capitals and capabilities - anthony bebbington

Capitals and Capabilities: A Framework for Analyzing

Peasant Viability, Rural Livelihoods and Poverty

ANTHONY BEBBINGTON *

University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, USA

Summary. Ð On the basis of themes emerging in current debates on rural development in LatinAmerica, this paper develops an analytical framework for analyzing rural livelihoods in terms oftheir sustainability and their implications for rural poverty. The framework argues that ouranalyses of rural livelihoods need to understand them in terms of: (a) peopleÕs access to ®ve types ofcapital asset; (b) the ways in which they combine and transform those assets in the building oflivelihoods that as far as possible meet their material and their experiential needs; (c) the ways inwhich people are able to expand their asset bases through engaging with other actors throughrelationships governed by the logics of the state, market and civil society; and (d) the ways in whichthey are able to deploy and enhance their capabilities both to make living more meaningful and tochange the dominant rules and relationships governing the ways in which resources are controlled,distributed and transformed in society. Particular attention is paid to the importance of socialcapital as an asset through which people are able to widen their access to resources and otheractors. Ó 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Key words Ð sustainable livelihoods, assets, social capital, peasants, Latin America, Andes

1. INTRODUCTION

This paper is a response to the disappointinge�ects of development interventions in the highAndes and other such ``marginal'' environ-ments (Zoomers, 1998; van Niekerk, 1997). It isnot, though, an inquiry into why those impactshave been so limited; it is instead an e�ort todevelop a framework that broadens ourconception of rural livelihoods in such a waythat may help rethink the nature, location andcontent of interventions so that they are moreconsonant with the diverse ways in whichpeople make a living and build their worlds. AsZoomers (1998) has recently suggested for theAndes, and as Scott (1998) has argued moregenerally, one important reason projects fail isprobably that they simply misperceive the waypeople get by and get things done. In particu-lar, I want to suggest that a large part of theproblem is that interventions work with ways ofseeing the world that continue to crunch rurallivelihoods into the category of agricultural andnatural resource-based strategies. Even sophis-ticated frameworks aiming to analyze ruralresource use emphasize access to environmentalresources and ultimately convey an image ofrural people making their living from natural

resources (Leach, Mearns and Scoones, 1998,p. 7). 1

World Development Vol. 27, No. 12, pp. 2021±2044, 1999Ó 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Printed in Great Britain0305-750X/99/$ - see front matter

PII: S0305-750X(99)00104-7www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev

* I am grateful to the ®nancial support from the

Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Livelihoods Program

at the International Institute for Environment and

Development, and particularly to Simon Croxton who

encouraged me to write this paper. Its preparation was

partly funded by the UK Department for International

DevelopmentÕs support to IIED's ``Policies that Work

for Sustainable Agriculture and Regenerating Rural

Economies'' research project, and by a Hewlett Fellow-

ship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral

Sciences at Stanford (1998±99) which provided a great

environment to round out the thinking the paper aims to

crystallize. Comments from Simon Croxton, Neela

Mukherjee, Jim Scott, Cecilia Tacoli, Gustavo Gordillo,

Robin Mearns and two anonymous reviewers were very

helpful. I also want to acknowledge the in¯uence of

Andrew Steer, Gloria Davis, and two groups of graduate

students at Boulder. The title of this paper was inspired

by Amartya Sen's (1997) World Development editorial

on Human Capital and Human Capability that captured

so nicely my nagging concerns about the language of

capitals and provided a way forward in the thinking that

is the foundation of this paper. Final revision accepted:

20 April 1999.

2021

This paper is therefore an attempt to build aframework that approaches rural livelihoodsand poverty without automatically linking theiranalysis to agriculture or natural resources. Indeveloping its case, the paper builds on recentwriting on environmental entitlements (Leach,Mearns and Scoones, 1998, 1999) as well as thewider literature on access to resources (Africa,1989; Bryant, 1992, pp. 21±24; Ribot, 1998). Itaims to develop these frameworks further inseveral ways. In the remainder of this intro-duction let me anticipate these di�erent elabo-rations.

First, I argue that it is important to have awide conception of the resources that peopleneed to access in the process of composing alivelihood, perhaps especially in a contextwhere peoplesÕ livelihoods shift from beingdirectly based on natural resources, to liveli-hoods based on a range of assets, incomesources and product and labor markets. 2 Thisleads me to consider livelihoods in terms ofaccess to ®ve types of ``capital'' asset 3Ðpro-duced, human, natural, social and culturalcapital (cf. Bebbington, Kopp and Rubino�,1997; Bebbington, 1997; Scoones, 1998;Carney, 1998). This conceptualization has arelated bene®t, perhaps more potential than sofar real, of conceiving livelihood sustainabilitywithin a framework that could also be used forthinking of regional and national sustainability(cf. World Bank, 1996, 1997), thus suggestingelements of a framework that could link levelsof analysis in research and practice addressingthe relationship between environment, societyand development (cf. Blaikie, 1989; 1985).

Second, the paper suggests that we need aframework that bridges the more materialist(cf. World Bank, 1990) and the morehermeneutic and actor-centered (cf. Chambers,1987; Scoones and Thompson, 1994) notionsof poverty and livelihood. 4 We thereforerequire a notion of access to resources thathelps us not only understand the way in whichpeople deal with poverty in a material sense (bymaking a living), but also the ways in which:their perceptions of well-being and poverty arerelated to their livelihood choices and strate-gies; and the capacities that they possess bothto add to their quality of life and also enhancetheir capabilities to confront the social condi-tions that produce poverty. In the frameworkadvanced here, then:

(a) peoplesÕ assets are not merely meansthrough which they make a living: they alsogive meaning to the personÕs world. This is

not to fall into the trap of voluntarism, forof course a personÕs assets are in large partdetermined by the structures and logics atwork in economic and political spheres (seebelow). They are, however, alsoÐto someextentÐboth re¯ections and components ofthe meaning the person has tried to createthrough their livelihood strategies. Thismeaning will then be one of several in¯u-ences in subsequent decisions people makeabout their livelihood strategies;(b) assetsÐor what I call capitals in thisframeworkÐare not simply resources thatpeople use in building livelihoods: they areassets that give them the capability to beand to act. Sen (1997) has noted that thepossession of human capital not only meanspeople produce more, and more e�ciently; italso gives them the capability to engagemore fruitfully and meaningfully with theworld, and most importantly the capabilityto change the world. The same is also true,in other ways, for the other types of capital.The framework thus understands these as-sets not only as things that allow survival,adaptation and poverty alleviation: theyare also the basis of agentsÕ power to actand to reproduce, challenge or change therules that govern the control, use and trans-formation of resources (cf. Giddens, 1979).

In some sense, this framework thus seesassets as vehicles for instrumental action(making a living), hermeneutic action (makingliving meaningful) and emancipatory action(challenging the structures under which onemakes a living) (cf. Habermas, 1971).

Third, and critically, to conceive of liveli-hoods as partly dependent upon householdsÕsocial capital o�ers a more integrated frame-work for thinking about access to resources.Indeed, seen this way, the distinction betweenaccess and resources breaks down, 5 becauseaccess becomes perhaps the most criticalresource of all if people are to build sustainable,poverty alleviating rural livelihoods.

Fourth, it is important that a frameworkunderstanding poverty in terms of assets alsoincorporates an analysis of the economic, socialand political relationships that create povertyand wealth, but in such a way that (i) under-stands these relationships as potentiallycontingent and subject to re-negotiation, and(ii) links this contingency to the capabilitiesthat people have as a result of the assets at theirdisposal. Assets are thus as much implicated inempowerment and change, as they are in

WORLD DEVELOPMENT2022

survival and ``getting by.'' 6 It is in this sensethat access and social capital are central ele-ments to the framework. They are the conceptsfor analyzing the relationships and transactionsbetween the members of a rural household andother actorsÐrelationships mediated by thelogics of the state, the market and civil society.As rural people try and access resources theydo so through engaging in relationships withother actors who are both present but moreoften than not usually absent from the day-to-day activities of rural people. Indeed access toother actors is conceptually prior to accessto material resources in the determination oflivelihood strategies, for such relationshipsbecome almost sine qua non mechanismsthrough which resources are distributed andclaimed, and through which the broader social,political and market logics governing thecontrol, use and transformation of resourcesare either reproduced or changed.

The social capital debate helps develop thisaspect of the framework, for it helps usunderstand how actors engage with otheractors in the spheres of market, state and civilsociety in order to gain access to resources, toin¯uence the de jure rules of access in a society,or to turn their assets into commodity bundles(cf. Sen, 1981; Evans, 1996). Building on thisdebate, the paper also argues that we ought notautomatically link the access question to thenotion of ``con¯ict over access'' (Bryant, 1992,pp. 21±24)Ðnot for reasons of linguistic tone,but rather for reasons of empirical balance, forindeed, there may be as much initiative andcollaboration in widening access as there iscon¯ict in the process of securing it. It istherefore important to develop frameworksthat capture all these dimensions of access, andnot only the con¯ictualÐthey must captureboth the dynamics of con¯ict emphasized byLeach, Mearns and Scoones (1998), and thoseof cooperation emphasized more by authorssuch as Evans (1996) and Tendler (1997).

Most of the paper elaborates these di�erentaspects of the framework. In developing itsarguments, the geographic focus of much of thediscussion and many of the examples is theAndean region. The themes are, though, of farwider relevance for thinking about sustainablerural livelihoods and economies. First, thepaper reviews the changing ways in which rurallivelihoods and poverty have been debated andanalyzed. The debates on rural livelihoodshaveÐperhaps more implicitly than explic-itlyÐcome to demonstrate how the resolution

of access to resources and institutional spheresis critical in determining the relative viabilityand sustainability of livelihoods, thus justifyinga conception of livelihoods rooted in a notionof access. Second, I present the basic elementsof the capitals framework, and then suggestseveral ways in which this framework couldusefully be developed. The ®nal section focuseson one of the ®ve capitals in particular,suggesting ways in which the concept of socialcapital might help us elaborate the relationshipbetween access, institutions and livelihood.

2. WHY ACCESS TO RESOURCES?DEBATING PEASANTS AND

LIVELIHOODS IN THE ANDES

Access to resources has been a constanttheme in debates on peasant (or campesino) 7

economy and livelihoods in the Andean region.While some authors have laid far greateremphasis on the constraints on peasant accessto resources, others have either been moreoptimistic about the possibility that this accessmight be widened, or about the chances ofincreasing the returns to the resources thathouseholds control. This section reviews someof the themes in these discussions. It paysparticular attention to recent policy discussionsregarding livelihood viability (for these revolvearound the notion that peasantsÕ limited accessto resources greatly constrains the viability oftheir livelihoods), and to research on instanceswhere rural people have in fact been able toimprove their livelihoodsÐfor this researchshows that critical to these improvements hasbeen the possibility of gaining wider access to arange of resources and improved access toother state, market and civil society actors.

(a) From functional dualism to ``losno-viables''Ðimages of limited access

Since the 1970s and 80s, much of the debateabout Andean livelihoods and peasant econ-omy has been heavily in¯uenced by a (notalways easy) mix of concepts deriving fromdependency, world systems, unequal exchange,and mode of production theory (de Janvry,1981; Deere and de Janvry, 1979; Hindess andHirst, 1975). While much ink was spilled intrying to de®ne the parameters of a peasantmode of production as a precursor to under-standing its internal dynamics, the generalsense that emerged from much of this literature

CAPITALS AND CAPABILITIES 2023

was that the campesino economy was tied to thewider political economy in ways that extractedsurplus value from rural areas, that constrainedpeasant access to resources (primarily land) andthat involved very unfavorable relationshipsbetween rural people and both the market andstate. Under this set of relationships, the peas-antry not only provided cheap food to theurban economy, but because their income waslow and asset base limited, had to migrateperiodicallyÐthus also providing the economywith cheap labor. Such notions of ``functionaldualism'' paralleled ideas of the labor reserveeconomy in southern Africa and work on theurban informal sector (Bromley, 1979).

These approaches to peasant economy havealso in¯uenced work on the environmentaldimensions of sustainability. Drawing (notalways explicitly) on the notion of a dualeconomy whose parts were linked in a rela-tionship that was functional to the needs of thecapitalist system, these studies identi®ed twoforces driving degradation (Durham, 1995). Onthe one hand was the degradation that derivedfrom the progressive impoverishment of thepeasant economy that led farmers to overuseresources and use unsustainable practices ``ra-tionally, and sometimes rationally in despera-tion'' (Chambers, 1987). This was degradationresulting from survival oriented livelihoodstrategies. On the other hand was degradationderiving directly from the activities of capitalistenterprises operating with a relatively shorttime horizon, and consuming natural resourcesin order to transform them into ®nancialresources. In these models the state supportedthese enterprises, o�ering or protecting di�erentforms of natural and policy subsidy to theiroperations (and thus to the degradation ofrural resources) (Durham, 1995).

This earlier analysis of the peasant economywas conducted under the policy contexts ofimport substitution industrializationÐacontext in which the state assumed an impor-tant regulatory and interventionist role. Thus,while pessimistic in analysis, there was animplicit notion that a ``via campesina'' orpeasant path based on intensi®ed, agrarianbased rural livelihoods was still a possible andconceivable development option (Figueroa,1990; Brush and Turner, 1987). By the earlyand mid-1990s there had been a shift ofemphasis, apparently re¯ecting changes in bothpolicy and mood. The policy shift is that ofneoliberal economic reforms. These haveprompted work on the impacts of these reforms

on agriculture in general, and the small farmsector in particular (Kay, 1995; Gwynne, 1997;Weeks, 1995). Various studies have looked atthe di�ering impacts of these policies ondi�erent types of producer and producercontext (e.g., Enriquez, 1998). The shift ofmood is that of a certain ``defeatism'' on thepart of those who would have ``taken the sideof the peasants'' in the past. In some cases, thisdefeatism is phrased in more empirical termsÐthat in the face of the macroeconomic shiftsthat are occurring in the region, a signi®cantpart of the peasant economy is in manyinstances ``not viable.'' 8 In other cases it isphrased in normative termsÐnamely, that in acontext of scarce public ®nances, the peasanteconomy ought not be seen as an object ofpublic investment.

Together these changes seem to have led to acertain truncation of all the grander theoreticaldiscussion of the 1970s and 1980s: in the 1990s,interpretations have been more empirical, morenarrowly focused and less hopeful. While stillin the pessimistic vein of the earlier arguments,these re¯ections on viability shed the theoreti-cal notions of functional dualism. Indeed, thenotion of ``functionality'' is often gone. In someconceptions peasants are seen as dysfunctionalto the overall economic model because theycontrol land resources that could be used moree�ciently by capitalist producersÐand/orbecause their production systems degrade landwith consequent adverse downstream e�ects.Other conceptions, though conveying a farmore critical conceptualization of a widerpolitical economy that simply has no need forthe campesino sector, can still frequently leadto the conclusion that this is a peasantrysurplus to structural requirements, and that thepolicy (and theoretical) challenge is to under-stand the scope for alternative sources of live-lihood in the urban sector.

Though only marginally an Andean country,the experience in Chile lies behind much of thisshift in thinking. Throughout the Pinochet eraof broadly neoliberal reforms, the Chileangovernment gave only limited support to anemerging sector of medium-sized capitalistfamily farms and invested little or nothing inthe peasant economy (Berdegu�e, 1990; Kay,1997). Support to this sector became largely thepreserve of nongovernment organizations(NGOs). At the same time, the medium andlarge farm sector began to thriveÐwith certaincrisis periods, as in the early 1980sÐlaying theground for the oft-heralded miracle of Chilean


agricultural transformation. By the time anelected government came to power in 1990, anyidea of programs of asset (primarily land)redistribution had already been ruled outduring the discussions of the pretransitionagrarian commissions of the opposition parties.Instead, the new government opted to extendprograms of technical, credit and othersupport, so that they would now reach theChilean campesinoÐindeed the coverage ofthese programs has increased signi®cantly(Berdegu�e et al., 1998).

The programs however, were being extendedwithin an overall context of continued neolib-eral economic policy and ®scal stringency.Soon, thenÐand within the context of an oftentense relationship between a Ministry of Agri-culture wanting to invest in the sector, and aMinistry of Finance wanting to limit suchinvestment if it could not be shown as pro®t-ableÐa language emerged that began todi�erentiate among so-called viable andnonviable peasants (los viables and los no-viables). The argument was that a large part ofthe Chilean peasantry (some suggested 50%:Sotomayor, 1994) were not viableÐthe de®ni-tion of nonviability being based largely on theland and water assets that they controlled(Namdar-Irani and Quezada, 1994, cited inKay, 1997). With such limited assets, it wasargued that they could not conceivably becomecompetitive production units capable of accu-mulating capital. As they were not viable, theargument continued, these peasants should notbe the object of programs aimed at enhancingtheir productive capacity but rather ought besupported through social investment programsthat would alleviate their poverty and ulti-mately facilitate their transition out of agri-culture and into the urban economy. Otherswere yet more drastic, arguing that for mostpeasants, the money spent on programs oftechnical and credit support would have a fargreater impact on rural poverty if spent oneducation (L�opez, 1995). While the governmentdid not take on board these more radicalinterpretations, policy toward the small farmsector nonetheless became one of promotingso-called reconversi�on or productive transfor-mation (Kay, 1997). This reconversi�on involvesinvestment in the productive potential of thoseunits deemed potentially viable (according tothe land and other natural resources to whichthey had access), in order to facilitate theirtransformation into competitive capitalistfamily farms by increasing their yields and/or

their mix of activities (Kay, 1997). The no-viables would instead receive other types ofsupport (from ministries other than agriculture)that would ultimately aim to enhance theirpotential to become a productive proletariat(though this language was not necessarily thatwhich was used). 9

This notion of viability has subsequentlyspread through Latin America, and not leastinto the Andean countries. This ``di�usion of adiscourse'' is partly due to the adoption ofmacroeconomic and agricultural policy frame-works to a greater or lesser extent based on theChilean experience. It also re¯ects the in¯uenceof the principal agencies ®nancing these policytransitionsÐagencies that have been signi®-cantly in¯uenced by the Chilean case, andwhose broader concerns for ®scal e�ciency jibewell with the notion that rural productiveinvestments should be very strategically targe-ted to areas where there is the potential forenhanced productivity. Thus, for instance, anInter-American Development Bank report onsocial and economic development in Boliviawas able to ask: `Ìs Bolivia viable?'' The reportparaphrases the conversation that ensuedamong the team: ``The reply came withoutquestion: Ìt has to be viable.' Later the ques-tion was recast Ìs the altiplano viable?' Thistime there was discussion and the eventualreply was more nuanced: Ìn some areas, yes' ''(IDB, 1996, p. 79).

Beyond this policy context, discussions ofviability are themselves also a direct conse-quence of the very disappointing e�ects thatrural development programs have had inostensibly low-potential areas, such as much ofthe higher Andes (Zoomers, 1998; VMPPFM-Banco Mundial, 1998). ``Looking back over thehistory of international cooperation in theBolivian Andes, one theme is constantlydominant: disappointment with the results ofrural development programs'' (van Niekerk,1997, p. 2). In the light of these experiences,and his own studies of the impacts of NGOinterventions in the Peruvian and BolivianAndes, van Niekerk (1994, p. 319) himselfcomes to the conclusion that: `Ìf the market isthe determining factor in the de®nition of ruralpolicy, Andean agriculture has two possibili-ties: to disappear, or to modernize violently toachieve competitive levels of productivity andproduction.''Ðin short, the two prongs ofChilean reconversi�on. Van Niekerk goes on tosuggest that neither of these options is likely inBolivia and Peru today given the limits on


public investment and the inability of the urbaneconomy to absorb migrants; consequently, hesays, the likely scenario is one of an ``impossi-ble'' situation in which the peasantry continuesto limp along, caught between migration andlow-productivity agriculture.

(b) Peasant viability and rural livelihoodtransitions in the Andes

While these discussions might seem despair-ing, it is important to note two things. First,that within the general context of crisis, thereare areas where people have turned thingsaround, and where processes of agrarianaccumulation have occurred in the campesinosector (Lehmann, 1986; Bebbington, 1997;North and Cameron, 1998). Second, it isimportant not to equate agrarian livelihoodswith rural livelihoods. While many agrarianlivelihoods might be in crisis, there may beother rural livelihood options emerging thatalso address householdsÕ material and humanneeds. This distinction is also politicallyimportant to make because the peasantnonviability argument is often closely linked tothe idea that policy ought help people leave theland, and move to urban areas. Yet, if it can beshown that rural families are able to puttogether livelihoods that are less precariousthan those suggested by van Niekerk (1994),elements of the notion of nonviability might beaccepted without having to argue for perma-nent outmigration and loss of land. Thisargument is particularly critical to make in thecase of indigenous groups for whom ruralresidence and relationship to land constituteimportant dimensions of their ethnic identity(Salomon, 1979; Korovkin, 1997): an identitywhose maintenance may, beyond any materialmeasure, be a critical determinant of their senseof being poor or not (see below).

This implies shifting our lens somewhat, andlooking less at agriculture per se and insteadfocusing attention on the types of resource,institutional sphere and market type thatfamilies have accessed in the course ofcomposing sustainable, non-agricultural rurallivelihoods. This then makes it important tolook in more detail at the varying types oflivelihood strategy that are emerging in theAndes, in order to understand the types ofresource access, capability enhancement (cf.Sen, 1997) and political economic factors uponwhich they have been based, and the conditionsunder which they may become more sustain-

able and more poverty alleviating (the two arenot necessarily the same). If a framework canbe built that helps capture this, then this mayhelp guide interventions, as well as o�er acommon language for analyzing the diversetypes of livelihood transition that are occurringin the region.

Indeed, a quick review of Andean experi-ences suggests that while the notion of agri-cultural crisis may be real in a number of cases,there are also instances of agricultural intensi-®cation, or other types of livelihood transitionthat may o�er elements of sustainable alterna-tives. The following looks at several of thesetransitions.

(i) Capitalized family farms and agro-silvipastoral transitions

Important insights into the possibilities forimproved rural livelihoods have come from abody of work in¯uenced more by Chayanovianand Boserupian theories of peasant economythan by more marxian positions (e.g., Netting,1981, 1993; Turner and Brush, 1987). In theAndes, an early empirical concern of workfrom this perspective was the rise of the so-called ``capitalized family farms'' or CFFsÐfarms which constituted successful cases ofaccumulation and intensi®cation in the house-hold peasant economy (Lehmann, 1986;Llambi, 1989). These were farms that emergedfrom the medium-sized peasantry rather thanthe very poorestÐand in that sense were theempirical precursor to the notion of ``viable''units. Though understudied in the literatureÐgiven its primary concern to analyze expropri-ation and povertyÐsome commentatorssuggest that they are actually quite widespreadin the Andes, and an important source of ruralemployment and of accumulation (Llambi,1989). Common to the success of many of theseCFFs have been: an ability to access land,®nance and at times labor; an ability to gain aniche in higher value product markets; and thepresence of di�erent types of supportive statepolicy. Migration (often interpreted as anindicator of non-viability) has frequentlyplayed a role in generating funds for landpurchase. These CFFs also seem more likely toemerge where large farms began to subdividetheir property early in the century, or in moreoriginally egalitarian agrarian structures (suchas areas of colonization) where there was lesslikelihood of larger farms having appropriatedall land and thus having kept a lid on landmarkets (Lehmann, 1986).


Subsequent work began to suggest thatsimilar styles of intensi®cation were apparentlypossible for small producers also. While accessto resources for the CFFs had been mainlythrough the market, state and kin networks, forsmall producers, more formalÐand relativelystrongÐforms of organization along withexternal support have generally been morecritical in opening access to knowledge, credit,irrigation, technical assistance and new markets(Bebbington, 1997; North, and Cameron, 1998;Hinojosa, 1998; Sinergia, 1998; Perreault,Bebbington and Carroll, 1998). In the cases ofcontract farming, the intermediation ofcommercial actors has been important inwidening this access, albeit at considerable costfor peasant autonomy (Korovkin, 1992). Thus,while elements of the transition and resourcesaccessed were similar to those of the CFFs, themechanism of access di�ered in the case ofsmall farmers, with intermediary organizationsof state, market and civil society playingimportant roles.

(ii) Rural proletarianizationThe presence of nonviable agricultural units

has not necessarily led to the end of rurallivelihoods. A signi®cant feature of someregional economies has been the growth of arural proletariat working on capitalist agricul-tural enterprises. The rise of fruit production inChile brought particular attention to thisphenomenon (Gwynne, 1997), but elsewherethe emergence of strong nontraditional agri-,¯ori- and horticultural sectors has similarlygiven rise to rural work forces elsewhere: suchworkers are sometimes urban based, and inother cases are members of peasant families(Korovkin, 1997). In many cases, this prole-tarianization does not lead to more sustainablelivelihoods, especially when wages are low andhealth hazards high as a result of the use ofagrochemicals in such enterprises (Stewart,1996). Such jobs however, can at times resolvethe rural residence/making a living dilemma,enabling people to stay in their communitiesthrough the complementary income comingfrom being a laborer in nearby agroenterprises(Korovkin, 1997). Thus, rather than instinc-tively criticize this option, it may be moreappropriate to ®nd ways of improving itscontribution to livelihood sustainability. Thismay involve pressuring (or legislating) forgreater workplace security and control ofhealth hazards, support to workplace organi-zation, special skills training and so on.

(iii) MigrationWhere agricultural intensi®cation has been

limited, and other rural employment absent,the principal livelihood adaptation has beentemporary or permanent migration. Indeed, theAndes is full of projects that have attemptedÐand failedÐto stop this out-migration. In partthis is because migration has been an element ofAndean livelihood strategies for a long time;but it is also because migration is critical to theviability of rural peoplesÕ livelihoods (Preston,1997). Migration is often, of course, merely asurvival strategyÐin many contexts familiesscarcely scrape by, and the cost to the migrantis enormous (Chambers, 1987; Bebbington,1993). But in some cases migration has allowedsigni®cant family accumulation. Talking of thespecial, but by no means unique, 10 case ofinternational migration in Ca~nar, Ecuador,Jokisch (1998) comments on the ways in whichmigrantsÕ remittances from the United Statesallow the rest of their families not only to keepliving in communities, but also to combinesubsistence agriculture with a remarkableimprovement of housing conditions. Whilerural investment in housing as opposed toproductive activities might be considered farfrom ideal and be a result of a continuingabsence of ®nancial institutions or asset andproduct markets in rural areas, as much as acultural preference, it is nonetheless a measureof accumulation. It is therefore informative tolook at cases where migration has gonebeyond a survival strategy and has becomepart of an accumulation strategy (either in theform of housing or productive investment), inorder to understand how this has been possi-ble. In these as well as other less extreme cases(Preston, 1998), it appears that a successfulsustainable rural livelihood strategy thatcombines migration with subsistence produc-tion at home and continued control over landrevolves around having the skills to enterhigher paid labor markets in urban areas, andhaving the social networks to gain access towork opportunities.

(iv) Rural industryIn some areas rural industry has emerged and

a�orded other rurally-based livelihood options.The rise of apparel, leather and shoe-makingindustries in Tungurahua, Ecuador, forinstance, has allowed families to combinehome-based work in these industries withagriculture (Martinez, 1994). The impacts onrural income and health have been signi®cant


(North and Cameron, 1998). The textileindustry has also come to dominate the ruraleconomy and rural livelihoods in manycommunities in northern Ecuador, where rela-tively high value products have been made overa long period of time (Salomon, 1981). Thoughthis has led to social di�erentiation, it has alsoallowed continued rural residence in areas ofquite advanced land fragmentation. To be ableto engage in such livelihoods, families need theskill to do the work required (a human capitalissue) and the access to the intermediatingagent (industrialists, traders, organizers ofproduction networks) that links rural familiesto wider markets and chains of production. Inparticular, it seems that links to higher-valuemarkets are important, and more able towithstand the e�ects of structural adjustmentpolicy (North and Cameron, 1998).

(v) Rural and peri-urban commerceOther groups in the Andes have been able to

build rural livelihoods around commerce. Insome cases this may mean a member of thefamily leaving for signi®cant parts of the year,or permanently, in order to peddle productselsewhere, as in the case of the Colta region ofEcuador (Gellner, 1982; Tolen, 1995). Indeed,Colta is remarkable: in the midst of an obvi-ously sad agrarian landscape one encounterstwo and three story cinder block, paintedhousesÐthe result of accumulation from trad-ing elsewhere. These houses allow the rest ofthe family to remain in rural areas, or allow thefamily to come ``home'' periodically, and ulti-mately to retire. In other cases, the commerce isin nearby urban settlementsÐas in the case ofAyacucho where in under four years peri-urban/semi-rural women have been able toaccumulate over 1 US$ million of savings invillage banks through their trade activities inAyacucho city (D. Bebbington, 1999). 11 In yetother cases, it is linked to contraband at inter-national border areas (e.g., Puerto Acosta,Bolivia). Critical to these cases, it seems, are:the access to initial capital (often in very smallquantities) to begin trading, an access oftenmediated through a micro-®nancial servicesorganization; and involvement in networks thatfacilitate access to markets (Woolcock, 1998).

(c) Elements of a framework: access to capitalsand spheres of access

The ways in which people compose rurallivelihoods in the Andes are multiple and

increasingly they have very signi®cantnonagrarian components (cf. Ellis, 1998).Across this diversity, however, one can detectcommon themes in those instances where therehas been some success in composing a viablelivelihood. These themes revolve around issuesof access: more viable rural livelihoods appearto be characterized by a relative success on thepart of households and their members tosustain or increase their access to:

Ðdi�erent resources, such as credit, land,skills, labor etc. depending on which of themare most relevant to the type of livelihoodthat people are composing. It is to be noted,though, that in some cases people sacri®ceone or another of these assets (especiallyland quality) in order to build up another as-set base more appropriate for their overalllivelihood strategy;Ðdi�erent opportunities to turn those re-sources into sources of livelihood enhance-ment (e.g., by accessing new labor andproduct markets);Ðmeans of enhancing the existing ways inwhich those resources contribute to theirlivelihoods (e.g., by obtaining better termsin transactions through a renegotiation ofthe power relations that underlie those trans-actions; cf. Ribot, 1998); andÐkin and ethnic networks, social organiza-tions, intermediate state and nongovernmen-tal organizations, and intermediary marketactors. Access to such institutions and rela-tionships has been important in securingthe three other types of access.

Conversely, where rural people have not beenable to improve their livelihoods, the principalreasons seem to derive from a failure orinability to: defend their existing assets; 12

identify and secure opportunities to turn assetsinto livelihoods; or protect existing ways ofturning assets into livelihoods (e.g., by losing aplace in a market). An important factor in suchfailures to counter the forces that createpoverty has been the limited ability of people tobuild up, and to draw upon, networks and linkswith state, market or civil society actors thatwould otherwise have helped them access,defend and capitalize on their assets.

If we were, then, to build a framework foranalyzing poverty reducing rural livelihoods, ata minimum it would need to address:

Ðthe diverse assets that rural people drawon in building livelihoods;Ðthe ways in which people are able to ac-cess, defend and sustain these assets; and


Ðthe abilities of people to transform thoseassets into income, dignity, power andsustainability: or in other words, to trans-form them into· consumption levels that reduce their pov-

erty;· living conditions that imply an improved

quality of life according to peopleÕs owncriteria;

· human and social capabilities to use anddefend assets ever more e�ectively; and

· an asset base that will continue to allowthe same sorts of transformations.

Ideally, the framework should also beconceived in such a way that reaches acrossscales of analysis, in two ways in particular. Itshould help us address the relationshipsbetween intrahousehold, household, regionaland macro economies; and it should incorpo-rate the relationships that households have withinstitutions and organizations that operate atwider scales, and which in general constitute

the channels through which developmentintervention occurs.

By phrasing the issue in this way, we canconceptualize sustainable rural livelihoods interms of recent debates on access to resources(Berry, 1989; Blaikie, 1989), asset vulnerability(Moser, 1998), and entitlements (Sen, 1981), andin such a way as to extend recent attempts todevelop such a conception (Chambers, 1989;Moser, 1998; Leach, Mearns and Scoones,1998). The suggestion is that one part of a usefulheuristic framework (see Figure 1) wouldconceive of livelihoods and the enhancement ofhuman well-being in terms of di�erent types ofcapital (natural, produced, human, social andcultural) that are at once the resources (orinputs) that make livelihood strategies possible,the assets that give people capability, and theoutputs that make livelihoods meaningful andviable. 13 The second part of this framework(Figure 2) focuses on household and intra-household level forms of engagement with

Figure 1. Assets, livelihoods and poverty.


market, state and civil society actors and rela-tionships, and the implications of these engage-ments for the distribution and transformation ofassets. We now turn to this framework.

3. WIDENING THE LENS:SUSTAINABILITY AND CAPITAL

ASSETS

In a short paper Serageldin and Steer (1994)suggested that we could think of sustainabledevelopment in terms of patterns in the accu-mulation of and substitution among fourdi�erent types of capital (see also World Bank,1996). They argued that for a long while,dominant notions (in the World Bank, but alsobeyond) had equated development witheconomic growth; hence the only indicator ofinterest to development planners (and Banks)had been expansion of produced capital. 14

Subsequently, human capital was also recog-nized as critical to development and povertyalleviation. The 1990 World DevelopmentReport (WDR) thus argued that development(seen through the lens of poverty reduction)ought be pursued through a joint strategy offostering macroeconomic growth and investingheavily in people (above all in education). 15

As the World Bank was fashioning thisstatement, however, it and other agenciesÐunder the pressure of lobby groups and its ownexperienceÐincreasingly came to recognizesome of the adverse environmental impacts ofgrowth. 16 Thus, claim Serageldin and Steer,the notion of natural capital began to take aplace, albeit subsidiary, alongside those ofhuman and produced capital. Then ®nally,since PutnamÕs (1993) study of civic traditions,democracy and regional development in Italy,one more ``capital'' has been added (with morerapidity than conceptual clarity) to this grow-ing list of capitals: social capital. Putnamsuggested that the critical factor in explainingregional di�erences in government e�ectivenessand economic performance was to be found incorresponding regional di�erences in socialstructures and networks. In areas where socialstructures are more ``vertical'' and based onauthority relations, then citizen capacity forcollective action is limited, and access to andin¯uence over state and market are far weaker.Conversely, he argued, those areas with moree�cient, e�ective and inclusive governmentsand economies were characterized by more``horizontal'' social relationships (based ontrust and shared values), and higher levels ofparticipation in social organizations and

Figure 2. Relationships of resource access, use and transformation.


networks that cut across the boundariesbetween di�erent institutions and social groups.These endowments he termed social capital.

If this was so, argued Serageldin and Steer,then sustainable development could be thoughtof in terms of changes in the overall stock ofthese four types of capital, and the changingcomposition of this stock. If ``development''implied an overall increase in the capital stock,the relative ``sustainability'' (and indeed qual-ity) of that development depended on thesubstitutions that occurred among the types ofcapital. They then go on to describe four typesor levels of sustainability in terms of these fourtypes of capital, and though we can argue withthe very value-laden terms they use to describefour types of sustainability, they catch much ofthe debate about styles of types of develop-mentÐfor much argument about developmentis about the ``level'' of sustainability to whichdi�erent groups aspire. 17

Such a framework draws on ideas derivedfrom early experiences in environmentalaccounting (cf. Barbier, 1994; World Bank,1997) that have aimed to include measures ofchange in natural capital in national accountsto give a fuller sense of the environmental costshidden in certain measures of growth. Thehope, clearly, is to extend such analysis bydeveloping measures of social capital that couldalso be included in national accounts and ulti-mately models that could determine thecontributions of di�erent types of capital togrowth or poverty alleviation (cf. Grootaert,1997).

Of course, the task of identifying viable (andagreed upon) indicators of social (and natural)capital is Herculean. Nonetheless, if only as aheuristic, the framework is a potentiallyintriguing way of making explicit the tradeo�sbetween economic growth, human develop-ment, social integration and environmentalintegrity that are implied by di�erent develop-ment options. Indeed, we could talk of styles ofdevelopment which opt for di�erent mixes ofand degrees of substitution among the di�erenttypes of capital: not only as inputs to devel-opment, but indeed as the outputs that giveboth meaning and resources to people.

This ®nal point opens up a number of waysin which this framework can be elaborated.Serageldin and Steer (1994) are clearly thinkingof national development accounts as theyelaborate their framework. Furthermore,theyÐand those who have elaborated theframework inside the World BankÐare

apparently thinking of a sort of extendedproduction function in which ``development''(ultimately measured by income or expenditure:Knack and Keefer, 1997; Grootaert, 1997) is afunction of produced capital assets, humancapital assets, natural capital assets, and socialcapital assets. While this may be a helpfulstarting point, if such a framework is to engageother writing on poverty, livelihoods anddevelopment and link it to discussions of via-bility, it can only be part of our understanding.The following subsections suggest elements ofsuch an elaboration around notions of:geographic scale; livelihoods and poverty; placeand cultural capital; assets and capabilities; andaccess.

4. EXTENDING THE SCALE: CAPITALASSETS, QUALITY OF LIFE AND

HUMAN CAPABILITY

(a) Livelihoods, regional economy and nationalaccounts: assets, scale and justice

While Serageldin and Steer apparently casttheir framework at the level of the macro-economy, it can equally be applied to regionaleconomies. Indeed, if it were then possible todevelop a suite of indicators for each of thedi�erent assets at these di�erent scales, it mightbe possible to suggest not only the tradeo�sbetween di�erent types of capital at a macrolevel, but also the di�erent forms that thesetradeo�s take across regions. This might allowa framework for linking macrodevelopmentchoices with analyses of social, geographicaland environmental justice. It would be possibleto talk about how patterns of asset growth andloss resulting from particular policies varyacross peoples and places and indeed acrossgroups within households.

Household and individual livelihood strate-gies might also be thought of in terms of accessto these types of capital (Bebbington, Koppand Rubino�, 1997; Scoones, 1998; cf. Moser,1998). As the Andean examples discussedearlier all suggest, Andean livelihoods nowdepend on a very wide range of assets, in somecases more natural resource related, in othercases more human resource related, and inmost cases, social capital related. The principalassets that people draw upon in building theirlivelihoods thus vary across space and alsoacross di�erent social, gender and ethnicgroups. If this is so, it becomes important to


have a clearer sense of the most importantassets for di�erent people in di�erent places inorder to identify the most useful (and mostdamaging) sorts of public investment in suchareas.

As a simple, but signi®cant example: manyprojects in the high Andes have aimed toaddress poverty by working with agriculturaltechnology, erosion control methods and otherinterventions related directly or indirectly tolivelihoods based on natural resources. Yetoftentimes the families with whom they haveaimed to work have depended primarily onmigrant remittances for their livelihoods ratherthan on agricultural income. If this is so, thenother types of support would have been farmore appropriate. The hypothetical range ofoptions here is obviously wide. Some optionswould emphasize investment in human capitalmore than produced or natural capital, forinstance: training so that people are able tosecure better and healthier jobs in the urbanlabor market; improved health care to increasemigrantsÕ resilience to environmental stresses;investment in education and nursery schools toincrease childrenÕs long term capabilities; etc.Other options might emphasize investments insocial capital as more appropriate. Socialcapital might, for instance, facilitate increasedincome for migrants, more rapid and safertransfers of remittances to rural areas, or moreproductive use of remittances once transferredto rural areas. In the ®rst case, strengtheningnetworks and institutions for accessing andsharing information among migrants on laborand petty trade markets might be appropriate,as might strengthening organizations thatdemand work safety for casual labor. Creatingnonformal institutional mechanisms, such asmoney wiring services, for the transfer ofresources from urban to rural locations, mightbe an appropriate response to the secondchallenge. 18 And third, to foster moreproductive use of remittances in rural areas,strengthening rural ®nancial institutions andvillage banks might be appropriate means ofincreasing the return on remittances fordepositors, and turning them into credit possi-bilities for those wanting to invest in ruralproductive activities (such as agriculture, live-stock or peri-urban trading etc.). In short,institutional and human investments largelyunrelated to agriculture and often outside ruralareas might be a more appropriate response toagricultural stagnation than yet one moreerosion control or seed improvement project.

These di�erent assets also clearly interact aspeople use and transform them in their liveli-hood strategies. On the one hand there areinteractions within each type of asset: certainforms of human capital, for instance, will havemore mutual synergy than others. At the sametime, each asset clearly interacts with theothers. Such interactions may be synergisticÐas in the case of womensÕ adult literacyprograms around which groups formed whichsubsequently undertook village bankingactivities. 19 Interactions may also be destruc-tive: as when investments of ®nancial capitalhave detrimental in¯uences on environmentaland social quality; or where ®nancial capital isproduced in ways that undermines social capi-tal (e.g., fostering growing anomie, or vio-lence), weakening the social networks throughwhich people access resources of varioustypes. 20 In this sense, the separation betweenthe inputs and outputs of a livelihood strategyis only arti®cial: the environment that anincome earning strategy helps build (or destroy)and the social networks it helps create (orweaken), in turn a�ect any subsequent incomeearning activity.

If it were possible to map out the di�erentassets that people draw upon in their liveli-hoods, then this would help improve the e�ec-tiveness and relevance of public investment. Atthe same time, though, rural peoplesÕ liveli-hoods may be shifting because they are losingaccess to certain assets as a result of eitherecological processes (e.g., demographicincrease) or macroeconomic policies and theeconomic strategies of other actors. Thus, it iscriticalÐas Yapa (1998) rightly insistsÐnot tofocus the poverty question only on an assess-ment of the poor. It is equally important torelate changing livelihood dynamics among thepoor to the changing assets of other actors.People may be migrating more because theyhave lost access to land, water or forests as aconsequence of the acquisition of those assetsby other actorsÐacquisitions that in turn maybe promoted by certain policies. Examples hereare many: a mine opens upstream of the watersupply of Andean communities; an intensive¯ower producer in the Inter-Andean valleystakes water that was previously used byupslope communities; oil wells are sunk inindigenous hunting and ®shing grounds inAmazonia; etc.. In such cases, rather thanidentifying investment in migrant skills as ameans of improving rural livelihoods, amapping exercise showing the ways in which


assets controlled by di�erent actors undermineassets of poorer groups would instead (or also)suggest it was more important to invest inpeoplesÕ capability to control and defend assets(cf. Leach, Mearns and Scoones, 1998), raisingthe issue of how to invest in social capitalinstead of human capital (cf. Bebbington,1996).

(b) Access, poverty and sustainability: assets asinstrument, assets as meaning

The Serageldin and Steer (1994) framework,and attempts to elaborate it, can justi®ably bequestioned on the grounds that their impliedunderstandings of poverty are largely econo-mistic: measured in terms of GDP (Serageldinand Steer 1994; Knack and Keefer, 1997) orhousehold income and expenditure dependingon the scale at which they are applied. 21 Yet,poverty is more than this, and so any notion ofthe links between livelihood sustainability andrural poverty must also be wider. Indeed, thenotion of livelihood in some sense cuts acrosswhat have been perceived as two opposed viewson the nature of poverty (Baulch, 1996; Moser,1998). At one pole are those approaches topoverty that aim to measure it objectively interms of expenditure, income or some otherquantitatively de®ned indicator (Grootaert,Kanbur and Oh, 1997). At the other pole arethe approaches that aim to see poverty throughthe eyes of the poor, arguing that it is as much asubjective experience as it is an objective state,and that participatory research methods o�erthe best means for assessing poverty andcapturing what people themselves identify as itsprincipal dimensions and indicators (Cham-bers, 1989; Chambers and Conway, 1992).While much of the in¯uential writing using theterminology of livelihoods came from this latterschool (Chambers, 1989; Chambers andConway, 1992; Scoones, 1998), the notionseems to capture both the objective dimensionsof ``having to make a living to get by'' as well asthe subjective dimensions of the conditions inwhich one lives. Income, expenditure and theexperienced quality of life are all somehowimplicit in the notion of livelihood. 22

Elaborating this point, poverty has di�erentdimensions, and up to a point (but only up to apoint) Serageldin and Steer's (1994) four capi-tals capture its environmental, income, humancapital and social dimensions. In their liveli-hood strategies, people make certain choices asregards the substitution between these di�erent

dimensions of poverty (often of course underconditions of severe constraint). Thus at times,people may decide (again, under greatconstraint) to live in areas of severe pollution,violence, or anomie, in order to earn a livingÐadecision to su�er environmental and socialdimensions of poverty in order to meet imme-diate monetary needs. At other timesÐmoreoften in rural areasÐpeople chose to desistfrom migration as far as possible in order to bein a calmer, cleaner environment closer tofamiliar kin, community and religious institu-tions, but at a cost of reduced monetaryincome. In like vein many livelihood decisionsinvolve a choice to overconsume a particularcapital asset at a given moment. This may benatural capital (e.g., by overcropping); socialcapital (e.g., by bene®ting from organization/family/kin networks but not contributing tothem and so not attending to their mainte-nance); produced capital (e.g., by drawingdown on ®nancial savings, or not maintainingthe value of savings, such as houses, vehicles,draught animals); and human capital (e.g., bysending kids to work rather than school, or bymoving into work that causes ill health etc.).Livelihood strategies are attempts, from exist-ing and often severe constraints, at a continu-ous management and modi®cation of thesesubstitutions, tradeo�s and draw downs ondi�erent capital assets. How these tradeo�s aremade, and which ones are preferred, varyacross the life cycle, and also across the shortterm. At certain points the resulting strategymay seem sustainable, at other points not.

The di�erent capitals are thus not only inputsto livelihoods and development strategiesÐthey are also their outputs. Thus their changingcomposition ought be considered not only insustainability terms (�a la Serageldin and Steer,1994) but also in poverty terms. 23 Actors atdi�erent scales opt to address certain dimen-sions of their poverty, and not others, certaindimensions of sustainability and not others.How they make this choice depends on whatdevelopment, poverty and livelihood mean tothem, as well as the constraints under whichthey make these decisions and the power rela-tions at play. We therefore need to beconcerned not only with the ways in whichassets are translated into income, but also withtheir impact on peoplesÕ sense of their well-be-ing. In this sense, peoplesÕ capital assets a�ectpoverty status and quality of life by a�ectinghuman experience as well as income. Keepingthis experiential dimension of poverty and


livelihood is thus critical if interventions are tobe relevant.

(c) Cultural capital: place, practice, poverty

This discussion returns usÐpartiallyÐto anobservation made earlier: namely that runningthrough many livelihood strategies in theAndes is an apparent determination to gainand/or maintain access to land as part of awider concern to maintain some form of ruralresidence. 24 Residence appears to be associ-ated with the maintenance of a range ofcultural practices that are valued for theirmeaningfulness: participation in ®estas (e.g.,Rasnake, 1988), in certain forms of agriculturallabor (Tolen, 1995), in volley ball games on thecommunitiesÕ court etc. Over and above themeaningfulness of a particular set of assets,then, there is a meaningfulness associated withthe set of cultural practices made possible (orconstrained) by the patterns of co-residenceand absence linked to certain livelihood strat-egies. This becomes one more (very important,though understated) dimension of the meaningof poverty or wealth to rural people themselves.It is therefore necessary that analytical frame-works are explicit in capturing this on the``output'' side of their understandings ofdevelopmentÐparticularly given how easilythese practices can be destroyed by interventionand policy.

Beyond being simply meaningful, such prac-tices are, however, also enabling and empow-ering. They enable forms of action andresistance that the other four types of capitalwould not, alone, make possible. They can alsobe the basis for the maintenance and enhance-ment of each of the other types of capital(Kleymeyer, 1993). Through fostering certainforms of identity maintenance and particularpatterns of interaction, they enable, inspire andindeed empower. They are another important``input'' to livelihood production and povertyalleviation.

There is, thus, a conjunction between placeand the reproduction of cultural practices thatare important inputs to and outputs of liveli-hood strategies. These practices are not thesame as social capitalÐthough they do clearlydepend on its existence in order to foster theconditions of social organization and spatialpropinquity that allow many of these practices.Though adding another capital to an alreadygrowing, and potentially confusing list ofcapitals, such observations imply that the

notion of cultural capital might usefully beadded to the frameworkÕs asset types. This is aform of capital that will clearly never bequanti®ed, nor should be: but making its role,importance and potential loss explicit innarrative form remains critical if externalnotions of poverty are not to be too divorcedfrom rural peoplesÕ conceptions.

(d) Capitals and capabilities: the rural poor asagents of change

The notion that cultural capital is empower-ing raises the critical point that peoplesÕ assetsare not only a source of sustenance andmeaningÐthey are also a source of power.Indeed, Sen (1997) has recently suggestedjettisoning the terminology of human capital asoverly economistic, referring to the worth ofhuman capital development only in terms of itscontribution to productivity. Human capitaldevelopment contributes, he insists, to thequality of life in many more ways than this: arange of ways which he sums up as ``humancapability.'' The ability to read and write, forinstance, not only enhances peopleÕs ability tosecure better jobs and do them more e�-cientlyÐit also enhances their ability to engagein discussion; to debate; to negotiate; to addtheir voice to the multitude of voices in¯uenc-ing household, local and national discourses ondevelopment etc. All these changes improve thequality of peoplesÕ lives in ways that simpleincome, GDP or Human Development Indexmeasures chronically underreport.

Perhaps more important, Sen argues, is thatthese capabilities enhance peopleÕs ability to beagents of change. They enhance peopleÕs abilityto question, challenge, propose and ultimatelyusher in new ways of doing things. Thisenhances peopleÕs capability to change the rulesof the development gameÐa change, which asYapa (1998) and many others remind us, is asine qua non of genuine poverty alleviatingstrategies. Thus, in considering measures ofhuman capitalÕs impact on development orlivelihoods, it is important to remember thatthey always understate the signi®cance of suchinvestments.

SenÕs comments regarding human capital canequally be made for social capital. Once again,the Andean examples, and many others, haveshown how networks and organizations play avital role in helping people act to improve theirlivelihoods, mobilize assets, and defend them.At the same time, they often give fora for


people to discuss, have voice, enjoy interaction,question, debate etc. They thus add to thequality of life above and beyond their simpleimpact on poverty and income indicators, andare critical in enhancing rural peopleÕs capacityto be their own agent of change. These pointsare elaborated in the following section.

5. ACCESSING, DEFENDING ANDTRANSFORMING: CAPITALS,CAPABILITIES AND SPHERES

Along with the notion of the ®ve capitals, thesecond element of the framework suggestedhere is the familiar trinity of state, market andcivil society (Figure 2): or more precisely therelationships between rural people and otheractors who operate within these spheres. It isthrough such relationships that people (andtheir organizations) aim to reassert or renego-tiate the rules (as de®ned within each of thespheres) governing access to resources in soci-ety: for each sphere has its own logics 25 in¯u-encing the distribution, control andtransformation of assets. Through these rela-tionships, people also aim to defend theirassets: by investing them in commercialmarkets, by mobilizing civil society actors toprotect budgets for rural education etc. Peoplealso act through such relationships to defend orenhance the bene®ts they derive from theirassets by transforming them. They may do thisby selling them, loaning them, exchanging themor engaging in some form of transaction thatallows them to enhance the commodity bundlesand income streams that can be derived fromthem. 26 These are also the relationshipsthrough which people struggle to improve the``exchange rates'' that govern this transactionso as to increase the entitlements that theirendowments will generate for themÐe.g., bytrying to increase the prices paid for forestproducts, or by seeking certi®cation for organicproducts.

As each sphere operates according to its ownlogic, this sets the limits of what can and cannotbe achieved through acting within that sphere(Ostrom, 1994). Thus, what can be done toenhance livelihoods and access to resources byengaging in relationships within the marketsphere is limited by basic commercial logic;what can be done through engaging with thestate is constrained (and enabled) by the waysin which the state works; and what can beachieved by collective action and engaging with

other civil society actors is structured by therange of bene®ts and limits of this form ofaction. Thus it is almost certainly the case thatbeing e�ective in enhancing livelihoods requirescompetence to manage relationships andtransactions in each of these spheres, takingadvantage of what can be achieved through onesphere, and complementing it with actions inthe other spheres.

PeopleÕs ability to gain access to thosespheres, is in turn greatly a�ected by thecapabilities they have as a result of their initialendowments of the di�erent types of capitalasset. For instance, people with signi®cantendowments of land (natural capital) or ®nan-cial resources (produced capital), or strongsocial networks (social capital) and universitydegrees (human capital and social capital) arein general better able to gain access to theinstitutions of the state and market and thusin¯uence their subsequent e�ects on patterns ofaccessÐin short they are more powerful. Itthen becomes interesting to understand theconditions under which people with lessendowments may be able to enhance theiraccess to the actors operating within thesedi�erent spheres, and the ways in which theorganizations may begin to act more in favor ofthose with fewer assets, and less power. While amarxian perspective on class would argue thatthe distribution of material resources (naturaland produced capital) will determine how thestate and market function, and thus howquestions of access are resolved, here I willfollow those such as Berry (1989), Evans (1996)and Ribot (1998) who suggestÐthough this iscertainly not the terminology they all use to dosoÐthat social and cultural capital can also bevitally important in determining access toresources. This is important, because it beginsto identify these as critical spheres for inter-vention to take into account if the goal is toalter the ways in which state and market typi-cally a�ect the distribution of assets and theability of rural people to use them. In closing, Itherefore focus on the ways in which socialcapital can enhance access to other actorsgoverned by the logics of state, market and civilsociety, and thus a�ect livelihood sustainabilityand poverty.

(a) Assessing the impacts of social capital: theproblem of causal mechanisms

Social capital belongs to that alarmingly longlist of terms in development that are


notoriously di�cult to de®ne, above all in acommonly agreed upon manner (Harriss andde Renzio, 1997). In perhaps the most exhaus-tive review discussion of the concept to date,Woolcock (1998) de®nes it as ``a broad termencompassing the norms and networks facili-tating collective action for mutual bene®t''(p. 155). This is relatively consistent with thede®nitions of such originators of the concept asColeman and Bourdieu. It is also akin toPutnamÕs (1993) de®nition of the term in thework that propelled the concept to popularfame, though in practice Putnam ``measured''social capital primarily by counting civicorganizations. This is signi®cant, becausealthough most authors will tell you that whatthey mean by ``social capital'' is networks andnorms such as trust, these are notoriouslydi�cult to identify and assess, and so muchwork ends up inferring the existence of thenorms and networks on the basis of actualcollective action, generally in the form oforganizations and groups (e.g., Narayan andPritchett, forthcoming; Bebbington, 1997).Social capital thus appears to be a phenomenonwhose indicators are largely surrogate andindirect. 27 Nonetheless, it has touched a nerve,just as the terms sustainable, and livelihoodhave, and in that sense seems to convey to``experts'' a sense of something very importantto society.

Given the di�culties of de®ning social capi-tal, and the di�ering ways in which it is used inthe literature, we need to be careful beforeattributing too much weight to empirical resultslinking social capital, poverty and livelihoods.There is however, a slowly accumulating bodyof evidence that suggests a relationship betweensocial capital and poverty, though di�erentstudies do not necessarily agree on whichindicators of social capital best predict thisrelationship. Some of this work has beenconducted at a macroeconomic level, and ®ndscorrelations between national income andsocial capital measured as ``trust,'' civic normsand the presence of national institutions thatare e�ective in protecting property and contractrights and that in a sense mandate trust and sorestrain predatory actions (Knack and Keefer,1997). Conversely, this study (of 29 marketeconomies) ®nds no relationship between percapita income and level of associational activ-ity, and thus stands in contrast with PutnamÕs(1993) work that identi®ed membership in civicassociations as the critical indicator of socialcapital and as directly causal of improved

economic and government performance. 28

Recent, more detailed, household level workhowever supports Putnam (rather than Knackand Keefer) in suggesting a correlation betweenmembership in organizations and income. Onthe basis of a 5,000 household survey, Narayanand Pritchett (forthcoming) argue that onestandard deviation in their social capital index(based on membership of village organizationsand the social inclusivity of those organiza-tions) leads to a 20% increase in householdexpenditure. More interestingly, they arguethat the village-level income e�ects of aggregatehousehold membership in organizations areeven more signi®cant than the householdincome impacts, suggesting that most of theincome bene®ts of membership in groups arefelt collectively rather than privately. Compar-ing data from the states of India, Morris (1998)comes to similar conclusions, as does earlyanalysis of on-going household level work inBolivia, Burkina Faso and Indonesia (Groo-taert, personal communication).

These studies identify tantalizing correlationsbetween social capital and poverty (albeit onlyin its economic dimension), on the basis ofwhich they infer causal relationships. But in factthey say little or nothing about the actual causalmechanisms at work. Nor do they help us knowwhether certain types and characteristics oforganization and networks are more likely tohave positive impacts than others, or whetherimpacts can be positive or negative, dependingon the status of other contextual factorsÐasauthors like Woolcock (1998) suggest is veryprobably the case. It is only with this sort ofinformation that we can begin to understand themore precise ways in which, through its in¯u-ences on both access to resources and to otheractors, social capital a�ects poverty and liveli-hood: and only with this type of informationcan more sensitive guidelines for action andintervention be inferred.

(b) Social capital and access: the missing causalmechanism?

While survey-based work on social capitalhas been more oriented toward showing theeconomic/income e�ects of social capital ratherthan the mechanisms through which thesee�ects occur, more ethnographic work hastended to focus on causal mechanisms withoutnecessarily showing that these have in facta�ected rural peoplesÕ poverty (e.g., Fox, 1996).Nonetheless, this work is instructive because it


does suggest ways in which social capitalapparently facilitates forms of action that onewould expect enhance peoplesÕ livelihoods. Ingeneral, these actions can be understood asenhancing peopleÕs ability to access and defendresources, transform them into income, andaccess institutions and organizations in thespheres of market, state and civil society in sucha way as to facilitate resource access, defenseand transformation. Importantly, this canhappen through actions either of rural people orof external organizations: from the inside out,and from the outside in (cf. Woolcock, 1998).

(i) Social capital and widening access from theinside out

Most of the work on social capital empha-sizes the di�erent ways in which social rela-tionships can be mobilized from within civilsociety to manage resources of various typesand to engage with other actors. We canorganize this work around the notion ofaccessing, claim making, defending and trans-forming assets. Some of this work has demon-strated clearly how certain types of community-level relationshipsÐoften ones based on sharedcultural identity, frequent confrontations withother groups, shared experience of discrimina-tion and strong intragroup communication(Portes, cited in Woolcock, 1998; also Durston,1998)Ðcan play important roles in facilitatingmember access to local resources of varioustypes. Similarly, as Katz (forthcoming) showsfor Guatemala, such relations can secure anddefend private as well as group natural resourceproperty rights, and thus protect those resour-ces from other users. They can also lead tomore e�cient use of resources, through foster-ing coordinated action (as in the case of water:Lam, 1996). This is not to say that such rela-tionships are always or even usually the normin communities (Leach, Mearns and Scoones,1998; McCay and Jentoft, 1998); their potentiale�ects, though make it important to understandhow such relationships come into being.

Also at the local level, networks of trust andmutual accountability linking individuals incommunities (not usually all the community)are critical in helping break the problem ofaccess to ®nancial capital. They have been thebasis of successful, self-sustaining and oftengrowing forms of local banking (indeed,Putnam, 1993, uses rotating savings and creditassociations as his principal analogy todemonstrate the nature of social capital). Inthis way, by facilitating access to credit and the

possibility of saving, this form of collectiveaction facilitates an accumulation of producedcapital, and through this a more e�ectiveparticipation in certain markets. Too little is yetknown, though, about the ®nal livelihood (anddistributive) impacts of this.

Moving up a level, other work has demon-strated the importance of strong regionalorganizations with networks linking them toother civil society and government actors.These can play important roles in preventingother actors from expropriating naturalresources (such as forests or intellectual prop-erty), in facilitating access to other types ofinvestment (e.g., in education, health) bydemanding and/or managing such programs,and in gaining a more permanent presence incertain rule de®ning and decision making forain the state and in civil society (Fox, 1990;Bebbington, 1996). Similarly, strong organiza-tions with networks linking them to othermarket actors can help open up market possi-bilities to rural producers that otherwise theywould not have, and can in this way increasetheir ability to turn their assets (of whatevertype) into income streams (North and Came-ron, 1998; Bebbington, 1997). In some Andeancases, these networks have subsequentlybecome part of the local state (Bebbington andPerreault, 1999), and thus been able to in¯u-enceÐhowever marginallyÐthe regulation ofresource control and of local markets (thusin¯uencing the bene®ts to be derived by ruralpeople as they transform their assets throughmarket exchanges). Also at the supracommunallevel, networks of far less formalized relation-ships have played an important role in estab-lishing and sustaining alternative,nonagricultural forms of economic activity.The rise of a rural weaving industry in North-ern Ecuador, or of the garments and leathersectors in central Ecuador, demonstrate theimportance of these networks in organizingproduction, and allowing people to becomeinvolved in these activities and market spheres(Ram�on, 1988; Martinez, 1994).

Finally at the national level, especially strongsocial capital, in the form of regional andnational organizations and their links togovernment o�cials, can be a mechanismthrough which rural people are able, collec-tively, to have an in¯uence on the overall rulesgoverning the distribution of public investmentof various types, and the defense and use ofnatural capital (Fox, 1996; Bebbington andPerreault, 1999).


(ii) Social capital and widening access from theoutside in

As Tendler (1997) notes, most of the work on``top-down'' institutions has been criticalalmost by de®nition. Yet recent work hasshown how under certain conditions govern-ment actors have been able to widen resourceaccess and control in rural areas, throughprocesses that might be thought of as buildingsocial capital. In most cases, this has occurredin the context of service provision (Ostrom,1996; Tendler, 1997). In some instances,government has been able to build synergisticrelationships with local organizations thatincrease the quality and coverage of the provi-sion of services, in turn enhancing familyassetsÐparticularly human capital andproduced capital assets. In the process, theseinitiatives also build up their social capitalassets to the extent that the collaborative rela-tionship built between government and socialorganization persists and facilitates other formsof collaboration and engagement. In othercases, government agenciesÐor more accu-rately key, pro-poor individuals inside theagenciesÐhave helped build up civil societyorganizations, enhancing their capacities tocoordinate with, or exercise pressure on,government and other organizations in thepursuit or defense of access (Fox, 1996).

These synergistic relationships, while usuallywith formal organizations, can also be with lessformal networks built up largely as a result ofthe governmentÕs action. Tendler and Freed-heim (1994) show how a preventive healthprogram in the state of Cear�a in Brazil wasturned around through a concerted e�ort on thepart of governmentÐagain at the initiative ofkey, critically placed individualsÐto developsuch networks linking it to rural and urbandwellers. The result was a 36% decline in infantdeath rates, a tripling of vaccination rates and agreatly enhanced capacity and functioningpresence of government health centers in almostall the stateÕs 178 municipios. (Tendler, 1997,pp. 21±22). This occurred as a consequence ofstate e�orts to increase the legitimacy of thehealth service on the one hand, to widen itspoints of contacts with communities, and ®nallyto create among Cear�aÕs citizens an expectationof good serviceÐand thus a constituency thatcould exercise some social control in demandinggood service through the now widened web ofcontacts linking it to the government program.

Thus under certain conditions, forms ofsocial capital that improve the collaborative

relationship between society and the state, andthat embed the state more deeply in networksand types of relationships through which soci-ety can hold it to account, can be built from theside of government in the process of providingcritical livelihood related services. These rela-tionships then have the potential to becomemechanisms through which people can accessadditional and di�erent assets, or call on thestate to defend those that they have.

(iii) Social capital, rights and social controlThat state agencies and actors will respond in

these constructive ways, or that e�orts atpopular organization will not meet withrepression, violence or exclusion rather thanincreased government responsiveness, is ofcourse far from certain: indeed, it is often farfrom even being likely. This is important, forPutnamÕsÐand otherÐdiscussions of socialcapital often understate the ``rawer'' questionsof political economy and violence. Indeed, oneof the most critical ``resources'' that peopleneed to access is the legalization and continuingrecognition by government, military and soci-ety of rights of organization and association.Without these, struggles for access are quitelikely to be unsuccessful and, indeed, repressed.

How such laws and mechanisms of enforce-ment might be created, and then sustained, iswell beyond the scope of this paper. Still, thesocial capital discussion draws attention tosome of the issues at stake, suggesting that theextent to which such rights will be respected andprotected will depend greatly on how the stateand its various institutions are embedded insociety (cf. Evans, 1995), as well as how farnetworks within a ``global civil society'' are ableto monitor and so in¯uence the behavior ofparticular states and their agencies (cf. Hyden,1997). The implication is that the moreembedded these institutions are in networkslinking them to pro-human rights and pro-pooractors in society, and the more subject they areto global scrutiny by actors with similarconcerns, the less likely they are to be repressive,and the more likely they are to be constructive.This then makes it important for such pro-poorand human rights groups in society todevelopÐsomehowÐthe types of relationshipsthat can embed and monitor the state. Impor-tantly, this will be a geographical process: thus,even if national institutions are in some senseembedded in this way, their more local armsmay not be, and so may still repress, or simplynot be responsive to popular pressures (Fox,


1990). While a range of other factors, such asbureaucratic and professional culture andvalues (cf. Evans, 1995) also in¯uence how thestateÕs apparatus responds to pressure andsocial organization, the building of local,national and global networks that embed thestate is important in creating conditions thatcontinue to allow for processes of social orga-nization among the popular sectors.

6. CONCLUSION

Though useful, because hard-headed, thediscussion of campesino viability in the Andesmakes three errors I wish to emphasize here.First, it tends to con¯ate agrarian with rurallivelihoods, thus de¯ecting attention from themyriad transitions that have occurred in theways through which people make a living, andthe diverse assets they draw upon in theprocess. Second, it implies (even if this is notthe intent) that rural people assess livelihoodoptions (and thus their poverty status) accord-ing to income criteria, whereas the evidencesuggests that other criteria are equally mean-ingful to rural people, in particular the main-tenance of cultural and social practices thataccompany rural residence. 29 Third, it implies(again even if this is not the intent) a sort ofimpermeable barrier between los viables, andlos no-viablesÐyet much of the work on accessto resources, and in particular on social capital,suggests that this barrier is both permeable andmovable. Just as Evans (1995) argued thatforms of state-business interaction can createindustrial viability in East Asia, so too certainforms of state-civil society-market-campesinointeraction can create rural viability.

The framework suggested here derives fromthese critical re¯ections on the viability debate.Our analyses of rural livelihoods need to

account for them in terms of: peopleÕs access to®ve types of capital asset; the ways in whichpeople combine and transform those assets inthe building of livelihoods that as far as possi-ble meet their material and their experientialneeds; the ways in which they are able toexpand their asset bases through engaging withother actors through relationships governed bythe logics of the state, market and civil society;and the ways in which they are able to deployand enhance their capabilities both to makeliving more meaningful, but also more impor-tantly to change the dominant rules and rela-tionships governing the ways in whichresources are controlled, distributed andtransformed into income streams.

Within this broader framework, particularattention has been placed on one of the ®veassets identi®ed as constitutive of livelihoodstrategies: social capital. This is for severalreasons. First, to the extent that access toresources and other actors is the most criticalasset that rural people need in order to buildsustainable livelihoods, then peopleÕs endow-ments of social capital are vital to their well-being. Social capital inheres in the types ofrelationship that allow access, and is thus acritical precursor to access being possible.Second, of these di�erent capital assets, socialcapital is probably the least tangible and so theone that is least understood. The paper there-fore paid some attention to elaborating possibleelements of its role in livelihoods and povertyalleviation. While the mechanisms for buildingand protecting human, produced and naturalcapital are clearer, the processes through whichsocial capital is constructed are little under-stood, though more is certainly known abouthow it is destroyed. How social capital can beconstructed so as to enhance the quality andsustainability of livelihoods thus merits muchmore attention. That, though, is another paper.

NOTES

1. It ought be noted, though, that the `ènvironmental

entitlements'' framework of Leach, Mearns and

Scoones. (1998) is designed for analyzing community

based sustainable development programs, rather than

livelihoods.

2. This ``shift,'' however, may be more apparent than

real. Pollard (1997) argues that in Europe livelihoods in

marginal areas were always diversi®ed.

3. `Àssets'' are thus resources that have been accessed,

though in practice the paper uses the terms `àsset'' and

``resource'' interchangeably. It does not, though, use

``resource'' only to refer to natural resources.

4. By ``hermeneutic,'' I am referring to those

approaches which emphasize that, for any advance of

knowledge, and indeed for any act of society building, it

is important to understand the meanings ascribed and

conveyed by di�erent people.


5. Leach, Mearns and Scoones (1998, p. 93) appear to

touch on this observation, but do not develop it.

6. Hence the title of the paperÐ``Capitals and Capa-

bilities.''

7. The terms peasant and campesino are used inter-

changeably in the text.

8. The terms in Spanish are viables and no-viables.

9. It is also recognized that a number of the units

currently deemed viable may ultimately not be, as they

may never become su�ciently competitive units to survive

the progressive integration of Chile into free trade areas

such as Mercosur and Nafta (Kay, 1997)Ðan important

point, because it shows that viability is a shifting state,

depending on market access and relationships.

10. The FAO 1998 Rural Development Strategy

Document notes the increasing importance of interna-

tional migration in the functioning of rural economies

and livelihoods (FAO, 1998, para 13).

11. Similar, though less dramatic examples of rural

accumulation based on peri-urban trade are apparent in

rural communities near the town of Llallagua, Potos�õ.

12. This may take the form of losing land (as in

DurhamÕs, 1995 cycles of accumulation and poverty) or

®nancial capital and soil quality (as in BernsteinÕs, 1979

simple reproduction squeeze).

13. Indeed by capturing the notion of both viability

and meaningfulness, the hope is that the framework will

allow us to address both narrower income/expenditure

and wider dignity/security based notions of poverty.

14. Serageldin and Steer (1994) in fact speak of

``human made capital,'' though this is later termed

``produced capital'' in World Bank (1996)Ða document

heavily in¯uenced by Steer.

15. Following the early Bank experiences with social

funds, the 1990 WDR also argued that these strategies

should be accompanied by safety net type funds to

``catch'' those adversely a�ected by policies fostering

growth in produced capital.

16. Clearly the UNCED proceedings in Rio in 1992

gave more political weight to this idea.

17. They speak of: ``weak'' sustainability: to maintain

total capital stock intact without regard to its compo-

sition; ``sensible'' sustainability: maintaining total stock

intact, and avoiding depletion of any particular capital

stock beyond critical levels, whichÐsince we do not

know what these critical levels areÐshould be de®ned

conservatively and monitored very carefully; ``strong''

sustainability: maintaining each component of capital

intactÐmeaning that if natural capital is destroyed in

one place, it should be replaced by cultivated natural

capital in other places (e.g., as in carbon sequestration

initiatives); and ``absurdly strong'' sustainability: in

which no capital stock can be depleted at all, meaning

no non-renewable resources could be used (Serageldin

and Steer, 1994, pp. 31±32).

18. Indeed, some ®nancial services NGOs such as

IFOCC in Peru have experimented with this service as a

less orthodox complement to the more common services

they provide, such as credit and savings.

19. I am thinking of the program Yuyay JapÕina in

Potos�õ, Bolivia.

20. Of course, such weakening of networks may allow

people greater freedom from having to redistribute their

income back to members of these networks (Woolcock,

1998).

21. The authors themselves would generally have a

wider notion of the nature of poverty, but it is this

dimension that comes through in these frameworks.

22. Indeed, more recent participatory poverty assess-

ments have tried to combine these di�erent approaches

and concerns, and interestingly have been vehicles for

pursuing the role of social capital in household liveli-

hood strategies (Moser, 1998).

23. This point is important, because indicators of

poverty alleviation are not the same as those of

sustainability, and while, say, the former may improve,

this may be at the expense of an unsustainable draw

down on particular capital assets.

24. Simon Batterbury (personal communication)

makes a similar observation for the case of West Africa.

25. For instance market exchange, political patronage,

state building, sustaining collective action for particular

identity groups etc.

26. What in SenÕs language would be termed turning

endowments into entitlements (Sen, 1981)

27. Exercises such as the World Values Survey aim to

measure ``trust'' and such data have been used to assess


the links between social capital and economic growth

(Knack and Keefer, 1997); but there are many di�culties

with these measures.

28. It is important in this regard to note that

Knack and KeeferÕs work originates from IRIS, the

research center of the late Mancur Olson who

disagreed profoundly with Putnam, instead arguing

that organizations put a break on economic growth

by creating constituencies that obtain rents and

subsidies from the state, thus impeding the free

functioning of markets.

29. Elsewhere I have argued that critical research on

rural change and the peasantry ought pay more atten-

tion to income than it does. This is not to contradict the

present assertion: rather the call is for understandings

that, in their critique and in their proposals, pay as much

attention to the material as to the hermeneutic of

poverty and livelihoods.

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