Household adaptive capacity: a social networks approach in rural South Africa

Abstract

This article explores social network analysis (SNA) as a means to revise and expand the concept of adaptive capacity in household-level research on climate change adaptation. SNA has recently been integrated into research on adaptive capacity in the global change sciences, but often not at the household level. The methodology relies heavily on measuring food, money, wood and water, labour, and information about disease exchanges between households, all of which are referenced in previous work on adaptation in the developing world. The regional focus is the rural Eastern Cape of South Africa but results have wider geographic application. Results bring into question assumptions about adaptive capacity’s relationship to network centrality, one of the most common measures in SNA. This is particularly where exchanges of wood and water and the information about disease are concerned. In the case of the former, results controvert contemporary work on livelihoods and natural resource dependence, while the latter points to a need for further clarification on when households share information about their ill health. The use of network variables combined with other methods may allow for a more concrete understanding of household adaptive capacity in the rural developing world.