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Podcast: New Books in Political Science
Episode: José Ciro MartÃnez, "States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan" (Stanford UP, 2022)
Description: In 1974 the government of Jordan established a new ministry to oversee a nationwide scheme to buy and distribute subsidized flour and regulate bakeries. The scheme sets terms for the politics that are the subject of a new book: States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan (Stanford University Press, 2022). Rest assured, this is no dull account of state welfare that posits and tests for a two-dimensional relationship between the delivery of a staple food and public acquiescence to authoritarian rule. Far from it! To explain these politics, José Ciro MartÃnez goes to work baking, and taking the re...