People’s Relational Agency in Confronting Exclusion in Rural South India

STEPS Working Paper 117 by Saurabh Arora, Ajit Menon, M. Vijaybaskar, Divya Sharma and V. Gajendran Social exclusion is considered critical for understanding poverty, livelihoods, inequality and political participation in…

Résilience vernaculaire: Une approche analytique des pratiques sociales et des répertoires culturels de résilience à long terme en Côte d’Ivoire et en République Démocratique du Congo

télécharger le pdf Une version anglaise de ce document est aussi disponible. Ce document de travail vise à situer notre projet de recherche dans les débats sur la résilience. Le…

Working Paper: Vernacular Resilience – Approaching Long-Term Social Practices and Cultural Repertoires of Resilience in Côte d’Ivoire and the DRC

A French version of this paper is also available. This working paper aims to situate our research project within the various debates around resilience. It advocates a historical, cultural and…

The Green Revolution and Poverty in Northern Tamil Nadu: a Brief Synthesis of Village-Level Research in the Last Half-Century

In this paper, a corpus of research is revisited to reinterpret how poverty in Northern Tamil Nadu was theorised and analysed, and to synthesise and compare the findings. The extensive scope of poverty concepts and processes studied over the decades constitutes the appendix.

Political Ecology and Differential Vulnerabilities to Droughts among Livestock Farmers in South Africa: A Case Study of Mpakeni Community

The enormous contributions livestock production makes to rural livelihood in communal areas are perhaps why it is deemed a vehicle that can reduce the high poverty and inequality levels through the injection of effective policies.

A New Policy Narrative for Pastoralism? Pastoralists as Reliability Professionals and Pastoralist Systems as Infrastructure

This paper proposes that pastoralist systems are better treated, in aggregate, as a global critical infrastructure. The policy and management implications that follow are significant and differ importantly from current pastoralist policies and recommendations. A multi-typology framework is presented, identifying the conditions under which pastoralists can be considered real-time reliability professionals in systems with mandates preventing or otherwise avoiding key events from happening. The framework leads to a different policy-relevant counternarrative to pastoralism as understood today. Some features of the counternarrative are already known or have been researched. The paper’s aim is to provoke further work (including case research and interactions with decision-makers) on how robust the counternarrative is as a policy narrative for recasting today’s pastoralist policy and management interventions.

Green Transformations, Charcoal and Social Justice in Rural East-Central Tanzania

Over the last 30 years, Tanzania has taken different policy approaches towards the conservation of forests. Intriguingly, from the earlier integrated conservation and development approach to the ‘newer’ green economy,…

Kenya’s Youth Agricultural Livelihoods and the Land–Water–Environment Nexus

This paper elucidates the extent to which the proposition for greening youth livelihoods is plausible by examining how young farmers navigate the land–water–environment nexus. The main question addressed here is ‘to what extent does the land–water–environment nexus influence (and, indeed, is influenced by) youth agricultural livelihoods?’

Herding through uncertainties – principles and practices : exploring the interfaces of pastoralists and uncertainty : results from a literature review

This paper assesses the practices and strategies pastoral communties adopt in responding to the stresses and shocks generated by the uncertainties that surround them, with a view to understand and appreciate the underpinning inspiring principles.

Herding through uncertainties – regional perspectives : exploring the interfaces of pastoralists and uncertainty : results from a literature review

Lessons from pastoralists, we argue, may help others working in other domains to develop more effective responses to uncertain contexts. Following Prof. Scoones’ papers What is uncertainty and why does it matter?, this is one of two papers developed with a view to analyse and reflect on the interfaces and interrelationships between pastoral societies, the uncertainties that embed their livelihoods, and the related coping/adaptive principles, strategies, and practices.