Recentering Resource-Based Livelihoods: Prosperity Beyond Extractivism and Pastoralism

This research note, informed by qualitative fieldwork with resource harvesters in Nova Scotia, explores the effect of economic change and ecological crisis, the outcomes of rural development strategies, and demographic shifts that have shaped the province's rural areas in recent years. It argues that our present moment is ripe with opportunities for a renewed sociological attention on livelihoods in this region, which should take as its focus the relationship that people, communities, and government have with their physical environment. Rural places tend to be valued for their natural endowments, either industrially extracted or preserved and sold as a pastoral idyll. Nova Scotia's recent past has exacerbated this bifurcation. New work is needed to help find prosperous ground beyond both tendencies. This note attempts to spark that effort.