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or political boundaries, shared resources or knowledge, concerns or views about shared threats or
opportunities, and shared visions, aims, or plans.
All communities are dynamic. Discussions of self-definition and changing identities should not be seen as
either new or inherently threatening to traditional institutions. The broader aim is to mobilize people
around shared identities, visions, and plans and empower them to address both threats and opportunities
emerging from interactions with external actors. The following boxes provide guiding questions for
discussion in order to define and communicate who and what comprises the community.
Defining Community
How do you define your community? How do you decide who is included in and excluded? This
self-definition may include more than one of the examples outlined above, including within
different contexts, or other characteristics entirely.
What is the story about the origins or history of your community? What is its significance for
your present way of life?
What are your community’s core values? What is their significance for your present way of life?
Communicating Community
Within your community, how are identity and core values passed on and reinforced? How are
they conveyed to outsiders? Is anyone in particular responsible for these processes? How have
they changed over time?
How could these processes be drawn on to communicate your identity and core values in the
community protocol?
COMMUNITY EXPERIENCE:
Defining ‘Community’ through Shared Identity as Traditional Health Practitioners in South Africa
Resource: Biocultural Protocol of the Traditional Health Practitioners of Bushbuckridge (available at
www.community-protocols.org under “Community Protocols”)
In the area of Bushbuckridge, South Africa, traditional health practitioners contribute greatly their
villages’ health and wellbeing. However, their traditional knowledge and practices are being
undermined by outside pressures such as the degradation of medicinal plants. A group spread across a
large number of villages and from two different language groups came together to define themselves as
a community of traditional health practitioners. They did this to assert their rights under a new national
law and to seek recognition of and support for their shared knowledge and customary practices.
B.
MAPPING THE COMMUNITY’S NATURAL FOUNDATIONS
KEY READING
Part I: Section III
Part II: Section II (Introduction, Box 35-36)
KEY TOOLS
Identifying appropriate forms of resource
mapping
Community institutions sketch map
Community biodiversity registers
Historical timeline
Trend line analysis
Community visioning
Assessing key opportunities and threats
Participatory video
Photo stories
Audio interviews
The following boxes contain guiding questions for community discussion about their ways of life in
relation to territories and areas. Some of the topics may not be relevant (for example, if the community
does not keep livestock), so you may wish to read through them all first before beginning. In the