This week, as part of book launches of the Japanese edition of “Sustainable Livelihoods and Rural Development”, STEPS Centre director Ian Scoones will be giving two talks in Japan.
The talks explore the linkages between livelihoods and agrarian political economy and the links between a politically-informed sustainable livelihoods approach and the SDGs.
Buy the book
Buy the bookSustainable Livelihoods and Rural Development (English version)
Sustainable Livelihoods and Rural Development (Spanish version)
Sustainable Livelihoods and Rural Development (Japanese version)
Note: translations in Chinese, Italian and Portuguese will also be available soon.
SUSSEX DEVELOPMENT LECTURE: If you can’t make it to see Ian’s talks in Japan, he will give a Sussex Development Lecture on 29 March 2019, entitled The SDGs: a New Politics of Transformation (free entry, with video livestreamed and available afterwards).
Sustainable Livelihoods and Agrarian Studies
23/24 November
Tsukuba University, Japan
Japanese Society for International Development conference
The talk will make the case for the connection between two important perspectives in development studies – sustainable livelihoods thinking and agrarian studies, or agrarian political economy. A grounded political economy approach allows both for the detailed description of a diversity of livelihood strategies and an evaluation longer-term livelihood trajectories. It also focuses attention on the political and economic alliances being forged between different classes and social groups, and so structuring the wider agrarian political economy. It is this movement between the diverse specifics of particular livelihood contexts and the wider structural processes associated with a relational understanding of social dynamics that offers important insights into longer term trajectories of agrarian change and processes of social differentiation central to understanding development questions in rural areas.
The Politics of Sustainability and Development – Envisioning global food and agriculture futures
26 November at 13.55
Institute of Developing Economies (IDE)
Conference on food, agriculture and the SDGs
JETRO Exhibition Hall, 5th Floor, Ark Mori Building, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Food and agriculture are central to many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Connecting the SDGs requires an integrated systems approach that starts with people’s own practices and knowledges, recognising diversity, difference and disagreement. The talk will introduce the ‘sustainable livelihoods approach’ as one way of addressing these challenges. With diverse livelihoods as a starting point, questions of class and social difference are central. Basic questions of political economy – who owns what, who gets what and what do they do with it – equally are core issues.
Negotiating pathways to sustainability is therefore not just a technocratic exercise to be led by experts, but one that is fundamentally political, and must involve deliberation and debate amongst diverse actors. If the challenges of the SDGs are to be met, a transformative approach is needed. The talk will explore the practical and policy challenges of seeking transformative solutions for sustainable food and agricultural systems through a politically-informed livelihoods approach.