Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
systems (GIS) and vegetation analysis (e.g., Robbins, 2001; McCusker and Weiner,
2003). Additionally, geographers have contributed in particularly fruitful ways to
the literature on smallholder agricultural production and crop management, bring-
ing empirical rigor and diverse methodological approaches to bear on questions of
peasant livelihood strategies. For instance, in his large body of work, Zimmerer
(see,
inter alia
, 1996; 1999) has combined detailed, household-level fi eld studies of
resource management practices and crop diversity with political and economic
analysis of state development and conservation policies. Others have examined
smallholder crop management, household income generation and regional econo-
mies in tropical forests (see, for instance, Coomes, 2004; McSweeny, 2005). The
strength of this approach lies in its empirical rigor and focus on micro-scale strate-
gies of resource management and income generation, placed within a context of
translocal economic processes.
While this body of literature highlights the diverse practices involved in small-
holder agricultural production and household-level livelihood strategies, only
recently have geographers considered the diversity of non-agricultural strategies
employed by peasant households to generate income and assure their reproduction.
Recognising that rural livelihoods are seldom
only
rural or agricultural, some schol-
ars have focused on the dynamics of livelihood diversifi cation. For instance,
Bebbington (2000) has demonstrated the diversifi cation of rural livelihoods among
indigenous peasant communities in the Andes, based on migration and remittance
income, rural industry and temporary wage labour. Livelihood diversifi cation of
this sort does not mean that rural
places
are less important, however: indeed, many
rural communities continue to be sites of cultural reproduction, investment and
empowerment even as agriculture plays a diminishing role in livelihood strategies.
As Jokisch (2002) has demonstrated, international migrants from the Ecuadorian
Andes frequently use income earned overseas to build large homes and maintain
farms in their home communities, with the hope of eventually retiring there. Such
processes dramatically alter rural communities and the landscapes in which they are
located.
These studies highlight the fact that the livelihoods of the rural poor, like the
environments from which they are (partially) derived, are not static. Rather, liveli-
hood strategies may change in response to perceived opportunities (for example
migration, market integration, development interventions, expanded resource
rights), as well as external stress (for instance drought, fl ood, pest infestation or loss
of resource rights). Examination of rural livelihoods as dynamic and diverse rather
than static and derived from a single economic activity (whether it be agriculture,
pastoralism, fi shing, or petty trading, to name a few obvious options) permits
analysis of the diversity of resources and strategies employed in securing a liveli-
hood. This in turns fosters a more geographically nuanced appreciation of livelihood
strategies, as inquiry turns to the sources and combinations of assets that contribute
to economic and social well-being: the sources of income, techniques of natural
resource management, networks of social relations and forms of knowledge and
education that people draw on to make a living (Bebbington, 1999; Sen, 1997).
If rural livelihoods are not static or unitary, neither are they socially homoge-
neous nor necessarily equitable. Geographical research into rural livelihoods has
revealed tremendous gendered, ethnic and class-based differences in access to the
natural resources necessary for livelihood security, as well as the benefi ts derived
from resource rights, management strategies and development projects (Harcourt,
