PEAT TURF, SEAWEED, AND THE ‘POOL OF HELP’ ECONOMY: TRACING THE SOCIAL LIVES OF NATURAL RESOURCES ON LETTERMORE ISLAND, GALWAY

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on the island of Lettermore, this paper catalogues a historical network of resource exchange between island, coastal, and mainland communities on the southwestern coast of Galway, and discusses the social construction of group identities and communitas in this region. Under conditions of material scarcity, people on Lettermore perform a ‘transmutation’ of the material into the social. The example of peat turf shows how, through customary processes of labour, exchange, and use, natural resources are subsumed into a pool-like economy of social support for members of the island community and outsiders on the island to draw upon as need arises.