Eventos o fases de la sesión de aprendizaje

The understanding of rural development and of peasant rationality has changed over time, and with it the approaches in development work. In the following, we outline a brief historical review of the thinking on rural development that will lead us to a starting point from where we can develop our approach to rural livelihoods. The outline largely follows the overviews on rural development thinking provided by Ellis and Biggs (2001) and Start and Johnson (2004). For reasons of brevity, we simplify the complex developments and focus on three major paradigm shifts in rural development thinking that are relevant for our purpose.

A first paradigm shift occurred in the 1960s, when small-farm agriculture switched to being considered the very engine of growth and development. Before that, traditional peasants were believed to possess only negligible prospects of rising productivity and fostering economic development (Ellis and Biggs, 2001: 440). Development policies therefore

promoted large-scale modern agriculture that was able to make use of economics of scale, and hence could presumably use resources and technologies more efficiently than small farms. An important contribution to the switch from this notion was brought by Schultz (1964), who concluded that peasants are efficient in resource allocation, but do not have access to improved technologies. Subsequently, technological transformation was seen as the process to stimulate agricultural growth based on small-farm efficiency. In this approach, smallholders were seen as rational agents making efficient farm decisions, being as capable as big farmers of taking advantage of the modern farming technologies promoted within the ‘Green Revolution’: high-yielding crop varieties, fertilisers, pesticides and irrigation (Ellis and Biggs, 2001: 441). Because small family farms can make intensive use of underutilized family labour and require less capital, they can even be more efficient than large farms. As a result of the paradigm shift, for the next few decades most development agencies have favoured small family farms in order to raise agricultural output. Although the adoption of Green Revolution technologies among farmers helped spur the economic development of entire rural societies also in developing countries, it did not manage to eradicate poverty among smallholders in general.

A second major paradigm shift in development thinking happened during the 1980s, characterised by a "growing acknowledgment of the ability of the poor themselves to contribute to solutions to the problems they confront" (Richards, 1985, in Ellis and Biggs, 2001: 443). The focus therefore switched from a top-down to a bottom-up approach in rural development work. Perceiving farmers as being able to analyse their problems and develop suitable solutions gave rise to "an actor-oriented perspective of rural development, emphasizing that participants in rural development are actors with different understandings of the processes of change in which they are involved" (Long and Long, 1992, in Ellis and Biggs, 2001: 443). This led to the advent of participatory methods such as Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) and Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) in the 1990s (Chambers, 1994; Chambers, 1997). Micro-level approaches such as forming self-help groups, micro-credit schemes, watershed development and farming system development based on indigenous knowledge became the favoured means of development work. During about the same period, the conception of what issues are relevant in farm households widened from technological aspects of farming to non-farm activities, dimensions of vulnerability, social differentiation and inequality, and access to resources and services (Sen, 1981; Harriss, 1982; Chambers, 1983).

Considering peasants as rational decision makers and recognizing the multitude of issues relevant for rural households formed the basis for the third paradigm shift, marked by the development of sustainable livelihood approaches in the 1990s. An important milestone in this new orientation is the discussion paper by Chambers and Conway (1992), that criticised many previous analysis of rural production, employment and income as reductionist, which “do not fit or capture the complex realities of most rural life”. The

concept of 'sustainable livelihood' gained importance, comprising the capabilities, assets (including both material and social sources) and activities required for a means of living. According to Chambers and Conway (1992: 6), “a livelihood is sustainable which can cope with and recover from stress and shocks, maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets, and provide sustainable livelihood opportunities for the next generation”. In the subsequent

discussion, rural households and their diverse functionalities came into the focus of development thinking. As these also include non-farm activities in farm households, as well as households of landless agricultural labour, the shift to livelihood approaches could to some extent challenge the "small-farm orthodoxy" (Ellis and Biggs, 2001:444).

Subsequently, a number of organisations such as DFID, ODI, IDS, CARE, Oxfam, IFAD and FAO have developed and applied livelihood approaches in their development work and research (Carney, Drinkwater et al., 1999, DFID, 2001; Hussein, 2002; Solesbury, 2003). Of particular interest for our purpose are the contributions on capitals and capabilities (Bebbington, 1999), on diversification and policies (Ellis, 2000) and on access and opportunity (Start and Johnson, 2004), each of them suggesting variations of the sustainable livelihood approach. Despite this variety of livelihood approaches, there is a certain consensus on the main features: People and their needs are in the focus of consideration, assets (material and immaterial ones) and capabilities play an important role, and there is a more or less common understanding on sustainability goals (Carney, Drinkwater et al., 1999, Murray, 2001). The proponents of the different livelihood approaches further agree that the investigation of the livelihood systems of social units (micro-level) must be meaningfully linked with the dynamic socio-economic, cultural and political context (macro-level) (DFID, 1999). It is also generally understood that livelihood approaches need to be used in a flexible way, aiming at improved understanding and better project design (Carney, 2002). However, there is considerable disagreement on what the relevant dimensions of rural livelihoods are, how the interactions between the household level and the context are shaped, and how livelihood strategies actually evolve.