Socio-cultural Processes and Livelihood Patterns at Tirurangadi - CDS

laboring groups become the central agencies for such collective action, and they will be
the beneficiaries also.
Another important human agency will be women. In any perspective of this kind,
household labor will become public, social labor, and direct intervention of women in
public labor becomes necessary. Now there are several efforts to develop the
participation of women, the so-called ‘empowerment’ strategies, but the aim should be
that women should become the major agency in the labor process. It should be
remembered that women did intervene in the public labor process than the present milieu;
the human geographical perspective would envisage the restoration and expansion of
woman’s agency in the process of production and distribution. It should be remembered
that we are only trying to actualize what lay hidden among the laboring people, as it was
suppressed by the patriarchic conception of a household. The initial step in this direction
would be to conceive of the household as a production unit, or rather conceive of a
landscape as consisting of production and distribution units, in which women come to
play the central role. Women producer’s Co-operative societies, women’s production
units and household industrial units may be conceived of. The self –help groups may also
be redesigned as production and distribution networks.
The third human agency is the young people. It is possibly impossible to convince a
modern employee to any conception of what sustainable livelihood means, but it is still
possible to persuade the young people to choose one, by giving him or her the necessary
training and confidence. We call this education. The present education system whether it
is run by religious agencies or the Government caters to the ideological requirements of
dominant social and political agencies including community agencies and that of the
requirements dictated by market forces. It has never addressed the question of knowledge
and skills required by the ordinary laborer. Hence, it is important that the young people