70
D. Johnson
aquaculture is even more evident; the FAO ( 2009 , 23) estimated that the total
number of people dependent on these sectors was approximately 520 million in
2006, or 7.9% of the world’s population (FAO 2009 , 25). These fi gures, along with
other reasons such as food security (see Chap. 6 ), clearly show that it is in society’s
material interest to be concerned with the state of fi sheries and their governability.
Livelihoods
The notion of livelihoods was elaborated within the literature on international development as part of attempts to re fi ne the understanding of and approaches to poverty.
Rather than focus on poverty in fi sheries, however, our intent in this chapter is to
trace some of the implications of livelihoods thinking for fi sheries governability
more broadly (on poverty in small-scale fi sheries see Béné 2003 ; Thorpe et al. 2007 ;
Jentoft and Eide 2011 ) . In this section I provide an overview of the livelihoods concept, critical comments on it, and indicate how coupling livelihoods with wellbeing
may address some of its shortcomings. I leave the full application of livelihoods to
fi sheries governability for the next section of the paper and limit myself here to
indicating how livelihoods and wellbeing concerns are as pertinent to fi sheries as
they are to other sectors.
Attention to livelihoods in the development literature was an explicit attempt to
extend the work of Amartya Sen and Robert Chambers on the multidimensional
nature of poverty (Béné 2003 , 957–958). The seminal work of these two scholars
challenged earlier approaches to poverty that are narrowly focused on income-based
measures and complement a social science understanding of the social complexity
of small-scale fi sheries (Johnson 2006 ) . With reference to famine initially, Sen
( 1981 ) showed how hunger and poverty cannot be explained by limited resource
endowments, but rather by problems of distribution that result from institutionally
entrenched differences in power. He introduced the idea that power differences constrain people’s entitlements, or their abilities to secure the various resources necessary to ensure their health, wellbeing, and even survival. In later work, he extended
his analysis into the capabilities approach, which seeks to identify the social structural factors that constrain entitlements and the development interventions that can
counter them (Sen 1992, 1999 ) . While Sen showed how poverty acts to constrain
possibilities for individual action, Chambers emphasized the importance of understanding the particularities of the experience of poverty. He argued that approaches
to poverty within development rely upon expert driven assumptions and templates
that generate large-scale poverty reduction programs that often miss the targeted
poor by wide margins. One of Chambers’ key contributions was to argue for rapid
rural appraisal as a methodological approach for tapping into diverse experiences of
and explanations for poverty (Chambers 1983 ) .
Livelihoods approaches have sought to draw together and formalize these insights
into frameworks for the assessment of poverty. Although the Institute for
Development Studies approach spearheaded by Chambers may be considered the
D. Johnson
aquaculture is even more evident; the FAO ( 2009 , 23) estimated that the total
number of people dependent on these sectors was approximately 520 million in
2006, or 7.9% of the world’s population (FAO 2009 , 25). These fi gures, along with
other reasons such as food security (see Chap. 6 ), clearly show that it is in society’s
material interest to be concerned with the state of fi sheries and their governability.
Livelihoods
The notion of livelihoods was elaborated within the literature on international development as part of attempts to re fi ne the understanding of and approaches to poverty.
Rather than focus on poverty in fi sheries, however, our intent in this chapter is to
trace some of the implications of livelihoods thinking for fi sheries governability
more broadly (on poverty in small-scale fi sheries see Béné 2003 ; Thorpe et al. 2007 ;
Jentoft and Eide 2011 ) . In this section I provide an overview of the livelihoods concept, critical comments on it, and indicate how coupling livelihoods with wellbeing
may address some of its shortcomings. I leave the full application of livelihoods to
fi sheries governability for the next section of the paper and limit myself here to
indicating how livelihoods and wellbeing concerns are as pertinent to fi sheries as
they are to other sectors.
Attention to livelihoods in the development literature was an explicit attempt to
extend the work of Amartya Sen and Robert Chambers on the multidimensional
nature of poverty (Béné 2003 , 957–958). The seminal work of these two scholars
challenged earlier approaches to poverty that are narrowly focused on income-based
measures and complement a social science understanding of the social complexity
of small-scale fi sheries (Johnson 2006 ) . With reference to famine initially, Sen
( 1981 ) showed how hunger and poverty cannot be explained by limited resource
endowments, but rather by problems of distribution that result from institutionally
entrenched differences in power. He introduced the idea that power differences constrain people’s entitlements, or their abilities to secure the various resources necessary to ensure their health, wellbeing, and even survival. In later work, he extended
his analysis into the capabilities approach, which seeks to identify the social structural factors that constrain entitlements and the development interventions that can
counter them (Sen 1992, 1999 ) . While Sen showed how poverty acts to constrain
possibilities for individual action, Chambers emphasized the importance of understanding the particularities of the experience of poverty. He argued that approaches
to poverty within development rely upon expert driven assumptions and templates
that generate large-scale poverty reduction programs that often miss the targeted
poor by wide margins. One of Chambers’ key contributions was to argue for rapid
rural appraisal as a methodological approach for tapping into diverse experiences of
and explanations for poverty (Chambers 1983 ) .
Livelihoods approaches have sought to draw together and formalize these insights
into frameworks for the assessment of poverty. Although the Institute for
Development Studies approach spearheaded by Chambers may be considered the