1. Livelihoods, institutions, and adaptation practices: Livelihoods in rainfed regions are diverse, complex, and interconnected. They are also in flux owing to both socio-economic and climatic stressors. Understanding how livelihood strategies help rural households secure both higher incomes and lower risks is a critical research challenge and one that has substantial implications for designing effective social policies. Such an understanding can help lead to policies that accommodate local diversity and changes in livelihoods, reduce the unintended effects of interventions directed at individual production strategies, and limit possibilities of elite capture. In particular, existing challenges underscore the need to consider how local institutions and public policies work to structure available opportunities and risk mitigation.
We seek proposals under this theme that would lead to empirically richer understandings of livelihood and risk-mitigation strategies that unfold within the lived experiences of rural producers in rainfed regions. We are interested in understanding how different livelihood strategies fit in complex livelihood portfolios, their overall effects on welfare and security, and how existing cultural and social norms shape household livelihood choices. Proposals should explore how rural pubic, civic, and market institutions facilitate and constrain responses to risks and opportunities – whether through information, resources, or power asymmetries. The empirical and conceptual contributions under this theme will enrich and strengthen the understanding of institutional architectures and public assistance strategies towards more secure rural livelihoods.
2. Understanding Security in Diversity : Among scholars of rural livelihoods, diversity has long been viewed as a central determinant of livelihood security among rural farmers. At the household level, it is assumed that diverse income streams help to guard against the failure of any single productive activity, while a diversity of production strategies help to ensure the integrity of production systems more generally. Nonetheless, relatively little effort has been devoted to analyze the myriad ways that diversity is manifest in rural livelihoods. Still less is known about the role of public policy in facilitating diversity and the range of (sometimes contradictory) effects on livelihood security. What kinds of diversity should be valued? With respect to which livelihoods and which assets? How should different kinds of diversity be analyzed — and at what scales? Under what circumstances might diversity serve to diminish livelihood security rather that promote it?
Livelihoods in rainfed areas are exceptionally diverse. Unlike the intensive monoculture that characterizes green revolution agriculture, livelihood systems in rainfed regions are composed of a diversity of production activities. In our recent data collection efforts, we have recorded up to 100 subsistence or income-generating activities in our field sites, which are bundled together in a variety of ways to build the livelihood portfolios of households in the community. This diversity is rooted in both the constraints and opportunities that different households face, structured by the endowment of assets, access to natural resources, participation in commodity and labor markets, and benefits from a broad array of public assistance programs, among other factors. Research under this theme will seek to disentangle the myriad factors and relationships that influence productive strategies to better understand the ways that diversity functions in complex agro-ecological systems. In so doing, we will trace the casual pathways through which diversity enhances livelihood security (or may undermine it) and advance understanding of the role of public assistance in advancing these outcomes.
3. Uneven Topographies of Governance: A long tradition of scholarship has sought to investigate the multi-faceted ways that rural citizens encounter state institutions and the implications of these interactions for human welfare and development outcomes. These interactions continue to be of central interest to scholars concerned with the ongoing challenges facing development administration, as well as the very partial and imperfect ways in which democracy has been realized in contemporary India. A dominant strand of this scholarship has focused on the ways that citizens’ interactions with state institutions are mediated by a variety of social, political, and bureaucratic interlocutors and, as such, are often governed by extra-constitutional forms of social power as much as (or more than) formal rights and entitlements. While these forms of informal ‘political mediation’ may provide crucial channels of access for citizens that lack the ability to interact with state institutions directly, they also often reinforce patterns of exclusion. We refer to these as uneven topographies of governance because they ‘bend’ differently around individuals of contrasting social, economic, and political positions and in relation to geographically-distributed centers of power. At the same time, these topographies are also constantly being reworked through new institutions, strategies of governance, and forms of political practice.
Scholars have advanced a variety of models to understand the ways that access to state resources is both channeled and circumscribed by established social hierarchies, party politics and patronage patterns, and the vagaries of bureaucratic practice. Yet, to the extent that these relationships are always evolving, there continues to be a need for empirically-grounded research on the social and political dynamics that shape access to state resources in different contexts. The last two decades have seen a great expansion of government programs in India, an increasing capacity of individuals from diverse social categories to interact with bureaucratic agencies, the intensification of democratic competition at several scales, and the growing prominence of local political institutions (panchayats) as a center of village power. These changes continue to reshape how citizens seek to gain access to state resources as well as the social and political relationships that undergird these engagements.
In this theme, we seek to explore how different types of relationships structure the ways that state resources and programs are brought to bear upon the development of agriculture and associated livelihoods in rainfed regions. Several sub-themes present themselves, including: (a) the networks of social and political relationships through which citizens gain access to resources and benefits from multiple state agencies, (b) the ways that rural producers ‘stack’ benefits from different programs to target specific requirements, (c) the unscripted negotiations (or jugaad) by which producers, civil society groups, and bureaucrats seek to work beyond bureaucratic constraints to tailor public assistance toward local needs, (d) the ways that citizens seek leverage on public services through democratic institutions and processes at multiple scales, and, finally, (e) the means through which powerful social groups continue to reproduce patterns of dominance and exclusion through control over state resources. Research under this theme aims to add empirical evidence on the multitude of ways in which citizens encounter state institutions within an ever-changing topography of governance and the implications of these interactions for both agricultural development and citizenship in contemporary India.
We seek proposals under this theme that would lead to empirically richer understandings of livelihood and risk-mitigation strategies that unfold within the lived experiences of rural producers in rainfed regions. We are interested in understanding how different livelihood strategies fit in complex livelihood portfolios, their overall effects on welfare and security, and how existing cultural and social norms shape household livelihood choices. Proposals should explore how rural pubic, civic, and market institutions facilitate and constrain responses to risks and opportunities – whether through information, resources, or power asymmetries. The empirical and conceptual contributions under this theme will enrich and strengthen the understanding of institutional architectures and public assistance strategies towards more secure rural livelihoods.
2. Understanding Security in Diversity : Among scholars of rural livelihoods, diversity has long been viewed as a central determinant of livelihood security among rural farmers. At the household level, it is assumed that diverse income streams help to guard against the failure of any single productive activity, while a diversity of production strategies help to ensure the integrity of production systems more generally. Nonetheless, relatively little effort has been devoted to analyze the myriad ways that diversity is manifest in rural livelihoods. Still less is known about the role of public policy in facilitating diversity and the range of (sometimes contradictory) effects on livelihood security. What kinds of diversity should be valued? With respect to which livelihoods and which assets? How should different kinds of diversity be analyzed — and at what scales? Under what circumstances might diversity serve to diminish livelihood security rather that promote it?
Livelihoods in rainfed areas are exceptionally diverse. Unlike the intensive monoculture that characterizes green revolution agriculture, livelihood systems in rainfed regions are composed of a diversity of production activities. In our recent data collection efforts, we have recorded up to 100 subsistence or income-generating activities in our field sites, which are bundled together in a variety of ways to build the livelihood portfolios of households in the community. This diversity is rooted in both the constraints and opportunities that different households face, structured by the endowment of assets, access to natural resources, participation in commodity and labor markets, and benefits from a broad array of public assistance programs, among other factors. Research under this theme will seek to disentangle the myriad factors and relationships that influence productive strategies to better understand the ways that diversity functions in complex agro-ecological systems. In so doing, we will trace the casual pathways through which diversity enhances livelihood security (or may undermine it) and advance understanding of the role of public assistance in advancing these outcomes.
3. Uneven Topographies of Governance: A long tradition of scholarship has sought to investigate the multi-faceted ways that rural citizens encounter state institutions and the implications of these interactions for human welfare and development outcomes. These interactions continue to be of central interest to scholars concerned with the ongoing challenges facing development administration, as well as the very partial and imperfect ways in which democracy has been realized in contemporary India. A dominant strand of this scholarship has focused on the ways that citizens’ interactions with state institutions are mediated by a variety of social, political, and bureaucratic interlocutors and, as such, are often governed by extra-constitutional forms of social power as much as (or more than) formal rights and entitlements. While these forms of informal ‘political mediation’ may provide crucial channels of access for citizens that lack the ability to interact with state institutions directly, they also often reinforce patterns of exclusion. We refer to these as uneven topographies of governance because they ‘bend’ differently around individuals of contrasting social, economic, and political positions and in relation to geographically-distributed centers of power. At the same time, these topographies are also constantly being reworked through new institutions, strategies of governance, and forms of political practice.
Scholars have advanced a variety of models to understand the ways that access to state resources is both channeled and circumscribed by established social hierarchies, party politics and patronage patterns, and the vagaries of bureaucratic practice. Yet, to the extent that these relationships are always evolving, there continues to be a need for empirically-grounded research on the social and political dynamics that shape access to state resources in different contexts. The last two decades have seen a great expansion of government programs in India, an increasing capacity of individuals from diverse social categories to interact with bureaucratic agencies, the intensification of democratic competition at several scales, and the growing prominence of local political institutions (panchayats) as a center of village power. These changes continue to reshape how citizens seek to gain access to state resources as well as the social and political relationships that undergird these engagements.
In this theme, we seek to explore how different types of relationships structure the ways that state resources and programs are brought to bear upon the development of agriculture and associated livelihoods in rainfed regions. Several sub-themes present themselves, including: (a) the networks of social and political relationships through which citizens gain access to resources and benefits from multiple state agencies, (b) the ways that rural producers ‘stack’ benefits from different programs to target specific requirements, (c) the unscripted negotiations (or jugaad) by which producers, civil society groups, and bureaucrats seek to work beyond bureaucratic constraints to tailor public assistance toward local needs, (d) the ways that citizens seek leverage on public services through democratic institutions and processes at multiple scales, and, finally, (e) the means through which powerful social groups continue to reproduce patterns of dominance and exclusion through control over state resources. Research under this theme aims to add empirical evidence on the multitude of ways in which citizens encounter state institutions within an ever-changing topography of governance and the implications of these interactions for both agricultural development and citizenship in contemporary India.