Community Profiling: From Technique to Reflective Practice in Community Engagement for Natural Resource Management

Abstract

Community profiling is a tool that aims to help practitioners collect and make use of varied data to understand the diversity of stakeholders and issues in communities where they are delivering natural resource management programs. This paper will discuss some of the problems experienced with community profiling and propose a shift in the way in which this tool is used. We present our reflections on two case studies of the use of community profiling in NRM programs where two of the authors were involved as practitioners. Community profiling practice in the case studies was problematic. Profilers were forced to choose between multiple constructions of the communities they were profiling. We raise significant concerns with community profiling but do not suggest abandoning the methodology altogether. We highlight the potential of the methodology to make visible multiple constructions of community and thus generate new potentiality to act by contributing to reflective practice.