Hungry for Revolution

InHungry for Revolution: The Politics of Food and the Making of Modern Chile(University of California Press, 2021), Joshua Frens-String explores the modern history and political economy of food in Chile, from World War I to the rise and fall of the Allende socialist regime in the 1970s. Drawing together a diverse cast of characters and weaving together a wide range of sources, Frens-String demonstrates that the struggles to create a more just food system shaped modern Chile and its expansive social welfare state prior to the Pinochet’s coup d’état and the implementation of the Chicago Boys’ economic neoliberalization policies. In addition to the dynamics of class and gender in the consumption politics of Chile,Hungry for Revolutionis particularly attentive to the different problematics of feeding the urban working classes and dismantling rural estates, and of creating durable socialist regimes and systems of food justice.

Nathan Hopsonis an associate professor of Japanese language and history in the University of Bergen's Department of Foreign Languages.