Summary This article examines practical methods which can assist the application of the environmental entitlements approach to field‐based situations. It introduces a ‘toolbox’ of methods relevant to livelihood analysis, environmental analysis and institutional analysis, and illustrates how they can be combined in innovative sequences to explore particular themes. Understanding complexity, diversity and dynamism is best acheived by combining multiple methods, and needs careful attention to sampling, scale and research setting. In the context of inevitable dilemmas about the relationship between research, participation and action, the environmental entitlements approach could, the article suggests, be applied within a variety of modes from more ‘extractive’ to more ‘activist’, depending on objectives and circumstances.