PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988-2001 21 Livelihoods, livestock and change: the versatility and richness of historical matrices

Document begins: PLA Notes CD-ROM 1988­2001 21 Livelihoods, livestock and change: the versatility and richness of historical matrices Karen and Mark Schoonmaker Freudenberger Introduction in the past. This leads to questions of why the changes took place and what may happen in the One of the greatest dangers in doing rural future which, in turn, often provokes much research is the tendency to take a static view of broader and revealing discussions about things and to focus all our research energies on environmental or economic changes. the present, rather than seeing the present as a temporary situation that is a product of the past Historical matrix: livelihoods and a precursor of the future. A number of the RRA tools, such as historical profiles, help to Table 1 is a straightforward livelihood matrix move us beyond this limited view but it is often from the village of Gillangel in the Gambia. It difficult to connect the discrete benchmarks shows the relative importance of various found in the typical profile with larger trends in activities in the household economy and how people's lives. these have changed over time. We asked our informants to limit the number of beans to 20 in We ...