Introduction

This article discusses the sustainable livelihoods framework (SLF) as an analytical tool to disaggregate interrelations and fundamentals central to people’s livelihoods and to increase the understanding of what is needed to improve livelihood. As such, the framework serves as a basis for developing measures to overcome livelihood difficulties, reduce livelihood vulnerability, and ultimately increase well-being (DFID, 1999). This is because developing adaptation and coping strategies for drivers of vulnerability, such as climate change, requires a reliable understanding of the context of vulnerability and local realities, such as how local communities generate sustainable livelihoods. According to Hammill et al. (2005), the core of this understanding can be derived by answering three key questions: (1) Why are people vulnerable? (2) How do they cope? and (3) To what extent can the changed conditions actually be attributed to a particular vulnerability factors, such as climate change? The SLF provides an organizing structure to answer these questions. It does so by guiding the analysis of identifying and structuring how livelihoods are created and the assets on which they are based, the vulnerability dynamics to which these assets are subject, and how local macro- and micro-level conditions influence strengths and weaknesses in the use of assets and activities undertaken to build resilient livelihoods (Hammill et al. 2005). Thus, the framework’s structure is composed of the main factors that affect people’s livelihoods and describes how these factors relate to each other (Fig. 1). These factors are grouped into three components: The vulnerability context, which refers to seasonal fluctuations, trends, and shocks that affect livelihoods and over which people have limited or no control; the livelihood assets, which refer to different types of resources (e.g., human, natural, financial, physical, and social) available to people; and the transforming structures and processes, which refer to the institutions and policies that affect people’s lives, from public and private institutions to national policies and local culture (Fig. 1). These three framework components define the range of livelihood strategies available for generating livelihood outcomes.

Fig. 1
figure 1

The sustainable livelihoods framework. Own illustration adapted from DFID (1999)

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The SLF is a well-established tool for assessing the sustainability and vulnerability of livelihoods (Soini 2008), yet it is also criticized for various reasons. Some of these criticisms are not unique to the SLF and are frequently voiced toward other evidence-based approaches and frameworks (Morse and McNamara 2013) such as Turner et al.’s (2003) framework for vulnerability analysis. These criticisms relate in particular to methodological uncertainties about how individual components can be measured and, if necessary, quantified, as well as the tension between the claim to capture the enormous complexity of a certain context and the limits set by reality, which necessitate simplification (van Dillen 2003).

Here, we address the criticism that the framework does not fulfil its own premise, namely, to put affected people at the center (DFID, 1999). Morse and McNamara (2013) get to the heart of this criticism, writing, “For all the people-centered rhetoric of SLA, people are strangely invisible [in the framework].” One of the consequences of this is that the framework offers only limited entry points for analyzing how power and power relations (Adato and Meinzen-Dick 2002; Moser and Norton 2001) and locally institutionalized practices and relationships (Adato and Meinzen-Dick 2002; Cleaver 2002) influence human action. Various authors have repeatedly emphasized how important these factors are for people’s ability to access resources and convert them into livelihood strategies (Adato and Meinzen-Dick 2002; Bebbington 1999; Kabeer 1999; Sen 1999).

The epistemological interest derived from the literature also coincides with the insights of a theoretical reflection of two empirical studies conducted by the main author of this article. Both studies aimed to understand how different aspects of the vulnerability context influence the design and implementation of rural livelihood strategies in North Vanuatu. The findings of these two studies suggest that socio-structural categories such as gender or age have a crucial impact on people’s ability to access livelihood assets and transform them into livelihood strategies, and thus also on their agency to respond to and cope with factors of vulnerability. The SLF was used as an analytical orientation framework, and it was found that the framework is of limited use for analyzing the agency of people and thus their power to make choices related to livelihoods and vulnerability.

According to Alsop and Heinsohn (2005), power is the capacity of an individual or a group to make a choice and to translate this choice into a desired action or outcome (e.g., converting livelihood assets into desired livelihood outcomes). If an actor is able to enforce this choice within their surrounding social relationship, even in the face of opposition, they possess power (Weber 1978). The extent or degree of this power is influenced by two factors in particular: agency (the ability to make a purposeful choice) and the opportunity structure (the institutional context in which a choice is made) (Alsop and Heinsohn 2005). Thus, power cannot be absolute solely on the basis of available resources (e.g., human, financial, or physical capital). It also depends on how strong or weak an actor is in relation to other actors in the system (Schiffer 2007), which in turn depends on the formal and informal institutions (specifications, norms, or sets of rules) of the respective system.

The notion of agency is linked to the form of self-determination of a person and his or her position within society. The concept of self-determination and, in relation, the autonomous subject are often found in people-centered approaches and are central concepts of the European Enlightenment (Viertbauer and Kögerler 2014). However, the actions of an individual should not be understood as autonomous; rather, they are socially enabled and constrained. Accordingly, human action should not be thought of without a social structure in whose framework the action takes place (Reckwitz 2012).

Some components of the SLF already include aspects relevant to agency and thus human action in the form of livelihood assets (e.g., human capital) or the framework component “Transforming Structures and Processes (TSP),” which refers to institutions and policies. In particular, livelihood assets are often associated with agency. Bebbington (1999), for example, wrote that livelihood assets “[…] are not simply resources that people use in building livelihoods: they are assets that give them the capability to be and to act.” However, the focus is not on people but on livelihood assets and their capability to empower people. Additionally, whether people can (and want to) access and use the resources necessary for their own capability to be and act (agency) depends on the social living conditions of a person. This also implies that social structure categories, such as gender or age, and the social structure in which people are situated are important for their agency (Reckwitz 2012; Scherr, 2012). We will elaborate on these connections and the associated theories later in this article. Although the social structure is at least partially represented by the TSP in the SLF, social living conditions and social structure categories are hardly depicted in the framework. Moreover, there is no clear demarcation in the SLF that would allow the placement of humans and their capabilities as their own entities in the fabric of such dynamics around sustainable livelihoods. Furthermore, in its current form, the framework conflates different levels of governance, such as households, local communities, national governments or international organizations, making it difficult to represent and analyze the dynamics of power relations.

The lack of focus on people is remarkable since both the capability approach introduced by Sen (1985) and the sustainable livelihood concept by Chambers and Conway (1991) have seemingly influenced the discourse around the SLF (Mensah 2011) and themselves have a strong emphasis on people. The capability approach particularly focuses on people’s needs and their capabilities of fulfilling those needs and thus on those characteristics whose absence in the SLF we criticize here.

Therefore, we propose a revision of the SLF, the main objective of which is to create a framework that has a stronger people-centered perspective and focuses more on the dynamics that constrain or facilitate access to the conversion of livelihoods into desired livelihood outcomes. We focus in particular on power and power relations, as they have repeatedly been identified as important influencing factors for agency and capabilities to achieve desired livelihood outcomes.

The challenge here lies in the question of how a person-centered perspective can be shaped when the individual is not thought of as autonomous but as socially situated and integrated into norms, structures, and power relations? To address this issue, we adopt a subject-theoretical perspective. According to this perspective, people are shaped in their feelings, thinking, and decision-making by their environment and their history. They too, however, can shape their environment (Traue 2005). Against this background, being a subject is a characteristic of persons not in the sense of their personality structure, but in the sense of their relationship to themselves and their relationship to the world (Traue 2005). Accordingly, the question of the subject is also a question of the specific social form that individuals acquire in a particular historical and social context (Reckwitz 2012). An example of a social form in Western European societies is the “entrepreneurial self,” which continuously optimizes itself and perceives itself as authentic. In Vanuatu, for example, this may be the “post-traditional self.” Therefore, this self is emancipated from traditional structures in the course of sociocultural transformation. This self could be understood as an increasingly common social form, especially among young people.

This paper begins with an analysis of how power relations are reflected in the current SLF. We then provide some theoretical perspectives on the main conceptual discourses on which the SLF is based. In particular, we focus on the capability approach introduced by Sen (1985). Finally, we introduce the “Personal Realization Capability” (PRC) as a new component complementing the SLF that aims to allow people and their social living conditions to be placed closer to the center of the analysis.

Methods

Data collection

To illustrate our statements, we frequently draw on insights and data from the two studies from North Vanuatu referred to earlier in the introduction. These two studies are based on ethnographic work conducted in 14 communities on six islands in North Vanuatu between 2015 and 2020. The selection of North Vanuatu as the study area is based on two considerations: First, the relevance of the research question to North Vanuatu due to its current vulnerability to climate change and socioeconomic change; and second, the reduced complexity offered by island systems.

The ethnographic design is characterized by six months of participant observation in the field, including numerous informal interviews and conversations. In addition, 63 face-to-face semi-structured interviews, two focus group discussions with a total of 17 participants, and four workshops with a total of 65 participants were conducted. Between 3 and 20 residents per island were selected for the face-to-face interviews. To ensure diversity, attention was paid to gender and age, with the youngest interviewee being 18 and the oldest 92. For the workshops and focus group discussions, we recruited participants using the snowball system (Goodman 1961) from among the acquaintances of residents who had already been interviewed. At the beginning of each workshop, we used gender-specific resource mapping to understand how residents access and control resources. In addition, all methods focused on local socio-cultural and economic changes and their impact on livelihood strategies. While each interview lasted between 45 and 90 min, the workshops and focus group discussions lasted between 2 and 4 h. All interviews were conducted either in English, Bislama (the lingua franca of Vanuatu) or in one of the four local languages of the island. In the latter case, the local research partners simultaneously translated the answers into English or Bislama.

Data analysis

We produced a summary protocol for the interviews, focus group discussions and workshops, paraphrasing the information during transcription. This involved condensing information by excluding less relevant or redundant information and combining similar statements into higher-level statements (Mayring 2002, pp. 94–98). To ensure systematic documentation of the findings from the participant observations, we followed the structure suggested by Bernard (2006) and divided our field notes into descriptive, analytical and methodological notes. The qualitative analysis of the primary data was based on the approach of Ritchie et al. (2003) and consisted of three main steps: (1) data management (building a thematic framework), (2) descriptive reports and (3) explanatory reports (pp. 220–248). The first step was guided by a series of questions adapted from Böhm (2012) to familiarize ourselves with the field and the data, identify initial themes or concepts and build an index. This index served as the basis for creating an initial thematic framework, which was then used to code (index) the data and carry out the iterative process of descriptive analysis. The aim of this analysis was to define categories, classify the data and refine the thematic framework where necessary. Based on these results, an associative analysis (explanatory accounts) was carried out to determine the relationships between the identified phenomena.

Agency in the SLF

In the SLF, power relations are grounded in a local institutional context—the so-called transforming processes. They include culture with prevailing norms and values, policies, and legislation. Processes are closely related to the prevailing structures of a specific site that define or implement a process. Structures include both governmental and private organizations. Together processes, and structures form the “Transformation of Structures and Processes” component in the SLF (Fig. 1). As such, they “mediate the complex and highly differentiated process of achieving a sustainable livelihood” (Scoones 1998). Accordingly, this framework component includes dynamics that operate at all spatial levels, from the household to the global sphere.

In addition to the identity-forming characteristics of a person and the local transformation structures and processes, acquired abilities such as knowledge or skills (human capital) and connections and networks (social capital)—or the lack thereof—can also play a decisive role in power relations and thus in a person’s or household’s agency. In particular, they can determine one’s ability to access financial, natural, and human capital and convert this capital into livelihood outcomes (Bebbington and Perreault 1999). For example, in addition to knowledge and skills of how to successfully cultivate a profitable cash crop, farmers can achieve better market access and thus better outcomes by pooling resources (e.g., through cooperatives) rather than acting alone. Another example is savings groups, which are popular in many regions with limited access to financial capital, including North Vanuatu. In these groups, people accumulate a large amount of money relatively quickly. They do this by pooling their savings into a common fund, which can then be used for investment by the group or members of the group. In the SLF, human and social capital are considered part of the livelihood assets.

The SLF rarely distinguishes between the extent to which these two types of capital (human and social) are potentially available in a given context and the extent to which a person or household actually possesses this capital. However, this difference is of decisive importance for analyzing and understanding people’s livelihoods and, in particular, for the design of intervention measures aimed at, for example, reducing livelihood vulnerabilities. There is the possibility that imparted knowledge remains potential knowledge because access is restricted to certain groups by power relations and (re)producing inequalities. If knowledge is only potentially available, the question arises: Why is the target population not in possession of this knowledge?

Agency in the capability approach

Based on the approaches presented earlier and our critique, we now briefly present the main aspects of Sen’s (1985) capability approach. We then justify the centrality of the capability approach in this paper by arguing that the focus of the approach largely corresponds to the intention of our proposed extension of the SLF, namely, to place the agency (the ability to make a purposeful choice) of a person or social group at the center of the analysis. This focus is barely visible in the SLF despite the fact that the capability approach is considered a foundational concept of the sustainable livelihood approach.

The Capability Approach focuses on the achieved quality of life (achieved functionings) and the freedom to live a good life (capabilities). Sen (2009) writes, “[the capability approach] is an intellectual discipline that gives a central role to the evaluation of a person’s achievements and freedoms in terms of his or her actual ability to do the different things a person has reason to value doing or being.” Thus, the approach aims to promote people’s own values and opportunities for realization in order to optimize their well-being and opportunities for participation. Moreover, the approach also aims to shape social structures in such a way that they contribute to improving living conditions. In addition to material and legal living conditions, the Capability Approach also pays attention to individual living conditions, abilities, and institutional framework conditions, such as social norms (Robeyns 2017). These elements can have both a facilitating and an inhibiting influence on capabilities and the achievement of funtionings.

Central to the capability approach are inequalities and, consequently, power relations (Robeyns 2017). While some people can do the things necessary for what they consider desirable for a good life, others may not be able to do so due to of a lack of empowerment. For example, Sen highlights the “boy preference” in families and that such preference is likely to influence the allocation of resources within a household (Sen 1999). If, for example, the available financial means were only sufficient for the higher school education of one child, in this case, priority will be given to the family’s son. Accordingly, girls in such families are believed to not have the same capabilities as their brothers; thus they are not given the opportunity to acquire their desired functionings. The “boy preference” example illustrates that, in addition to resource constraints, social institutions and processes and associated norms and values can influence a person’s choices in achieving desired functionings (e.g., to obtain a higher education qualification). Social norms, values, or laws not only have differential effects on different social structural categories (e.g., gender), but also between different social living conditions. For example, two girls have both similar intellectual capabilities and human capital. Furthermore, the school in their country is accessible, and there are no financial barriers. However, while one girl grows up in a family where both parents have already pursued academic careers, the other girl lives in a family that places little value on intellectual achievement. Thus, different social structures are likely to influence the preferences of the two girls as to which functionings (i.e., which level of education) are considered desirable or are visible at all. Accordingly, the social environment influences the girls’ desirable functionings, even if the conditions are similar.

Personal realization capability to bring back agency into SLF

In the following section, we first introduce the idea behind the “Personal Realization Capability” (PRC) as a new, additional component of the SLF. We then clarify the use of the term “personal” based on theoretical principles before discussing the attributes that comprise the PRC.

PRC delineates the capability of a person (being able) to access assets and convert them into desired livelihoods and therefore their own ability to make a purposeful choice. We claim that PRC is a function of the following two attributes: social living conditions and personal identity. As a whole, these two attributes constitute a specific framework for a person’s capability to convert livelihood assets into desired livelihood strategies: the personal realization capability (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2
figure 2

The sustainable livelihoods framework with the “personal realization capability” as a complementary component. Own illustration adapted from DFID (1999)

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PRC is to be understood as an indicator of a person’s power to access and use the necessary resources for desired livelihood strategies and thusly their freedom to make a choice and to translate that choice into a desired action or outcome. As such, personal realization capability also reflects a person’s agency toward achieving an aspired well-being. PRC only exists where the two attributes overlap and are therefore not mutually exclusive (Fig. 2). Overlap that forms the personal realization capability means not only a common intersection of the different attributes but also an interdependence between them. For example, a person’s desired doings and beings (functionings) are guided by a supposedly personal understanding of what a desired well-being is. However, this understanding is likely to be influenced by social living conditions, such as in the prior example of the two girls who, due to the different educational backgrounds of their parents, are likely to aspire to different levels of education themselves. To what extent and how processes from this social structure influence a person’s capability depend essentially on the personal identity (structural categories) with which that person identifies. This is particularly evident in society’s different expectations of different social structure categories (e.g., age, or gender). Personal identity thus depends not only on one’s own characteristics, but above all on the social attributions associated with them. As a result, personal identity also shapes the image of what is considered desirable in life.

In contrast to the classical SLF, livelihood assets in our framework represent only potentially available assets. Potential, in this context, means that assets are available in principle, but people or a group of people may not have access to them. For example, the existence of a school with teachers does not automatically mean that all residents have access to the human capital provided by the school. The same applies to natural resources. For example, statements in interviews and participant observation suggest that women on most islands in Vanuatu have no access to the resource of deep-sea fish, as women driving boats break local gender norms. Thus, deep-sea fish and boats are potentially available, but women do not have access to them. Therefore, the totality of potential livelihood assets in our expanded framework represents an opportunity space (Fig. 2). Whether and to what extent these opportunities can be converted into livelihood outcomes depends on the individual’s capability to do so. This means that effectively usable opportunities arise only when the two attributes overlap (Fig. 2).

Theoretical considerations on the term “personal”

With the adjective personal, we do not intend to individualize the two attributes. Rather, we use it to refer to our subject-theoretical approach, which essentially draws on subject theory as a central approach at the intersection of sociology and pedagogy. Based on the definition of the subject as the center of life practice, subject theory deals with processes of personality formation, gaining and asserting identity, and developing agency (Traue 2005; Scherr, 2012). Proponents of subject theory argue that people actively and productively engage with social reality. Subject-theoretical approaches, therefore, also focus on the perspectives of individuals. However, these views and actions are not individual, but rather are embedded in the specific orientation frameworks of a society. This is because instead of considering the term “person” as someone’s characteristic in terms of a personality structure, we consider “person” more in terms of a relationship to oneself (self-image) and a relationship to the world (world-image) (Traue 2005). In this way, PCR facilitates the inclusion of social expectation horizons and the social context in which people act in the analysis of livelihoods. Nevertheless, individuals can also disregard such orientation frameworks and break away from collective action orientations (Mead 2015). For example, people in Vanuatu who migrate from remote, rural islands to the country’s economic centers may discard some of the norms and values that shaped the orientation framework on their home island. Even when they later return to their islands, they continue to orient themselves, at least in part, to the newly acquired orientation framework of urban areas. In one specific case, a woman acquired her driver’s license in a provincial capital. When she returned to her home island, she made giving driving lessons one of her life strategies, even though this contradicted the implicit norm prevalent on her home island that women do not drive. It is therefore not surprising that only men signed up for driving lessons.

With its subject-theoretical approach, PRC aims to enable a better understanding of a person’s capability to access assets and transform them into desired life outcomes, taking into account social structural categories and patterns of social action. In this way, the subject-theoretical approach also aims to provide access to seemingly contradictory orientations of action and ambivalent functionings (e.g., a girl “not wanting” a higher education), which can lead to different social living conditions and thus different personal realization possibilities.

Social structure categories define a social position and, thus, different possibilities of access to different types of capital. Gender, age, ability/disability class, sexual identity, and race may also be considered social structure categories. No person is part of only one category. Rather, a variety of social structure categories are attributed to a person. Thus, no one is only female; they may also be, for example, young, and a person with a migration background. Regardless of whether one identifies with these categories, they affect how people are socialized, educated, and viewed and treated by others. How privileged a person is within a society, or what forms of discrimination one faces, also depends on these categories.

Furthermore, while a person may be privileged with respect to some or several social structure categories, they may still experience discrimination on the basis of one or more other categories. This is where the notion of intersectionality and, thus, the interaction of these categories, plays a major role (Crenshaw 2022). The approach of intersectionality is mostly described with the metaphor of a street crossing wherein different dimensions of inequality intersect (Crenshaw 1989). Thus, a black woman with a physical disability is exposed to discrimination and social exclusion not only through her disability, her gender, or her skin color, but through interactions between all three, as well as possibly other class-specific dimensions of disadvantage. Intersectionality as a theoretical perspective represents the development of multidimensional analyses of parallel and thus complex relations of discrimination (Combahee River Collective 2015). Theories of intersectionality also draw on social structural categories in their analysis, reflection, and conceptualization of intertwined forms of domination. With regard to PRC, it is of central importance that social living conditions and personal identities are not analyzed in isolation from existing power and domination relations. Inclusion in and exclusion from specific activities must be understood as a complex interaction of privileges and forms of discrimination within a society (Crenshaw 2022).

Social living conditions

Following Ganz and Hausotter’s (2020) work, we define “social living conditions” as those structures that materialize in norms and values (processes) that are relevant for a person’s decisions and resulting behavior. Social living conditions include those structures and processes that shape a person’s behavior through explicit and implicit processes and rules (e.g., norms and beliefs in faith communities or subcultures). In contrast, we see the framework component “Transforming Structures and Processes (TSP)” rather as a framework of orientation for a society as a whole (e.g., national jurisdiction) or a group thereof (municipal regulations). TSP, as defined in the classical SLF, contemplates private organizations as well as executive authorities or judicial bodies, and its associated processes range from international legislation to subcultural norms and beliefs (DFID, 1999). Accordingly, the TSP represents an all-encompassing set of rules (process) that regulates the interaction of all actors present (structure) in a given context (e.g., country or community). As such, they can have a direct impact on a person’s behavior (e.g., a trade ban on a certain good that is not planted as a result). However, not all of these structures and processes are equally important for a person’s behavior. Therefore, we propose to group the structures and processes that are particularly relevant for an individual into a separate framework component: the social living condition. However, the TSP and social living conditions are interrelated and, accordingly, should not be understood as independent. For example, national legislation can shape the rules and values of local associations, which, in turn, are relevant for its members. In democratic, organized societies, this influence can also be made reciprocal through political participation (initiatives and referendums) or political protests and social movements that potentially affect voting behavior of representatives (Madestam et al. 2013) or influence public opinions (Banaszak and Ondercin 2016). TSP may also have impact groups by addressing them directly, which may influence their function. For example, national programs can empower a particular group to make decisions that contradict the norms and values of social living conditions.

Nevertheless, consensus is not an imperative, as the two sub-components may also conflict with each other. For example, boy preference, as described by Sen (1999), may prevail in a family due to traditional norms and values, even though gender equality is guaranteed as a constitutional right at the national level. In this example, it is not the national constitution that is responsible for a person’s actions but the norms and values rooted in the personal social structure. As with the TSP, the personal social structure can extend over several temporal scales. Temporal scales mean that past processes, for example, the norms and values imparted in childhood, might still be decisive for an adult’s behavior since these were incorporated (Traue 2005).

Personal identity

The term and concept of identity are discussed controversially in social science (Eickelpasch and Rademacher 2013). We use the term personal identity to refer to the fact that social structure categories are constitutive of a person’s identity and that this identity is mainly based on an external attribution on one or more of these categories, regardless of whether the persons concerned also identify with these categories.

Personal identity (and the potentially resulting intersectionality) can have a significant impact on a person’s agency, potential discrimination, and the privileges they face (Winkler and Degele 2009), for example, by being decisive about whether a particular process affects a particular person (e.g., if women are not allowed to pursue higher education or if they are generally allowed but doing so would break gender norms and result in sanctions or the social control of school attendance). A concrete example of how this affects people’s ability to transform their livelihood assets into outcomes is access to social capital. On some of the islands we studied in Vanuatu, it was difficult for women who migrated from other islands to benefit from existing social structures, at least at the beginning of their stay on the new island. First, they do not have access to some (mostly traditional) male-dominated structures because of their gender. Second, participation in women’s associations is also perceived by some women as difficult, primarily but not exclusively due to their lack of language skills. However, such discrimination may also apply to men. On most of the islands we visited, a man can, for example, not join women’s savings groups. His only option is to join a (locally perceived) less successful men’s savings group. A single man, because of his gender, therefore has less (potential) financial capital than a woman does. Such discrimination may also arise from national legislation that discriminates against a particular group of people on the basis of gender, sexuality, or origin.

Identity-forming social structure categories such as gender or age and the associated affiliations and social roles, expectations, and identities may also influence the choice of functionings (and thus also what is considered a desirable quality of life), as they tend to attribute certain characteristics to certain beings and doings. For example, the low percentage of female pilots worldwide is certainly not due to the intrinsic refusal of women to exercise this profession but rather a result of stereotypical role models and associated societal expectations. In Vanuatu, contrary to men, none of the women interviewed in the study stated that they fished for any other reason (e.g., leisure activities) than for food or for resale. In addition, as mentioned earlier, women indicated that they would never fish from a motorized boat because doing so and driving boats (like driving cars) would not be consistent with locally prevalent social norms.

Discussion

Access to and conversion of livelihood assets is a matter of institutional structures that facilitate the allocation of capital. However, it is also a matter of a person’s social living conditions and identity. For they may (a) hinder or prevent the emergence of the function that would have led to a specific livelihood strategy with the corresponding resource requirements or (b) limit or strengthen a person’s physical and social capabilities required to pursue a particular livelihood strategy or to access livelihood assets. When analyzing a system or developing measures to change a system, all these aspects need to be taken into account. For example, to increase livelihood resilience through a greater diversity of livelihood strategies, it is not sufficient to merely increase the range of assets and create the necessary institutional structures for their distribution. It is also necessary to overcome the many explicit and implicit (i.e., social) barriers that prevent a person or group of people from accessing and using resources. In other words, what needs to happen is exactly what Morse and McNamara (2013) and other authors suggest: putting people back at the center.

People-centered analysis would enable measures such as those for adaptation to climate change to be better aligned with the realities of those affected. For example, vulnerability analyses often assume that communities or women and men form more or less homogeneous groups. However, particularly in times of crisis, socioculturally determined exclusions can impede both access to resources and ways out of vulnerability by privileging certain groups over others (Kadetz and Mock 2018). Such inequalities have been and continue to be largely ignored in disaster and vulnerability research (Kadetz and Mock 2018). PCR aims to refine the analysis to enable identifying possible discrimination caused by individual personal identities (e.g., class, ethnicity, age, sexuality) and incorporating it into planning interventions. The current SLF cannot adequately support such an analysis because of its lack of focus on people.

We believe that complementing the SLF with the PRC will make such an analysis more feasible. The two attributes of the PRC address the individual persons and/or social structure categories, as well as the social living conditions that form the frame of orientation that guides human action. In this way, the PCR takes into account the fact that agency is not exclusively determined by personal—supposedly individual—characteristics, but also by the social structure categories and thus the social position attributed to the person on the basis of these characteristics (Reckwitz 2012; Scherr, 2012). Subjects are embedded in structures, and so are their actions. The capacity to act and the resulting capability to access and transform livelihoods should accordingly not be individualized. Instead, they should be considered from the perspective of power and power relations. This point is crucial, as gender and other categories are not personal or individual characteristics but social structure categories. As such, social structure categories determine exclusions, inclusions, and agency (Crenshaw 2022). Gender itself, for example, is not a factor of vulnerability, but gender (as well as all other social structure categories) determines a person’s social living conditions. These conditions—embedded in power and domination relations—determines the vulnerability and agency of a person and/or a social group. Therefore, agency and vulnerability should be viewed as complex interactions between the individual and societal interdependencies (Scherr, 2012). Accordingly, measures to reduce livelihood vulnerability should not simply be gender-specific per se or specific to another structural category but should address the social life conditions of the people affected and the power relations inherent to it. We argue that the addition of the PCR component to the framework allows for a more nuanced representation of these dynamics.

The expansion and partial redesign also lead to an increase in the complexity of the analysis and, consequently, the conclusions that can be drawn with the framework. This presents a challenge. Since the proposed version of the framework is still a relatively simple and structured approach to livelihood analysis, this supposed simplicity may tempt the user to work through the individual components in the form of a checklist. This may lead to a too-simple analysis of the individual components, and especially of the dynamics between the components. A comprehensive and in-depth analysis, in turn, runs the risk of getting lost in the complexity inherent in the system that the framework represents. In order not to fall into a “holistic trap, where everything is linked to everything else,” (Friis 2019), and thus where every factor, no matter how small, is considered an important determinant of livelihoods, a number of analytical choices need to be made. In particular, it is important to set clear temporal and spatial scales. We regard balancing the impact of these spatial-scale choices on the analysis as one of the major challenges in applying the framework. The choice of system boundaries depends, in turn, on the epistemic interest of the analysis. This interest and the questions derived from it also inform which component of the framework should be the focus of the analysis.

This framework is based on a theoretical reflection of the literature and two case studies. To consolidate the robustness of the proposed changes, we encourage researchers and practitioners alike to test the new approach.

Conclusion

In this paper, we have introduced the Personal Realization Capability (PRC) as a complementary component to the SLF as an analytical tool for vulnerability assessment. The aim of PRC is to explicate a person’s ability in the SLF to make purposeful choices that are fundamental to accessing and converting potentially available resources into desired livelihood outcomes, and thus to responding to and coping with vulnerability factors.

This capability depends on identity-forming socio-structural categories, such as gender or age, and on the social living conditions in which a choice is made, and thus on the norms, structures and power relations in which a person is integrated. Only where these two attributes are not mutually exclusive does personal realization capability exist.

We argue that in contrast to the existing SLF, the proposed extension allows for a differentiated consideration of social living conditions and personal identities in order to better analyze how these attributes shape and influence the scope of action of individuals or groups, especially when dealing with vulnerability.

However, the difficulty of delineating systems, as well as spatial and temporal boundaries, poses a significant challenge to the application of the framework. We encourage researchers and practitioners alike to test the new approach to consolidate the robustness of the proposed changes.