198
indigenous communities’ native to Baja California, the complexity of social and
economic problems that arise can be attenuated if project proposals emanate from
the same community, respecting the traditional social organization and family organization during their implementation. Our results provide elements to design and
evaluate public policies on indigenous issues at the local level, so it is suggested that
the indicators proposed in this research be contrasted with other rural indigenous
communities of the drylands.
Keywords Sustainable development · Rural public policy · Interdisciplinary
indicators · Mexican indigenous people · Baja California
Introduction
In terms of cultural identity, apart from the social and anthropological elements that
give a group the keys to be unique are the links with the environment and the use of
ecosystem services. This is a specific idea of what cultural identity is, provided that
the concept and the idea of the environment is integrated into social and anthropological aspects. In addition to the above, the self-perception of indigenous communities leads to identify elements that describe their relationships with the environment
and, therefore, identify themselves as part of nature, as an element that interacts, or
on the other hand, a superior element owner of natural resources (Pretty et al. 2009).
This construction of cultural identity tends to be inclusive (social and environmental
aspects) in order to generate a clear and unarguable culturalism concept that is useful to represent the essence of a native community. The culturalism is an idea of the
self-perception including those elements that are relevant to explain the history and
values of a society or a community, and the relationships forged with the natural
surroundings. While cultural identity is recognizable and understandable, intercultural will be possible to explain it as the relationship that arises from interactions
between individuals and groups with particular cultural identities (Grimson 2001).
It is important to observe the issues that arise from intercultural and interpret them
through a comparative process to explain the relevance of the environment, how this
is integrated into the economic cycle, how different communities explain their perception of the ecosystem, and how they perceive themselves in the environment.
Therefore, the techniques used in an intercultural research become extremely
important in order to obtain satisfactory communication.
To improve intercultural relations among researchers, developers, and the local
people that will benefit from the project outcomes, a new way of starting project
design has been proposed recently. Co-design and co-generation of knowledge is
fully recommended (Schuttenberg and Guth 2015) and researchers from the human
sciences become key persons in the research teams. In this chapter we selected a
study case to show how traditional ethno-ecological studies start, how it changed
while doing it, and how it must be developed if applied by the communities themselves. The research started by a question developed by a student (first author) as the
D. Galván-Martínez et al.
indigenous communities’ native to Baja California, the complexity of social and
economic problems that arise can be attenuated if project proposals emanate from
the same community, respecting the traditional social organization and family organization during their implementation. Our results provide elements to design and
evaluate public policies on indigenous issues at the local level, so it is suggested that
the indicators proposed in this research be contrasted with other rural indigenous
communities of the drylands.
Keywords Sustainable development · Rural public policy · Interdisciplinary
indicators · Mexican indigenous people · Baja California
Introduction
In terms of cultural identity, apart from the social and anthropological elements that
give a group the keys to be unique are the links with the environment and the use of
ecosystem services. This is a specific idea of what cultural identity is, provided that
the concept and the idea of the environment is integrated into social and anthropological aspects. In addition to the above, the self-perception of indigenous communities leads to identify elements that describe their relationships with the environment
and, therefore, identify themselves as part of nature, as an element that interacts, or
on the other hand, a superior element owner of natural resources (Pretty et al. 2009).
This construction of cultural identity tends to be inclusive (social and environmental
aspects) in order to generate a clear and unarguable culturalism concept that is useful to represent the essence of a native community. The culturalism is an idea of the
self-perception including those elements that are relevant to explain the history and
values of a society or a community, and the relationships forged with the natural
surroundings. While cultural identity is recognizable and understandable, intercultural will be possible to explain it as the relationship that arises from interactions
between individuals and groups with particular cultural identities (Grimson 2001).
It is important to observe the issues that arise from intercultural and interpret them
through a comparative process to explain the relevance of the environment, how this
is integrated into the economic cycle, how different communities explain their perception of the ecosystem, and how they perceive themselves in the environment.
Therefore, the techniques used in an intercultural research become extremely
important in order to obtain satisfactory communication.
To improve intercultural relations among researchers, developers, and the local
people that will benefit from the project outcomes, a new way of starting project
design has been proposed recently. Co-design and co-generation of knowledge is
fully recommended (Schuttenberg and Guth 2015) and researchers from the human
sciences become key persons in the research teams. In this chapter we selected a
study case to show how traditional ethno-ecological studies start, how it changed
while doing it, and how it must be developed if applied by the communities themselves. The research started by a question developed by a student (first author) as the
D. Galván-Martínez et al.