Paper short abstract:

This paper will provide an ethnographic account of food security and risk in a Kenyan informal settlement. It will address how conflict, power, and gender-based inequality contribute to experiences of, and responses to, uncertainty in the household context.

Paper long abstract:

In East African urban centres such as Mombasa, Kenya, informal settlements are residential spaces characterised by poverty, high population density, lack of infrastructure, sub-standard housing, "quasi-legal" land rights, HIV/AIDS, and social, political, and economic marginalization. For the majority of inhabitants in these communities, the most pressing everyday issue is food security or safe, sustainable access to sufficient, acceptable, and nutritious food. In terms of food security, households are the units in which resources are distributed and entitlement to food is negotiated. However, gender inequalities, power differentials, and attendant conflict mean certain household members may lack the ability and resources to attain food security while others may be more consistently successful. In this way, the household may be seen as the locus of both access and risk. While preceding research has thoroughly depicted informal settlements as biophysical, epidemiological, and economic risk environments, too few efforts have privileged the socio-cultural components of the "slum" as risk milieu. Through a biocultural approach, I will address the social and political obstacles to achieving individual (and collective) food security within these households. Furthermore, I will consider why domestic (especially intimate) relationships exist as a source of uncertainty and how individuals at risk respond to associated anxieties. My aim will be to offer an ethnographic account of the ecology of risk in an informal settlement.