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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how food was literally prescribed through rationing during the 2022–2023 blockade of Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh and how people navigated these diets through care, mutual help, and exchange. It shows survival, measured in grams, depended on social relations.

Paper long abstract

Between December 2022 and September 2023, Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin Corridor severed the only road connecting Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh’s predominantly Armenian population to Armenia, disrupting food, energy, and supply infrastructures. In response to escalating shortages, local authorities introduced rationing systems, issuing bread cards and food tickets that defined what could be eaten and in what quantities. This paper draws on ethnographic interviews with displaced Artsakh Armenians conducted between 2023 and 2025, alongside analysis of social and news media, to examine how survival was administered through prescribed portions and reorganized through everyday practices of care and exchange.

While dietary prescriptions are often understood as medical guidance, in blockade Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabakh they operated in a literal, bureaucratic sense: survival was measured and distributed in grams. Yet prescription did not guarantee provision. Many nutritionally necessary foods remained unavailable, while the usability of available ingredients depended on disrupted infrastructures such as electricity, transport, and storage.

Under these conditions, food access depended on social relations. Families relied on kinship ties, informal exchange, and mutual help to redistribute scarce resources between villages and cities. Rationed food was ethically managed, with many reducing their own portions to prioritize others, while visible consumption became morally sensitive. Mothers experienced anxiety over their inability to meet nutritional standards. Media representations of improvised foods further politicized everyday eating. Together, these materials show how survival under blockade was shaped not only by bureaucratic prescription but by collective care, exchange, and the reorganization of everyday life.