Fourth, the work demonstrates the dangers of pigeon-
holing families and their strategies. Households
with limited resources can achieve reasonable standards
of living. Households that diversify due to distress can
find themselves building progressively better and more
resilient livelihoods. Individuals who go against the
wishes of the wider household may end up supporting
that household during periods of crisis. More widely,
subsistence lifestyles may be supported by an intensifying
engagement with the market. Or, indeed, they may
be undermined. In other words, it is not possible to ‘read
off’, on the basis of a village’s or household’s resources
what their conditions are likely to be, nor their livelihood
transition. The Lao rural world is more complicated
than that.