Local Responses to Global Change: Community Alternatives for ‘Good Living’ in Latin America - Impact of Global Changes on Mountains: Responses and Adaptation - page 384

of social and political organization, offer a realistic but challenging strategy
for local progress. These principles, widely agreed upon in broadly based
consultations among the communities, are: Autonomy, Solidarity, Self-
Suffi ciency, Productive Diversifi cation, and Sustainable Management of
Regional Resources. Their emphasis on local (regional) economies (rather
than larger units) and the use of traditional and agro-ecological approaches
in production and the integrated management of ecosystems are the basis
for their guarantee of a minimum standard of living for all their members
and a corresponding responsibility to participate, thus eliminating the
phenomenon of unemployment. An integral part of this approach is the
explicit rejection of the notion that people in rural communities conceive
of themselves exclusively as farmers, or even as resource managers; rather,
in these societies, it is more revealing to understand their decisions as the
result of a complex allocation of their time among numerous activities of
individual and collective benefi t.
Communality
There are a number of fundamental conceptual principles underlying the
organization of the societies involved in constructing structure capable
of moving towards the 'good life' (buen vivir) discussed in the Latin
American literature that are facilitating their efforts to transcend the
problems of poverty in their social reality, with a concomitant commitment
to productively incorporating all their members into socially useful forms
of participation. In the case of Mexico, these principles have been codifi ed
by a number of 'organic intellectuals' who have been actively involved in a
process of innovation as a part of the process for the consolidation of social
capacities in their communities, a self-conscious process of organization
contributing to strengthen tradition (Díaz 2007, Martínez Luna 2010). They
have coined the category 'communality' to encompass these principles, that
include: 1) Direct or participative democracy that defi nes and ratifi es the
political, cultural, social, civil, economic and religious aspects of society; 2)
The organization of community (collective) work; 3) Community possession
and control of land; 4) A common cosmology, including the notion of the
Earth as mother (Pachamama) and a respect for community leadership;
and 5) A common history and language. This development refl ects an
epistemological contribution that incorporates the appropriation of nature
in a dramatically different way than that conceived by the dominant
institutions of the western project of 'civilization' that is embedded in most
development programs (Diaz 2007: 38-39).
Communality, in this sense, is not simply the aggregation of individual
interests into a collective whole as suggested in the historical notion of