Farmers' Livelihoods: A Market Embeddedness Perspective

Livelihood is a basic aspect in the process of humans maintaining their lives and seeking meaning.How to sustain livelihood for marginal farmers in the modernization process is an important social issue.Livelihoods research has making insistent contribution for this mission.The market economy system is being formed in society.As a tool of social integration and a way for humans to organize livelihood activities,the market economy is increasingly dominating in the process of social modernization.The one manifestation of this is that the market economy includes subsistence farmers into its scope of influence.This triggers some questions deserving to be answered.Firstly,what transformation dose happen to farmers' livelihoods under the influence of market economy? Secondly,how does the transformation of farmers' livelihoods change livelihoods' sustaining process? Thirdly,how can farmers sustain their livelihoods? Unfortunately,the extant livelihoods research can't provide effective responses to these questions.Answering the above questions will be conducive to comprehend the sustainability of farmers' livelihoods in social sense.It is feasible to explore the questions by the method of conducting field research in a village.The market is embedded in villagers' livelihoods in the process of commercialization of subsistence,which leads to the transformation of villagers' livelihoods.Livelihood is the practice process that actors make use of capabilities and livelihood capital by strategies to act on resources and opportunities for obtaining and maintaining a lifestyle based on living conditions under the impact of structural and institutional factors.Livelihood includes two aspects: life and production.Life is the driving force of production,and production is the basis of life.With the process of economic reform and open up in China,Xi Village,located in Huangzhong County,Qinghai Province,has being involved in the wave of market economy.Villagers as consumer have becoming the objects that commodities chase after.Multi-level consumption market makes increasingly diverse commodities easily accessible to villagers,and villagers' living conditions thus gain the possibility of becoming more convenient and comfortable.Villagers accept commodities as consumption materials in the process which mixes active and passive way.With the improvement of villagers' living conditions because of commodity consumption,the degree of commercialization of subsistence is gradually increasing.The consequence of this is that the market becomes a source of life's materials and its indispensable role is increasingly strengthened.The relationship between life and production in livelihood likes the two sides of one coin.The change of life's material source leads to production's material flow turn.The material relationship between production and life has evolving from direct to need to be linked through the market as an intermediate part,namely,production needs to rely on the market to realize the foundational role for life.As a result,the market is embedded in the livelihoods of villagers as “form”.The market becomes an almost indispensable element in the villagers' livelihoods,which is manifested in the form of the connection between individual and market.The obtainment of villagers' living conditions depends on market connection,and the realization of production's foundational role is the same.Therefore,the livelihoods of villagers have transformed from subsistence to market-dependent,and the sustainability of their livelihoods relies on market connection.Based on livelihood capital,villagers form market connection in production to sustain livelihood.Market connection in production shows up as a collection of business relation between producer and consumer.The establishment of market connection requires actor to possess the following four elements at the same time: firstly,to be able to perceive market demand;secondly,to be able to produce commodity that meets market demand;thirdly,to be able to establish spatial connection between commodity and specific market demand;fourthly,to be able to make exchange with consumer through commodity in market competition.The four elements continuously simultaneously occur,which indicates that market connection established by the actor in production is maintained.Villagers form market connection in production on the basis of the joint effect of their livelihood capital.Such examples include planting carrots for commercial purpose and producing copperware.As the one kind of livelihood capital,social capital not only can promote the formation of market connection due to its basic character of social relation,but also dose have a positive impact on other kinds of livelihood capital.The salient influence of social capital shows that the market is also embedded in the livelihoods of villagers as “substance”.Market connection formed by the villagers in production is affected by the market competition situation,which is concentratedly reflected in the comparative situation of villagers' livelihood capital.For this,the end of planting carrots for commercial purpose and the decline of producing copperware in Xi Village are clear illustrations.The relative lack of livelihood capital of villagers indicates that the social sustainability of livelihoods is at risk.Briefly,the conclusions are as follows: firstly,farmers' livelihoods transform from subsistence to market-dependent as the result of that the market is embedded in livelihood,the social sustainability of individual's livelihood depends on the existence of market connection;secondly,based on the joint effect of livelihood capital,farmers form market connection in production to sustain livelihood;thirdly,the effect of livelihood capital is influenced by the situation of market competition;fourthly,social capital as one kind of livelihood capital has prominent significance for farmers to form market connection.The conclusions not only contribute to the improvement of Sustainable Livelihood Framework,but also provide some reflections on rural development.There are also some deficiencies in this research.