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Book chapter2023Peer reviewed

Agricultural Livelihoods, Rural Development Policy and Political Ecologies of Land and Water : exploring new agrarian questions

Alarcón Ferrari, Cristián; Bergman Lodin, Johanna; Hajdu, Flora

Abstract

This chapter examines some of the key links between agricultural livelihoods, rural development policy and agrarian change through the lens of a political ecology of land and water use. In doing so, we aim to develop a deeper understanding of the external and internal processes defining prospects and barriers for agricultural livelihoods. The chapter pays special attention to labour and gender relations in the understanding of agricultural livelihoods. The chapter focuses on 1) the role of control over land and water and labour in defining paths of agrarian change and their relation to different forms of agricultural livelihoods in the context of the sustainability crisis and climate change, and 2) how agricultural livelihoods interact with the wider processes of rural transformations premised on national rural development policies. In conceptual terms, the chapter develops perspectives from an agrarian question framework to offer theoretical and empirical insights into agricultural livelihoods in rural contexts of South America and Africa.

Published in

Title: The Routledge Handbook on Livelihoods in the Global South
ISBN: 978-0-367-85635-9, eISBN: 978-1-003-01404-1Publisher: Routledge