Capitals and capabilities : a framework for analysing peasant viability, rural livelihoods and poverty in the Andes

Contemporary debates on the rural sector in Latin America have led many to question the future viability of peasant livelihoods in the Andes. The paper first discusses certain limitations in these discussions of peasant viability. Firstly, they conflate agrarian with rural livelihoods, thus deflecting attention from the myriad transitions that have occurred in the ways through which people make a living and the diverse assets they draw upon in the process. Secondly, they imply that rural people assess livelihood options according to income criteria, whereas ethnographic and sociological evidence suggests that other criteria are equally meaningful to rural people, in particular the maintenance of cultural and social practices that accompany rural residence. Thirdly, they suggest an impermeable barrier dividing viable and non-viable units. Yet a review of recent livelihood transitions in the region suggests that this barrier is indeed permeable, particular if we phrase the issue as one of rural, and not only agrarian, livelihoods. On the basis of these observations, the paper develops an analytical framework for analysing rural livelihoods in terms of their sustainability and their implications for rural poverty. The framework argues that our analyses of rural livelihoods need to understand them in terms of: people’s access to five types of capital asset; the ways in which they combine and transform those assets in the building of livelihoods that as far as possible meet their material and their experiential needs; the ways in which they are able to expand their asset bases through engaging with other actors through relationships governed by the logics of the state, market and civil society; and the ways in which they are able to deploy and enhance their capabilities both to make living more meaningful, but also more importantly to change the dominant rules and relationships governing the ways in which resources are controlled, distributed and transformed into income streams. Particular attention is paid to the importance of social capital as an asset through which people are able to widen their access to resources and other actors. 1 p o li ci e s th a t w o rk