TY - JOUR AB - <p>Rural livelihood strategies that engage in criminalised activities and hidden economies are an important, yet understudied, aspect of achieving economic diversification. This paper discusses findings from a project that examined the role and importance of cannabis cultivation, as a criminalised cash crop, in Lesotho. The research employed a multi-strategy approach that combined qualitative and quantitative methodologies. Cannabis income was found to play a very important role in economic and livelihood diversification in the study area. The paper concludes that cannabis production, as an extra-legal livelihood strategy, should be viewed by policy makers using a livelihoods focus, rather than a criminal one, if rural smallholders are not to be further marginalised by drug control policies.</p> AU - Julian Bloomer DA - 2009/12// DO - 10.2458/v16i1.21691 IS - 1 VL - 16 PB - University of Arizona Libraries PY - 2009 TI - Using a political ecology framework to examine extra-legal livelihood strategies: a Lesotho-based case study of cultivation of and trade in cannabis T2 - Journal of Political Ecology UR - http://journals.librarypublishing.arizona.edu/jpe/article/id/1824/ ER -