Core Values among Newfoundland Fishermen in the 1960s

Abstract

In this article the core values of fishermen on the South Coast of Newfoundland in the 1960's are compared with those of a farming/fishing population from the Blasket Islands off western Ireland from a generation earlier in time. The data from which the values are derived consists partly of autobiographical materials, but mainly was obtained through projective narrative tests based on those developed by Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck (1961). The author finds a considerable con gruence between the two populations, both in respect of the five values which were the basis of the Kluckhohn study, but also in respect of three others which have emerged in his own work. Resume: Dans cet article on compare les sentiments fondamentals des pecheurs de la c6te mdridionale de la Terre Nouvelle dans les anndes soixantes par rapport a ceux d'une population des cultivateurs et des pecheurs d'une generation d'auparavant qui habitait les lies de Blasket au large de LTrlande occidental. Les donndes dont ces sentiments sont denvds consistent en partie des matieres autobiographiques, mais on y a obtenu la plupart par les tests projectifs sous forme de r?cit qu'on a faconn? d'apr&s Kluckhohn et Strodtbeck (1961). L'auteur a trouv? un congruence considerable entre les deux populations et a regard des cinq sentiments qui se faisaient le base de l'&ude de Kluckhohn et a l'dgard des trois autres qui se sont d<5velopp?s de son propre travail. Over 25 years ago Florence Kluckhohn and her associates completed a pio neer study of the values of five neighbouring ethnic groups in the American southwest (Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck 1961). In this analysis they isolated five problem areas which they believed are common to all human groups, and referred to a sixth in a footnote, although they did not include this in their analysis. In a recent study of the fishermen/farmers of the (now abandoned) Irish island community of Great Blasket (Whitaker 1986) I have attempted to resurrect Kluckhohn's schema, using as my principal data the extraordinary autobiographies that were written by no less than four different members of that community, as well as the published letters of a fifth islander. This exer cise had been in my mind for some thirty years, since I had first visited those islands, which form the westernmost outlier of Europe, in 1954. I increas Anthropologica XXX (1988) 75-86