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Organizational Change and Adaptation: Community Cooperatives and Capital Control in the Western Isles of Scotland
Author(s) -
Prattis J. Iain
Publication year - 1987
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1525/aa.1987.89.3.02a00020
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , politics , unrest , social capital , capital (architecture) , transformative learning , sociology , economic system , political economy , political science , economics , geography , social science , pedagogy , archaeology , law
The community cooperative on Barra (Western Isles of Scotland) expanded in 1984 to incorporate a limited company—Iasg Bharraidh—whose major purpose was the collective marketing of shellfish for island fishermen. This response to falling prices for shellfish involved the substitution of collective activity for individualistic marketing, and other adaptations to a wider economic system beyond their control. The history of the shellfish industry and the community cooperative will be given to provide context for an evolving marketing structure. The limited company is analyzed in terms of a transitional organization designed to permit the community to adapt to changing conditions in the wider political economy. Considerations of risk, technological change, resource conservation, and community dynamics are introduced, to indicate that cooperative organizations in peripheral areas perform very complex functions, not the least of which is to alleviate social unrest in the periphery. Cooperatives have both transformative and resistive roles. This paper tries to elucidate some of the factors that locate the Barra community cooperative within a strategy of transformation rather than that of resistance to wider social, economic, and political constraints.