LIVING THROUGH CRISES: AN OVERVIEW
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Customary and localized sources of support were considerably more widespread and typically more substantial determinants of resilience against economic shocks than formal social protection systems. The reason is partly that coverage continues to be inadequate to protect all vulnerable groups against covariate shocks, such as food price spikes, and partly that official social protection and emergency coping measures are sometimes triggered after a shock, rather than acting as automatic stabilizers. A related finding was that where formal social protection was covering the population, serious design flaws limited its effectiveness (see Davies 2011). Informal sources of support included help with jobs and migration networks, meals, or small loans from friends and neighbors; private charitable support through faith-based or community institutions; and traditional assistance to beggars and other vulnerable groups. The research also confirmed certain known limitations of informal social protection systems. Some of the very poorest people were left unprotected by the informal safety nets, even where the safety nets were reasonably comprehensive, because the people were outsiders. They could be migrants, members of socially excluded groups, or in other respects not considered members of the moral community protected by the safety net, such as members of another faith. In addition, the covariate nature of the globalized crises meant that betteroff groups within the communities were themselves facing economic stress and were less able to provide the customary level of charitable assistance to poor people in hardship.
Attribution in an Era of Complex Shocks In an era of complex globalized crises, direct attribution between individual global shock waves and local hardships is difficult. We cannot assert with confidence which shock caused which hardships because the nature of the research was never designed for attributing causality. It is also because of the way different local and global shock waves interact (see also McGregor, Hossain, and Butters 2010). First, many hardships were often indirectly linked to global crises and in ways dimly perceived by respondents. Poor people’s lives often consist of continuous episodes of shocks and coping, which may include rebuilding their livelihoods after natural disasters and dealing with food price inflation, political upheavals, and severe illness or death of family members. Kenya has been suffering from the effects of the political violence of