC 20052

Jessie Barnes will discuss her recent book Staple Security: Bread and Wheat in Egypt with Graham Pitts.

Egyptians often say that bread is life; most eat this staple multiple times a day, many relying on the cheap bread subsidized by the government. In Staple Security, Jessica Barnes explores the process of sourcing domestic and foreign wheat for the production of bread and its consumption across urban and rural settings. She traces the anxiety that pervades Egyptian society surrounding the possibility that the nation could run out of wheat or that people might not have enough good bread to eat, and the daily efforts to ensure that this does not happen. With rich ethnographic detail, she takes us into the worlds of cultivating wheat, trading grain, and baking, buying, and eating bread. Linking global flows of grain and a national bread subsidy program with everyday household practices, Barnes theorizes the nexus between food and security, drawing attention to staples and the lengths to which people go to secure their consistent availability and quality.

Jessica Barnes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and the School of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at the University of South Carolina.

Graham Pitts is the Croft Assistant Professor of History and Middle Eastern Studies at The University of Mississippi

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