Serious Games in Livelihood Analysis: Reflections from the Case of Agricultural Wage Labourers in Andhra Pradesh

This article presents an approach to anticipating future livelihood portfolios through Sherry Ortner's model of 'serious games'. The value of the model is to draw attention to the (always shifting) purposes and intentions that direct people's lives, within a social, cultural and material context that differentially constrains and enables. Power is central to the approach, and to the understanding of processes of social reproduction and transformation. I use the model of serious games to examine the proposition that agricultural labour will become less important in the diverse livelihood portfolios of the rural poor in Telangana region, Andhra Pradesh, India.