Coping and Adaptive Entitlements

Abstract

This chapter examines the entitlements derived from coping strategies, that is, the tertiary activities pursued by people to survive when their habitual primary and secondary activities cannot guarantee a livelihood. Production and exchange entitlements are the central planks of subsistence in any year, as well as enabling accumulation in a good year (increasingly difficult in vulnerable livelihood systems). Coping strategies, in contrast, are reserved for periods of unusual stress, often resulting in food insecurity. As argued in Chapter 3, these same activities become adaptive strategies when they are used in every year to fill the food gap left once production and exchange entitlements have failed to meet minimum food requirements.