Livelihoods and Security in Africa: Contending Perspectives in the New Global Order

Abstract

Development, as we typically define it, implies the integration of livelihoods into an increasingly global economy where the destinies of people living continents apart are no longer separate. New forms of social consciousness emerge from the effects of these globalized resource flows. Conflicts arise more and more over control of resource flows and the way in which these resources are conceived, managed, and sustained. These conflicts, in turn, pose challenges to existing ways of governing at different levels. The growing realization that individual livelihoods and the fate of local communities can no longer be viewed in isolation from national or international structures and processes has given rise to new forms of scholarship in which micro and macro considerations are being combined to provide fresh perspectives and insights on issues that previously were studied in isolation from each other. This means that in the same way that we are increasingly interdependent in pursuit of our livelihoods, we are as scholars more and more dependent on each others’ theoretical and methodological contributions. Even though many are slow in recognizing it, interdisciplinarity is no longer something to be despised or discarded.