ABSTRACT
Food riots dramatize the moral priority of human eating over other laws or rules, challenging in particular the right to profit from speculation in the food grain trade. The right to food as manifested in claims to protection against the failures of food markets to enable secure access to food is articulated in what has been termed the 'moral economy' in social historical studies of food riots in the periods of adjustment to market economies in 17th and 18th century Europe. Food price rises may in the first instance have been experienced by individuals, and their families. Protests about food prices sometimes built on pre-existing protest groups or organizations, as happened in Kenya when citizen movements 'hijacked' national events with colourful protests. Food trade interests were regularly demonized, including both oligopolies and powerful groups with the ear of policymakers, and more tangibly and more visibly to food shoppers and protestors, food or grain traders or ration-dealers.
