- Livelihoods research, of its nature, is essentially carried out at the micro-level: that of ‘households’ and ‘communities’. It involves empirical investigation of combinations of modes of livelihood and, above all, of the relationships between them. It also involves pushing to the limit of their potential various methods of understanding changes that have taken place over time.
- For research into changing livelihoods to be illuminating and useful, however, it is essential to define the structural, historical and institutional elements of what may for convenience be called its macro-context. A time-frame must be specified, key variables identified, important trends of change discerned.
- In so far as livelihoods research is directed to the diagnosis of the causes of chronic poverty, the circumstances of poverty and the reasons for poverty should be understood through detailed analysis of social relations in a particular historical context. This implies a structural or relational view of poverty, and, in turn, that understanding of its ‘persistence’ or its intractability or its ‘deepening’ should be driven by questions about inequalities of power.
- It also implies that livelihoods research and discussion of its implications for ‘policy-making’ should contain explicit reflection on the particular, relevant, contexts in which ‘policy’ is made, with reference to key questions such as the following. Who makes policy? How is it made? For what purposes? For whose benefit? With what outcomes?
Next page: Examples of the Livelihoods Framework in practice