By Ian Scoones and William Wolmer

IDS Bulletin Vol 34 No 3 2003

Rethinking Livelihoods

As previous sections of this Bulletin have shown, the livelihoods of poor, rural people in southern Africa are highly complex, often vulnerable and subject to many uncertainties: biophysical, economic, institutional and political. Any neat prescriptions or models about livelihoods do not stand up for long. Yet, as we have seen, whether in relation to wild resources, land or water and across the countries, certain basic assumptions are repeated. Despite the fact that these do not generally reflect empirical reality, they remain pervasive and influential in the framing of policy.