Influence of Theory of Livelihood Conceptualisation in Two Regions of Burkina Faso

Rural livelihoods in Africa are increasingly being examined though the lens of the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework (SLF), which assumes that the poor behave as “strategic managers” in negotiating their livelihoods outcomes by selecting livelihood activities according to their entitlements and access to resources, as mediated by the parameters of institutional contexts. This paper examines how appropriate this European theoretical construct is for explaining African realities. The livelihoods of eight family compounds (a total of 23 households) were followed for an entire agricultural cycle (Oct. 2009 – Dec. 2010) in two contrasting regions of Burkina Faso, in order to critically examine how they constructed their livelihoods throughout the seasons. By choosing two contrasting theoretical frameworks, this study shows that “facts are not facts”, but that the same finding can yield an opposite conclusion depending on the angle from which it is examined. The adoption of a mono-disciplinary lens of analysis can significantly constrain the choice of research method, and lead to simplistic conclusions regarding the motivations behind livelihood construction. The SLF should only be used as the conceptual framework as which it was conceived, and not an analytical framework. These findings stress the role of epistemology in the selection of research methods, the sampling period and unit of analysis chosen, the choice of data collected, and the angle of analysis chosen.