Technology and Culture

Human nutrition, and especially humanitarian food aid, is shaped by sociopolitical conditions. This is the entirely unsurprising and decidedly unexciting conclusion of what is nevertheless an interesting and, in many respects, revealing book.

In ten chapters, Scott-Smith offers a chronological story of technological approaches to food aid, starting with the soup kitchens of the mid-to-late eighteenth century. This is followed by two chapters on the development of scientifically inspired food aid, notably the development of new concentrated foodstuffs (Chapter 2) and the rise of a mechanistic view of human nutrition (Chapter 3).

The following two chapters focus on the rising ambition in colonial settings (Chapter 4), and more globally at the initiatives of the League of Nations, to permanently better developing societies by improving the daily diets consumed in them roughly up to World War II.

Remarkably, the history of public nutrition is then more or less abandoned and the final three chapters instead focus on emergency food relief in the context of famine. Thus, we see aid providers shifting in the direction of increasingly technological and technocratic solutions in Chapters 6 and 7 [End Page 1239] and the innovation of new manufactured foods, such as Single Cell Protein (Chapter 8), Corn-Soy Blend (Chapter 9) and Plumpy'nut (Chapter 10).

From the perspective of historians of technology, it is worth noting, first and foremost, that the book is not about technology per se, but about the ways in which culture, commerce, and politics shape humanitarian nutrition, such as emergency food aid. Innovations in food preparation for the starving and malnourished is used as a vantage point to assess how attitudes, interests, and prejudice have shaped the effort to feed those who cannot adequately feed themselves. In this respect this is a truly unique book; I am not aware of any other publication on food aid or public nutrition that takes this technology-centered approach.

In the view of Scott-Smith, modern, technology-driven solutions to undernourishment and food crises constitute a "Faustian bargain," in which food aid has become impersonal, bureaucratic, and heavily beholden to commercial interests on the one hand, while at the same time improving equality and efficiency in providing food aid in crisis situations. Scott-Smith illustrates this bargain by recounting how he presented the ideas laid out in this book to two different audiences, one dominated by anthropologists and one dominated by medics. According to Scott-Smith, neither group was satisfied by his work—the anthropologists felt he was insufficiently concerned about (negative) cultural and social implications, whereas the medics felt he did not pay sufficient heed to biomedical benefits.

Although he is aware of the pitfalls and limitations of each view, Scott-Smith is undeniably an anthropologist himself. An epidemiological assessment of the merits and demerits of various forms of famine food, for example in terms of mortality rates or weight gain, is conspicuously absent.

What we end up with is perhaps best described as an anthropological history of nutritional innovation. Innovations are discussed in concise and admirably readable essays, with a clear focus on the motivations and interests behind them. Finding paternalism and self-interest in humanitarian aid is perhaps not very surprising, but each chapter provides a rounded, incisive, and well-researched minihistory.

Most of the chapters have a small section about how the findings in the chapter fit a Foucauldian perspective. It is unclear what exactly their function is. To the avid reader of Foucault these paragraphs seem pedestrian at best, while they offer little to readers ignorant of Foucault's work. What is (even) more annoying is that these passages do not elucidate at all how Foucault's work has influenced Scott-Smith's reading or interpretation of his material, but rather seem to aim to demonstrate that the findings of the book fit a Foucauldian view of modern history.

The book has a global outlook, insofar that it recounts the birth of a global industry and...