RESILIENCE ON THE MARGIN: LOCAL CULTURE IN A SMALL TOWN

This community study of a small, isolated fishing-logging village on the northwest coast of Canada focuses on internal struggles between 'local neo-indigenous' and 'mainstream-cosmopolitan' residents who have different conceptions of what kind of development would be desirable for the town. How this polarization could be understood in terms of class conflict between the neo-indigenous and labour-intensive independent commodity producers and mainstream residents involved in wage work or capital-intensive strategies, such as businessmen, professionals, and company employees, is first considered. Then, a series of confrontations and referendums during the period 1964-1976 which resulted in political victory for the local neo-indigenous raises the problem of explaining the victory of this 'class' which does not constitute a majority of the electorate. Contrary to many observer's predictions, numerous residents voted against their presumed 'class' interests. It is argued that local cultural factors played an important role in how these interests were perceived.; Participant observation, representative structured interviews, life histories, and the use of key informants both inside and outside the community were the methods used during 30 months of fieldwork. A combination of theoretical perspectives from cultural ecology, economic anthropology, social psychology, and sociology are used to explain how 'local culture' persists despite the continued loss of self-employment opportunities accompanying the urbanization and increased translocal control of the town. Local people are affected by a range of conditions which are not usually considered in macro-level analysis of these processes. They include (1) the ecology of fishing and logging as it relates to continued subsistence possibilities; (2) local mutual aid and non-monetary exchange outside the cash economy as supports to the self-sufficiency, independence, and work flexibility valued by the self-employed neo-indigenous; (4) in-migration patterns to the town, which in this case had already developed characteristics polar to the rest of the region.; The discussion of these four factors involves both a description of what 'local culture' is, and an analysis of ways in which residents who are mainstreamers by most criteria may, nevertheless, develop sympathy and attraction for the occupations and life styles of self-employed neo-indigenous, to the point of supporting them politically. In some cases mainstreamers opt for independent occupations involving downward mobility in socio-economic terms. A consideration of local cultural factors, however, makes such class changes understandable.; Thus the concept of 'local culture' is used to evaluate the importance of the local context in adaptation to ecological conditions and in formation of ideology and local social and economic organization. While the political economy and macro-level sociology perspectives analyze paths of probable development, an anthropological perspective demonstrates that the uneven, contradictory, and often paradoxical paths of development in many regions cannot be properly understood without reference to local cultural factors.