7 - Community Strategies

Summary

Chapter 7 provides a detailed account of social self-organisation at the local level, the constitution of the main NGO during the famine, local child-feeding initiatives, as well as women’s food protests. This chapter demonstrates that the final months of war presented a period of declining legitimacy of state authority in the food system, which led to the rise of new types of organisations: local self-organised relief and self-help entities. Emerging from existing networks, these civil society organisations occupied a central position between the household and state levels and effectively took over care and relief responsibilities. These community efforts can be qualified as a great success and are crucial to explaining why certain groups – children in particular – fared better during the famine than others.