hello and welcome to CHI the Contemporary History Intervention
this is the final video that we will do in this academic
year she will go into hibernation over the summer
and this video is dedicated to an event 10 years ago more precisely a
series of events the Arab Spring as you all know the Arab Spring was a
series of protests across the Arab world that deposed a number of
rulers in Tunisia Egypt Libya and Yemen it
challenged political leaders across the Arab world
I would even try to summarize this entire event here that is something that
needs probably a series of lecture and I won't
touch on that big question overhanging the Arab Spring nowadays
was it worth it that is a question that relies exceedingly on
political views and maybe also relies exceedingly on the wisdom of hindsight
no protest movement ever started with cost benefit calculations
instead this video will focus on underlying cause and specifically one
underlying cause
that received short shrift in the western media
world these are protests against authoritarian regimes
against the suppression of dissent profession of human rights and that
framed media coverage in the western world but there was
something else that I would like to talk about
food or more precisely food prices because there's
a macro coincidence between the protests on the one hand
and the development of food prices I’m using here the
food price index that the food and agriculture organization of the united
nations since 1990 and there was an interesting
event the FAO food price index reached
its highest point both in real and nominal terms
in January 2011 exactly when protests were
starting the highest point since the FAO started measuring food prices
since 1990 and that was a recurring theme
in the streets of the Arab world these were protests
around exceedingly high food prices food was significant people were not so much
for people in the west where the focus was as I mentioned on freedom
and democracy why did the western world miss the significance of food well
for one thing there is the orientalist gaze our view
of the Arab world has long been framed by
what we have and what they lack democracy
human rights the rule of law but there's something else in play here and it's
about generational experience for those of us
who grew up in the western world I guess the idea of
food prices as something that is politically volatile
is a pretty remote thought for us food was
always there in the supermarket cheap abundant
and safe I looked up when I did the research for this video last night I
looked up where it is in the UK
um well if you look at the expenditure for food and non-alcoholic
beverage as a share of income well that share
is pretty stable in the UK for all UK households
it's between 10 and 12 since 2006 and even for poor people the lowest 20
on the income ladder even there um it has never been above 18 of total
income since 2006 and sometimes as low as 14
now as I started attempting to zoom out here and look at the entire swath at
human history and to point out here that throughout history
well most humans have lived on the brink of starvation
and sometimes beyond that bring but in this case you don't have to go
back hundreds of years to see the significance
of cheap and abundant food we can just look at
the 1950s and 1960s the golden years of western capitalism a time of
uninterrupted growth the longest period of uninterrupted economic
growth in modern economic history where we saw
an increase of incomes across the entire spectrum of society but there
was something else the 1950s and 1960s also saw a historic
decline in food prices and that mattered for
the wealth of Britain and other western countries because it meant an increase
in disposable income disposable income is the share of your income
that you can spend as you like food is obviously an item that is a necessity
and if the food price goes down that means that you have
more income to spend at leisure even if your income remains constant
and in this way cheap food prices underpinned
the rise of democracies across the western world these democracies
weren't just about parliament the rule of law human rights there were also
consumer democracies but that is a part of the post-war
miracle years that did not enter collective memory when we think
about food riots we think about something
in the distant past 19th century maybe earlier or in today's world
among the desperate poor but these are not the people that we need to talk
about when we talk about the underlying causes
of the Arab Spring here I’m talking about the middle classes people who
could afford food but who saw that food claimed an ever greater share
of the limited wealth and we saw that high
increasing food prices were ignoring aware
their status and we know from plenty of research that the middle classes matter
tremendously for the stability of democracies
when I did the research for this video I discovered something else on the
website of the food and agricultural organization there is
a news release of 8th of April 2021 just a few days ago
and it was about global food prices global foods are rising and they have
risen for 10 months in a row now and at this moment in late April uh 2021
food prices are at its highest since June 2014. now
I will not say that another round of protest is about to begin
protests are certainly not about applied mathematics
but we take can take all this as a lesson about what democracy is democracy
is not just about political essentials
it is about human essentials