Charles Taylor Book Award Honorable Mention 2023: José Ciro Martínez, for States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan

Honorable Mention: José Ciro Martínez (University of York) for States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan (Stanford University Press, 2022)

States of Subsistence is a journey that leaves the reader sensing the smell of khubz ‘arabi and pondering how the state is performed in Jordan and beyond. Through an ethnographic study of subsidized bread, Martínez pursues “the conundrums that come with being governed by something we can feel, hear, smell, and discuss, but never see” (5). He works at bakeries, interviews policymakers, and spends time with average citizens to understand how subsidized bread is entangled with weighty issues of state authority. Drawing on this long-term immersion, the book shifts attention from the institutions and events that have dominated the study of bread politics to the routines of food production and distribution as sensory rituals connecting citizens to the state. Taking bread and bakeries as an analytical vantage point, Martínez shows how political subjectivities are shaped through embodied relationships to the state, and how the state itself is “a set of relations and practices that must be constantly renewed” (12). States of Subsistence is a pertinent example of how systematic engagement with the ordinary can lead to unexpected yet profound insights, demystifying that most consequential abstraction in political thought and life—the state.

Selection Committee:

Anastasia Shesterinina, chair (University of York)

Mona El-Ghobashy (New York University)

Ido Oren (University of Florida)