Variations on an entrepreneurial ethos: Work and culture in the logging and non-timber harvesting industries of British Columbia's North Okanagan/Shuswap

Social scientists studying environmental conflicts in developed countries have often suggested that cultural differences between competing social groups are an important factor shaping such disputes. This thesis is an ethnographic essay that applies Fredrik Barth's concepts of entrepreneurialism, social group formation and social identity in an attempt to investigate the processes that generate cultural views within one category of environmental stakeholders; commercial forest harvesting entrepreneurs in British Columbia's North Okanagan/Shuswap region. The thesis analyzes the exchanges that logging and non-timber harvesting entrepreneurs engage in with workers, customers, government officials, members of rival interest groups, and the general public, all of which influence their cultural values. The thesis argues that the cultural values generated within the regional commercial forest harvesting industry form a consistent ethos, albeit one with variation between specific types of contractors and small-business owners.