Vulnerability and resilience

The concepts of vulnerability and resilience have long been central to research and practice on livelihoods in the Global South. However, critics point to crucial limitations in how existing development projects conceptualise, implement and measure vulnerability and resilience as they relate to livelihoods. Livelihoods approaches offer valuable insight to thinking about vulnerability and resilience in ways that transcend these relatively narrow economistic interpretations. This chapter reviews the conceptual and methodological foundations with an eye to identifying the tensions, limits and opportunities surrounding efforts to fold vulnerability and resilience into consideration of livelihoods. It emphasises 1) the need for cross-scalar studies that go beyond snapshot assessments to visualise livelihood vulnerability and resilience as power-laden processes that play out in places over time and 2) the need for recognition of how social difference (e.g. gender, class, race, ethnicity) and power differentials shape winners and losers in processes of development and change.