decision-making, and resource flows (and the Incentive structures Valuing labor also affects its availability for various agriculassociated with them)? I will highlight six Issues: tural tasks. We have traditionally assumed there is low opportunity
cost for female labor. There are problems in the FSR process' Implicit
A. Defining the household: should It be defined in terms of its or explicit reliance on the market mechanism to value women's labor.
production, consumption, residences managerial, income or investment How should we analyze the labor displacement within household and lost
functions? Might It be useful to formulate tynolomles of household goods and services which may not be valued in the marketplace but have a
romposition as one criterian in selecting the sample within the high subsistence value?
recommendation domain?
E. Measuring resource flows within household. The intra-household
B. Defining the farming system: where to place the boundaries in incentive structure bears a crucial relationship to both the ability and
determining what is exogenous vs. endogenous to the system. How much do the willingness of the household and its members to adopt new
we need to know about the overall household produotion/consumption technologies. This relates back to the problem of utility functions and
system In order to specify a production subsystem on which to focus the of determining the household's objectives.
initial FSR inquiry? How can we determine the hierarchy of constraints
or needs? Gilbert, Norman et al have recognized, for example, the need F. Monitoring/evaluation of a new technology's impacts and distrito supplement analysis of crop production with an understanding of butional consequences within the household. Relevant evaluation
livestock production, marketing, and off-farm enterprises -- how, in criteria vary according to the perspective of different household
practical terms, can the system then be defined? This raises for us the members, since there may be conflicting interests if the new technology
challenge of partial farm vs. whole farm vs. whole household budget and requires allocation by individuals of additional labor, cash, or other
analysis. resources, which is not compensated by some share of the resulting
gains.
C. Defining the farmer: who is the appropriate declsion-maker with
respect to proposed intervention(s). Should one use labor inputs, vs Gender may play a central role In differentially allocating the
ownership vs. management vs. investment criteria for determining the fruits of innovation, especially when the sexual division of labor and
appropriate decision-maker? Here there are two methodological problems: economic responsibility is quite distinct.
1. Use of household head as a surrogate for aggregated How can we best monitor and assess the second-order consequences of
decision-making is a very gross oversimplification. The technological interventions, in terms of income, nutrition, workload,
literature is beginning to document quite clearly that many status, etc? For the purposes of FSR, it is important to know how the
households are not homogeneous decision-making units which household and its members have adjusted and reallocated their resources
maximize a joint utility function -- rather, a polygamous to accommodate the new technology.
household may be more like a series of small firms with
separate utility functions.
SUGGESTIONS FOR INCORPORATING IMPROVEDANALYSIS OF INTRA-I1OUSEHOLD
2. How should the practitioner deal with the problem of PROCESSES WITHIN THE FOUR-STAGE FSR PROCESS
multiple decision-makers, and with absent ones?
While we are still far from having streamlined, robust methD. Identifying sources of labor: who is going to do the work? odologies In our tool kit, there are feasible means to improve, at a
Measurement and valuation of labor by different categories of household minimum, our analysis of Intra-household factors within FSR frameworks
labor may be especially Important when labor is more of a key constraint currently being employed. My suggestions relate to the specific
than land. multi-stage FSR/E process.
Aggregating labor profiles of Individual family members to obtain (I) At the pre-diagnostic stage, it may be useful to
"household labor profile" essentially assumes that labor is absolutely conduct a complete review of the existing anthropological
substitable, but actually, there are significant sex differentials in and sociological literature which disaggregates the
labor bottlenecks over the season, due to the sexual division of labor, household's division of labor, decision-making patterns, and
We need to figure out how to better characterize sexual division of control of returns from production, for the specific sample
labor and measuring labor inputs, disaggregated by age and sex. areas to be studied (the recommendation domains, in the
CIMMYT terminology). This may suggest the most Important
intra-household interactions to be examined during the
Iterative research process which follows.
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