Let Them Eat Peanut Butter! Understanding Obstacles to Women's Embodied Sovereignty Through Peanut-Based Agriculture and Aid in Haiti

Abstract

How did Haiti, where peanuts were once a staple crop often grown, traded, processed and shared by women, reach its contemporary food crisis, when some mothers must feed their children a diet of donated peanut-based nutritional supplements to keep them alive? Case studies of peanuts as food aid in Haiti reveal the ways neoliberalism and disaster capitalism stymie women's embodied sovereignty. This article uses the concept of embodied sovereignty to build on food sovereignty literature, enabling a sharper focus on the bodies that produce, process, feed and eat food, as well as the historical production of gendered food responsibilities, and the life-and-death stakes of sovereign power.