Abstract
In discussing famine, its causes and its results, we immediately run into problems of terminology. It seems to me, however, to be useful to think of the ontogeny of famine as involving three major sets of factors: first, background factors; second, pathological factors (precursors); and third, precipitating factors. (See Table I). For example, the 1974 famine in Rangpur District of Bangladesh, was precipitated by flooding of the Brahmaputra River. The flooding, in turn, had its causes in a set of pathological factors (meteorological, ecological, geographical), which were the precursors of the famine and which were pathological because they were distortions of the basic ecological relationships (background factors). Reading the chain of causation of the famine forward, rather than backward, we have a situation in which a fairly stable ecosystem (background factor) becomes diseased and produces a series of pathological biotic and social conditions (the pathologies, the precursors). The stage is set for the ...
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