Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue

canadienne d'études du développement

ISSN: 0225-5189 (Print) 2158-9100 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcjd20

Sustainable livelihoods and rural development, by

Ian Scoones

Adam Sneyd

To cite this article: Adam Sneyd (2016): Sustainable livelihoods and rural development, by
Ian Scoones, Canadian Journal of Development Studies / Revue canadienne d'études du
développement, DOI: 10.1080/02255189.2016.1174673

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2016.1174673

Published online: 02 Jun 2016.

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 CANADIAN JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
REVUE CANADIENNE D’ÉTUDES DU DÉVELOPPEMENT, 2016

BOOK REVIEW / COMPTE RENDU DE LIVRE

Sustainable livelihoods and rural development, by Ian Scoones, Blackpoint,

Winnipeg and Warwickshire, Fernwood Publishing and Practical Action Publishing,
2015, 149 pp., (paperback), ISBN 9781552667743

This is an essential book for development studies students and scholars, and a must-read for
international development professionals. In it, Ian Scoones, one of the intellectual pioneers of
livelihoods analysis and a leading authority on rural development south of the Sahara, chal-
lenges development agencies and researchers to embrace politics. From the get-go, Scoones
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claims that intellectual frameworks for assessing livelihoods have been employed by powerful
organisations in ways that have not been very attentive to political contexts or relations.
Viewed in this light, the academic literature on livelihoods filtered into the global development
community in the post-Cold War period in a very constrained manner. In particular, Scoones
argues that empowered researchers often used livelihoods assessments simply to evaluate and
justify development projects and programs that aimed to better the lot of marginalised peoples.
And while this instrumental application was conducive to the production of materials essential
for the execution of results-based management, such as logical frameworks, he laments the
politics that were downplayed or typically left out. While this narrow application helped
some disempowered people some of the time, in his estimation instrumental approaches
essentially ran with the livelihoods “baby” and threw all of the difficult political questions
out with the dirty bathwater.
This volume in the Agrarian Change and Peasant Studies book series1 is a sophisticated yet
accessible resuscitation of livelihoods approaches. It comes at a time when the Internet and
social network-enabled dissemination of knowledge about the power politics that envelopes,
informs and undercuts “development” is seemingly reaching an all-time high. Scoones
implores researchers seeking analytical rigour for their studies of rural issues and agrarian
change to revisit livelihoods approaches, in tandem with an attentiveness to politics and
power. His presentation commences with a brief history of livelihoods perspectives and think-
ing, and offers a comprehensive review of the livelihoods literature. Subsequently, he “brings
politics in” by first focusing on the politics of institutions, organisations and policy processes.
Scoones then emphasises how global environmental change and the imperative of sustainabil-
ity demand that researchers engage with insights from the budding political ecology literature.
And immediately thereafter he asserts that transnational inequality and class dynamics
necessitate detailed political economy analysis as well. In the final chapters, Scoones introduces
the revised questions and methods that he believes should inform the work of livelihoods ana-
lysts in light of the politics imperative.
His overall message is that development researchers conducting longitudinal livelihoods
analyses need to be more attentive to who owns what, and who gets what and what they do
with it. To cement this argument, Scoones presents a series of linked case studies that yield
several lessons. These draw attention to the need for researchers to: (1) take better account
of long-term processes; (2) recognise rural diversity; (3) understand transnational and
global connections; (4) speak to the local mediation of national and global change; and
utilise political economy to comprehend (5) social relations and (6) conflict. To demonstrate
that he has taken these lessons to heart, Scoones updates the visual presentation of his own
sustainable livelihoods framework. In the new figure, he superimposes political questions
 2 BOOK REVIEW / COMPTE RENDU DE LIVRE

that he feels should guide future research on a reproduction of the widely emulated original
framework. This corrective is an essential aspect of Scoones’ critique of the “post-political”
position of much of the livelihoods literature. He hopes that greater attention to the politics
of interests, individuals, knowledge and ecologies can contribute to resuscitating this subfield,
and to assuring its future relevance.
Ultimately Scoones articulates what he refers to as “a normative position that takes the side
of the marginalised, the dispossessed and the less well-off”. His practical political economy is
consequently attentive to the situation of researchers and their collaborators, informants and
subjects in relation to politics. The implicit message to researchers here is clear enough. It is
simply no longer possible or desirable for development experts to hide behind their models,
or to explain away their political blind spots through appeals to “science”. We must align
our questions, frameworks and methods with the genuine livelihood aspirations of the impo-
verished, and call out the political institutions, ideas and power relations that impede their
hopes and dreams.
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Note
1. The series is edited at the Initiatives in Critical Agrarian Studies (ICAS) programme at the
International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague.

Adam Sneyd
Department of Political Science, University of Guelph
asneyd@uoguelph.ca
© 2016 Adam Sneyd
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2016.1174673