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What’s the Story on Agriculture? Using Narratives to Understand Farming Households’ Aspirations in Meru, Kenya

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Relation http://oar.icrisat.org/11799/
https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-021-00361-9
doi:10.1057/s41287-021-00361-9
 
Title What’s the Story on Agriculture? Using Narratives to Understand Farming Households’ Aspirations in Meru, Kenya
 
Creator Dilley, L
Mausch, K
Crossland, M
Harris, D
 
Subject Livelihoods
Agriculture-Farming, Production, Technology, Economics
Agricultural Extension
 
Description In the limited research on farming aspirations, little attention has been paid to the
narratives which frame and shape them, and the ways in which the aspirations of
those who farm intersect with the goals of extension services. Drawing on multimethod
research conducted in Meru County, Kenya, we demonstrate how aspirations
are not only situated within a consideration of personal circumstances, but are
shaped in crucial ways by networks of relations and by the perceived possibilities
afforded by material and cultural resources. We further highlight the accounts of
state extension agents that link a lack of engagement with the desires and needs of
those who farm to the failure of agricultural development initiatives. We argue that
an engagement with aspirations opens up a route to understanding the obstacles and
potentialities that matter to those who farm and, as such, might enable more responsive
development initiatives centred on the perceptions and desires of those who
farm.
 
Publisher Palgrave Macmillan
 
Date 2021-02
 
Type Article
PeerReviewed
 
Format application/pdf
 
Language en
 
Identifier http://oar.icrisat.org/11799/1/s41287-021-00361-9.pdf
Dilley, L and Mausch, K and Crossland, M and Harris, D (2021) What’s the Story on Agriculture? Using Narratives to Understand Farming Households’ Aspirations in Meru, Kenya. The European Journal of Development Research (TSI). ISSN 0957-8811