Beyond sustainable livelihoods: A diverse economies approach to rural peasant livelihoods in China's Qinghai Province

Abstract

This paper delves into rural peasants' livelihood-related agrarian changes revolving around their three major livelihood strategies in Qinghai. These strategies include peasant agriculture, seasonal migrant labour and caterpillar fungus harvesting, the latter two of which have been adopted since the mid-1990s. The research particularly focuses on rural Tibetan peasants' lived experiences in their efforts to achieve sustainable livelihoods through these three strategies in a specific village context. In doing so, the paper highlights resources, qualifications, opportunities, changes and challenges in rural peasants' livelihood realities. The empirical evidence from this paper suggests that rural Tibetan peasants' diverse ways of making livelihoods have a greater potential to imagine and build sustainable and equitable livelihoods. I argue that sustainable livelihoods approaches must be pursued in tandem with a diverse economies framework for analysing rural peasants' present way of making livelihoods. This new and critical way of studying rural peasant livelihoods can particularly highlight non-capitalist economic relations and practices that are the major contributors to sustainable and equitable livelihoods for Tibetan peasants.