Evolving Institutions
- Workshop papers
On May 29th-30th 2002 a workshop entitled 'Supporting Livelihoods, Evolving Institutions' was held at Bradford Centre for International Development. The two-day event was an intensive mix of presentation and discussion on a range of issues, both theoretical and practical relating to the concepts of 'sustainable livelihoods', institutional management and change and sustainable livelihoods frameworks and principles.
(This workshop was partly funded by 'Goodbye to Projects?': a research project funded by DFID's Social Science Research Fund (formerly ESCOR)).
The following points indicate some of the major themes of the discussion:
- Does a livelihoods analysis lead to a capitalisation of people's lives?
- How are different capital assets linked- can social capital be used to compensate for lack of natural capital?
- Do the poor have 'livelihoods' or 'lifestyles'?
- Where is sustainability located-in individual terms or on a global scale?
- Is it possible to get institutions right?
- Are livelihood principles just the distillation of current best practice?
- To what extent have livelihoods approaches broken down barriers and extended understanding between disciplines?
- Is policy linkage the key to success in applying livelihoods approaches?
- Does a livelihoods analysis offer a new way of thinking about how to take action on poverty?
- Is livelihoods analysis just another tool attempting to 'codify complexity'?
Workshop overview and discussion