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The implementation of SAP and economic liberalisation throughout sub‐Saharan Africa during the last fifteen years has coincided with the rapid expansion of rural income diversification. Many analysts see income diversification as a vital coping strategy for the rural poor, while recognising that its growing incidence amongst all sections of the African rural population can serve as a mechanism for increasing wealth differentiation. The current income diversification and livelihoods literature primarily restricts itself to situational analysis underpinned by assumptions of economic optimization on the part of decision‐making households, while ignoring the broader process of depeasantization. Early agrarian change took the form of urban migration, funnelling labour from rural areas and creating an array of stimuli that acted indirectly upon village life. Rural income diversification adds a new, more immediate dimension. Villagers are now actively part of in situoccupational change that has far‐reaching implications for the social coherence of rural households and the political balance of local communities and nation‐states. Such profound transformation calls into question the ‘sustainability’ of rural livelihood strategies now being advocated by donor agencies as well as the relevance of delineating formal, informal and peasant sectors of the national economy.

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Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0022278X01003792How to cite this article: Deborah Fahy Bryceson (2002). Multiplex livelihoods in rural Africa: recasting the terms and conditions of gainful employment. Citing recent case study evidence from various parts of Africa, this article argues that the income diversification efforts of most rural dwellers over the past decade have been directed at meeting daily needs amidst declining returns to commercial agriculture. Individuals and households have experimented with new forms of livelihood, expanding their non-agricultural income sources, while retaining their base in subsistence farming. Various livelihood patterns are emerging, depending on historical, geographical and agroecological factors at local and national levels. Livelihood experimentation has catalysed overlapping arenas of dynamic change, notably disequilibria between households and individual members, tensions between generations, the recalibration of gender power balances, and a search for new social networks. So far this surge of livelihood ' multiplexity ' has not generated adequate overall levels of gainful employment, technical innovation, purchasing power or welfare improvement. Thus, probing the complex interplay of economic, social, cultural and political dynamics in rural Africa becomes all the more essential for effective policy formulation.