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| Title: | Multiplex Livelihoods in Rural Africa: Recasting the Terms and Conditions of Gainful Employment |
| Author: | Bryceson, Deborah F. |
| Year: | 2002 |
| Periodical: | Journal of Modern African Studies |
| Volume: | 40 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Period: | March |
| Pages: | 1-28 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Subsaharan Africa Africa |
| Subjects: | employment rural areas agricultural development Labor and Employment Economics and Trade |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3876079 |
| Abstract: | This article explores interlinked economic, cultural and political dimensions of current livelihood experimentation in Africa in light of the findings of the De-agrarianization and Rural Employment (DARE) research programme, which was carried out in Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa in the 1990s. Emphasis is placed on the multiplexity of social processes, political disequilibria and identity conflicts that are being played out within households and that individual agents directly influence. Following a discussion of the nature and analytical categorization of proliferating rural activities, the following opposing tensions are examined: non-agricultural market experimentation as opposed to reliance on an agricultural subsistence fallback in the quest for economic survival; household solidarity versus individual autonomy in the course of mobilizing resources and social networks; and agrarian conservatism versus sceptic otherness, resulting in an unacknowledged identity crisis. The article concludes that, so far, this surge of livelihood multiplexity has not generated adequate overall levels of gainful employment, technical innovation, purchasing power or welfare improvement. Bibliogr., notes, sum. |
