From Description to Explanation : Using the Livelihoods as ( Intimate ) Government ( Lag ) Approach

Two decades after their rapid rise to prominence, the place of livelihoods approaches in contemporary development conversations and programming is unclear. This status is in many ways deserved, as such approaches have often failed to deliver rigorous explanations of observed livelihoods decisions and outcomes. However, the recent refocusing of development and climate change discourses around the concepts of resilience and vulnerability has revived demand for methods with the holism of livelihoods approaches. If livelihoods approaches are to fill this need, they must evolve. Such an evolution requires a theory of livelihoods decision-making that supports an explicit framework for understanding livelihoods decisions. However, it also requires a specific approach to gathering information that fits this theoretical framing, and a transparent process through which that information is interpreted. This paper presents the Livelihoods as (Intimate) Government (LAG) approach as one such means of gathering and interpreting livelihoods data. LAG captures a wider range of motivations for observed decisions and behaviors than possible under the more instrumental livelihoods approaches that currently dominate the scene, a critical need of we are to productively address complex questions of vulnerability and resilience that are coming to characterize the program and policy interests of contemporary development, humanitarian assistance, and climate change organizations. This article lays out the theory behind LAG and illustrates the implementation of the approach in a step-by-step manner with reference to livelihoods decisions in Ghana’s Central Region, closing with a brief discussion of what LAG, and indeed revitalized livelihoods approaches more generally, can contribute to contemporary development and climate change research, policy, and implementation.