A sustainable livelihoods framework for the 21st century

Main author: Natarajan, Nithya
Other authors: Newsham, Andrew
Rigg, Jonathan
Suhardiman, Diana
Format: Journal Article           
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id eprints-37091
recordtype eprints
institution SOAS, University of London
collection SOAS Research Online
language English
language_search English
description This paper proposes a reformulation of the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF) fit for the 21st century. The article explores the rise and usage of the original SLF, highlighting how its popularity among development practitioners emerged both from its practical focus, and its depoliticization of wider shifts in the development landscape at the time. Distilling the various critiques that have emerged around the use of the SLF and sustainable livelihoods approaches, the article highlights problems of theory, method, scale, historical conceptualisation, politics, and debates on decolonising knowledge. It further explores two key shifts in the global development landscape that characterise the 21st century, namely the impacts of climate change on rural livelihoods, and the shifts wrought by globalisation, before highlighting the structural and relational turns in critical development literature. In speaking to both historical critiques and more recent debates, we present a SLF for the 21st century, foregrounding a structural, spatially-disaggregated, dynamic and ecologically-coherent approach to framing rural livelihoods. We offer a framework and not an approach, hoping that that our SLF leaves open the possibility for different theoretical traditions to better work with emerging rural livelihoods.
format Journal Article
author Natarajan, Nithya
author_facet Natarajan, Nithya
Newsham, Andrew
Rigg, Jonathan
Suhardiman, Diana
authorStr Natarajan, Nithya
author_letter Natarajan, Nithya
author2 Newsham, Andrew
Rigg, Jonathan
Suhardiman, Diana
author2Str Newsham, Andrew
Rigg, Jonathan
Suhardiman, Diana
title A sustainable livelihoods framework for the 21st century
publisher Elsevier
publishDate 2022
url https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/37091/