Matthys, Marie-Luise (2022). Agricultural commercialisation and the 'good life'. Investigating the relationship between wellbeing and cash crop production in low-income countries with qualitative and quantitative methods. (Thesis). Universität Bern, Bern
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Abstract
Numerous low-income countries promote commercial smallholder agriculture to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and improve the lives of the rural population. While the macroeconomic effects of commercialisation are well established, evidence on household-level impacts is scarce and the little evidence that exists is inconsistent. Particularly, there is a research gap on the influence of commercialisation on the wellbeing of farmers and labourers. This is noteworthy given the growing importance of wellbeing concepts in development research and practice. This dissertation contributes to linking two important fields of development research by providing a comprehensive analysis of the wellbeing effects of agricultural commercialisation. The analysis combines three different approaches commonly used in wellbeing research: local perspectives, subjective wellbeing, and the capabilities approach. The research focuses on the effects of cardamom production in Nepal; the capability analysis additionally considers impacts of coffee production on capabilitites in Laos and Rwanda to enable comparison. Overall, the three analyses established a positive relationship between commercialisation and wellbeing. First, an innovative combination of qualitative methods elicited a local concept of the good life in Nepal, in which the dimension “having no hardship” was most salient across different social groups. The shift to cardamom production reduced physical hardship associated with agricultural labour and mental hardship associated with poverty (section 2). Second, cardamom production and life satisfaction were positively associated, a finding which was robust when disaggregating by gender (section 3). Third, several capability expansions were detected, albeit in different forms for women and men, and to different extents in the three study sites (section 4). Despite the various improvements, however, the situation of most households was characterised by marked precariousness: farmers and labourers remained at constant risk of falling back into a state of reduced wellbeing due to reliance on a single crop and the associated dependence on fluctuating world market prices. Further research should focus on mechanisms to guard against these risks.
| Item Type: | Thesis |
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| Dissertation Type: | Cumulative |
| Date of Defense: | 15 December 2022 |
| Subjects: | 300 Social sciences, sociology & anthropology |
| Institute / Center: | 03 Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Institute of Sociology |
| Depositing User: | Hammer Igor |
| Date Deposited: | 14 Nov 2023 17:54 |
| Last Modified: | 15 Dec 2023 23:25 |
| URI: | https://boristheses.unibe.ch/id/eprint/4703 |
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