72
D. Johnson
A major impetus for the multiple asset basis of livelihoods was the need to
challenge the idea that rural individuals or households depend solely on a single
natural resource dependent sector like agriculture or fi sheries (Ellis 2000 ) . Rather,
and increasingly so as the pace of development increases, livelihoods transcend
particular sectors. Even within speci fi c sectors, livelihoods build on multiple opportunities from extraction to processing to trading to credit. Livelihoods approaches
focus on how and why individuals and households choose to invest in and balance
their different assets in order to make a living. The combinations they use are
identi fi ed as the set of different possible livelihood strategies.
Livelihoods are constrained and given opportunity by the broader structural context within which they take place. These structures are institutional in the broad
sense of being the economic, social, cultural, and political conditions that operate at
multiple scales from the hamlet to the region and beyond. Thus, as Ram ( 1992 ) has
eloquently demonstrated for South Indian fi sheries, livelihood opportunities for
women are generally signi fi cantly different from those for men. At a broader scale,
Greenberg ( 2006 ) has shown the power of economic and political factors to structure livelihood opportunities in Mexican fi sheries. Structuring in fl uences also
include changes over time of a non-institutional nature, although these changes may
have institutional causes and may be fi ltered by institutional structures. In the vulnerability and risk literature, these are divided into shocks, trends, and seasonality
(Allison and Horemans 2006 ) , each referring to types of pressures, sudden, intensifying or recurring, that test livelihood resilience.
This last point provides a connection between the core structure-agency logic of
the livelihoods approach and the natural environment. As mentioned above, sustainable livelihoods is a very common conceptual pairing that re fl ects the frequent application of livelihoods approaches to contexts where households are dependent on
ecological goods and services. One ‘bracketed’ livelihoods approach (see below) is
to see households as adapting to the vagaries of an external natural environment.
Increasing the sustainability of livelihoods could then involve a number of strategies,
whether through building human and social capitals that permit the construction of
alternative income generating activities or through strengthening social and political
capital so that those at risk can pressure or work with the state to strengthen institutional and infrastructural defenses against threats. Vulnerability reduction in this
sense connects livelihoods analysis to complex socio-ecological systems literature
and the notion of resilience. As indicated below, however, there is still more work to
do to make livelihoods approaches more effectively cross-scale in their reach.
The primary challenge to, and the root of critiques of, livelihoods approaches is
with the interplay of assets representing agency and the institutions and other factors representing structure. Bebbington et al. ( 2007 , 183) note that most livelihoods
analyses tend to ‘bracket’ the structural side in order to focus on the analytically
original part of the livelihoods approach; the interplay of the capitals. This is problematic, as assets and institutions are in ongoing, mutually constituting relationships. Thus, the perception of the opportunities that an asset may present depends on
the speci fi c context. In different fi sheries or for different individuals within a speci fi c
fi shery, for example, debt relationships with moneylenders that involve social and
D. Johnson
A major impetus for the multiple asset basis of livelihoods was the need to
challenge the idea that rural individuals or households depend solely on a single
natural resource dependent sector like agriculture or fi sheries (Ellis 2000 ) . Rather,
and increasingly so as the pace of development increases, livelihoods transcend
particular sectors. Even within speci fi c sectors, livelihoods build on multiple opportunities from extraction to processing to trading to credit. Livelihoods approaches
focus on how and why individuals and households choose to invest in and balance
their different assets in order to make a living. The combinations they use are
identi fi ed as the set of different possible livelihood strategies.
Livelihoods are constrained and given opportunity by the broader structural context within which they take place. These structures are institutional in the broad
sense of being the economic, social, cultural, and political conditions that operate at
multiple scales from the hamlet to the region and beyond. Thus, as Ram ( 1992 ) has
eloquently demonstrated for South Indian fi sheries, livelihood opportunities for
women are generally signi fi cantly different from those for men. At a broader scale,
Greenberg ( 2006 ) has shown the power of economic and political factors to structure livelihood opportunities in Mexican fi sheries. Structuring in fl uences also
include changes over time of a non-institutional nature, although these changes may
have institutional causes and may be fi ltered by institutional structures. In the vulnerability and risk literature, these are divided into shocks, trends, and seasonality
(Allison and Horemans 2006 ) , each referring to types of pressures, sudden, intensifying or recurring, that test livelihood resilience.
This last point provides a connection between the core structure-agency logic of
the livelihoods approach and the natural environment. As mentioned above, sustainable livelihoods is a very common conceptual pairing that re fl ects the frequent application of livelihoods approaches to contexts where households are dependent on
ecological goods and services. One ‘bracketed’ livelihoods approach (see below) is
to see households as adapting to the vagaries of an external natural environment.
Increasing the sustainability of livelihoods could then involve a number of strategies,
whether through building human and social capitals that permit the construction of
alternative income generating activities or through strengthening social and political
capital so that those at risk can pressure or work with the state to strengthen institutional and infrastructural defenses against threats. Vulnerability reduction in this
sense connects livelihoods analysis to complex socio-ecological systems literature
and the notion of resilience. As indicated below, however, there is still more work to
do to make livelihoods approaches more effectively cross-scale in their reach.
The primary challenge to, and the root of critiques of, livelihoods approaches is
with the interplay of assets representing agency and the institutions and other factors representing structure. Bebbington et al. ( 2007 , 183) note that most livelihoods
analyses tend to ‘bracket’ the structural side in order to focus on the analytically
original part of the livelihoods approach; the interplay of the capitals. This is problematic, as assets and institutions are in ongoing, mutually constituting relationships. Thus, the perception of the opportunities that an asset may present depends on
the speci fi c context. In different fi sheries or for different individuals within a speci fi c
fi shery, for example, debt relationships with moneylenders that involve social and