SOCIAL EXCHANGES AND COLLECTIVE IDENTITY IN INDUSTRIAL-SYSTEMS

For about ten years now, scholars have been trying to find the equivalent of central Italy's local industrial systems in France. Observations in France by the author and his colleagues serve to analyze how such systems work. Collective identity seems fundamental. It is not so important whether or not it is local: nonlocalized professional systems in a small territory may work in the same way-one based on social exchanges that are more far-reaching and flexible than economic transactions alone. What is given in return is not given immediately; and the specific endebted person is not pointed out, since the whole community is responsible for seeing to it that the implicit social rules are followed that guarantee its survival.