Concluding Thoughts 325
what?” (Bannister, 2004, p. 3). This is not to say that communities, as bounded
groups with a clear sense of territorial possession and traditional institutions, are
solely things of fiction – or social construction at best. Rosemary J. Coombe has
warned against two possible shortcomings: “simple allegations of essentialism
(strategic or otherwise), sitings of social construction, and accusations of romanticism” – as both “[…] reveal a profound lack of political sensitivity to the fields
of power and leverage in which peoples struggle for recognition, resources, and
opportunity” (Coombe, 2011, p. 85).
To prevail over these shortcomings, the concept of “community of interest”
(“Gesellschaft” in Tönnies’ (2001) analytic) is of some help. The point is not to
signal the existence of different types of communities as in Tönnies’ writing,
but to take into account the fact that a BCP/CP arises out of certain types of
interests that the community’s members might not equally share. As the BCP
drafted by the Kukula Traditional Health Practitioners Association (Parks, 2019,
p. 80) or the Lamu County Biocultural Community Protocol (Chapter 11, this
book) illustrate, a tension permeates the collective. Here, a community shows
its Janus-faced nature: it stands as a “site of regulation and management” as much
as “a source of identity and a repository of tradition; the embodiment of various
institutions […]” (Watts, 2000, p. 37 italics in original). The truth is that a “community” is never “out there”, but continually negotiated and actualised in its
flexible borders, membership, and institutional structures. “Political dilemmas”,
“livelihood struggles”, “environmental needs”, and “local aspirations” (Coombe,
2011, p. 85) may be pulling inwards towards the ethnic core, but constant assembling and continuous reassembling, at times fuelled by engagement with external
actors (Almeida, 2017), speak to the fragility of a community. In the Malagasy
case presented in Manohisoa Rakotondrabe and Fabien Girard’s chapter, this
process of tension and emergence manifests through elite appropriation, institutional reconfiguring, and social exclusion. This highlights the fact that the
identification of different interests and their repartition inside the community
involved should be considered when working towards the success of a BCP/CP.
Biocultural Jurisprudence, Sovereignty and Legal Subjectivity
This last and shorter part of this book is intended as an avenue to new issues and
ideas that could emerge with the wide-ranging development of BCPs/CPs and
to provide a platform for a more critical appraisal of the philosophy underlying
these protocols. We also seek to examine the main question implicitly addressed
throughout the book: how effective are BCPs/CPs as political tools in the context of strengthening IPLCs’ rights and making more room for self-policy,
self-governance, and bottom-up decision-making? As BCPs/CPs are always initiated by external actors and developed with their help, what community-level
interventions and changes have multilateral agencies, developments institutions,
NGOs, and facilitators (even inadvertently) prompted? Does the emphasis on
stewardship and tradition conceal a new kind of politics of control, managerial
what?” (Bannister, 2004, p. 3). This is not to say that communities, as bounded
groups with a clear sense of territorial possession and traditional institutions, are
solely things of fiction – or social construction at best. Rosemary J. Coombe has
warned against two possible shortcomings: “simple allegations of essentialism
(strategic or otherwise), sitings of social construction, and accusations of romanticism” – as both “[…] reveal a profound lack of political sensitivity to the fields
of power and leverage in which peoples struggle for recognition, resources, and
opportunity” (Coombe, 2011, p. 85).
To prevail over these shortcomings, the concept of “community of interest”
(“Gesellschaft” in Tönnies’ (2001) analytic) is of some help. The point is not to
signal the existence of different types of communities as in Tönnies’ writing,
but to take into account the fact that a BCP/CP arises out of certain types of
interests that the community’s members might not equally share. As the BCP
drafted by the Kukula Traditional Health Practitioners Association (Parks, 2019,
p. 80) or the Lamu County Biocultural Community Protocol (Chapter 11, this
book) illustrate, a tension permeates the collective. Here, a community shows
its Janus-faced nature: it stands as a “site of regulation and management” as much
as “a source of identity and a repository of tradition; the embodiment of various
institutions […]” (Watts, 2000, p. 37 italics in original). The truth is that a “community” is never “out there”, but continually negotiated and actualised in its
flexible borders, membership, and institutional structures. “Political dilemmas”,
“livelihood struggles”, “environmental needs”, and “local aspirations” (Coombe,
2011, p. 85) may be pulling inwards towards the ethnic core, but constant assembling and continuous reassembling, at times fuelled by engagement with external
actors (Almeida, 2017), speak to the fragility of a community. In the Malagasy
case presented in Manohisoa Rakotondrabe and Fabien Girard’s chapter, this
process of tension and emergence manifests through elite appropriation, institutional reconfiguring, and social exclusion. This highlights the fact that the
identification of different interests and their repartition inside the community
involved should be considered when working towards the success of a BCP/CP.
Biocultural Jurisprudence, Sovereignty and Legal Subjectivity
This last and shorter part of this book is intended as an avenue to new issues and
ideas that could emerge with the wide-ranging development of BCPs/CPs and
to provide a platform for a more critical appraisal of the philosophy underlying
these protocols. We also seek to examine the main question implicitly addressed
throughout the book: how effective are BCPs/CPs as political tools in the context of strengthening IPLCs’ rights and making more room for self-policy,
self-governance, and bottom-up decision-making? As BCPs/CPs are always initiated by external actors and developed with their help, what community-level
interventions and changes have multilateral agencies, developments institutions,
NGOs, and facilitators (even inadvertently) prompted? Does the emphasis on
stewardship and tradition conceal a new kind of politics of control, managerial