I had been interested in bread and wheat since my first period of fieldwork in Egypt, back in 2007 and 2008. This was a time when there were shortages in the supply of the government-subsidized bread, long lines at bakeries, and lots of complaints about scarcit..
Jessica Barnes
Jessica Barnes’s work examines the cultural, political, and material dimensions of resource use and environmental change in the Middle East and beyond. Her publications include Cultivating the Nile: The Everyday Politics of Water in Egypt (Duke University Press, 2014), Climate Cultures: Anthropological Perspectives on Climate Change (coedited with Michael Dove, Yale University Press, 2015), Staple Security: Bread and Wheat in Egypt (Duke University Press, 2022), and articles in a number of journals. Her research has been supported by grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation. Jessica received her PhD in sustainable development from Columbia University and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of South Carolina.