Social institutions and access to resources

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dc.contributor.authorBerry, S.en
dc.contributor.departmentSustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management (SANREM) Knowledgebaseen
dc.coverage.spatialAfricaen
dc.date.accessioned2016-04-19T18:56:01Zen
dc.date.available2016-04-19T18:56:01Zen
dc.date.issued1989en
dc.descriptionMetadata only recorden
dc.description.abstractFor over a decade African economies have been plagued by recurrent food shortages, economic decline and growing disparities between the living standards of rich and poor. A further dimension of the agrarian crisis in recent years has been the extreme volatility of both agro-climatic and politico-economic conditions facing agricultural producers and rural households. The present article describes some of the strategies which farmers have used to cope with the crisis, and explores their implications for agricultural performance. People's ability to generate a livelihood or increase their assets depends on their access to productive resources and their ability to control and use resources effectively. Access depends, in turn, on participation in a variety of social institutions, as well as on material wealth and market transactions. One objective of this paper is to examine some of the ways in which institutions have served as channels of access to productive resources; have shaped strategies of agricultural production and investment; and have been affected, in turn, by farmers' patterns of resource use. A second issue to be addressed is the extent to which the increasing instability of economic, political and environmental conditions in recent years has reinforced or altered on-going processes of resource access and resource use. Like farmers anywhere, Africans have responded to instability and economic decline by economizing and, at the same time, attempting to diversify their options. The particular forms of these activities have, however, reflected specifically African conditions-including the role of social institutions in processes of access and control- and may, in turn, have contributed to the intractability of the agrarian crisis itself.en
dc.format.mimetypetext/plainen
dc.identifier1343en
dc.identifier.citationAfrica 59(1): 41-55en
dc.identifier.issn0001-9720en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10919/66051en
dc.language.isoen_USen
dc.rightsIn Copyrighten
dc.rights.holderCopyright 1989 Africa: Journal of the International African Instituteen
dc.rights.urihttp://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/en
dc.subjectRural developmenten
dc.subjectLivelihoodsen
dc.subjectNatural resource managementen
dc.subjectMarketsen
dc.subjectAgricultureen
dc.subjectAgricultural crisisen
dc.subjectResourcesen
dc.subjectOrganizationsen
dc.subjectAccessen
dc.subjectFood shortagesen
dc.subjectEconomic declineen
dc.subjectSocial institutionsen
dc.subjectMarket transitionen
dc.subjectAgricultural productionen
dc.subjectInvestmentsen
dc.subjectInstabilityen
dc.subjectGovernanceen
dc.titleSocial institutions and access to resourcesen
dc.typeAbstracten
dc.type.dcmitypeTexten

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