Communal approaches to natural resource management are the subject of this article for three reasons. Firstly, it is a topic for other articles in this special issue of the Journal and was earlier addressed in symposium presentations. Secondly, having grown in the last two decades from a relatively untested conceptual stance to the status of conventional wisdom in much development discourse, communal approaches are under attack, both from donor agencies impatient with the lack of evidence of immediate and positive results and from scholarship in the narrative-counter-narrative mode. The topic is thus likely to be prominent in academic and development discourse in the next few years. Finally, my choice has been dictated by the broader significance of the topic for the evolution of governance in Africa. What is happening in communal approaches to natural resource management provides in large measure a surrogate picture of elements of this evolution, and until we grasp this our analysis will be blinkered by a focus on element, to the exclusion of essence.