of innovations in general demonstrates
that commitment to an undertaking,
regardless of what stimulates it, is more
important to the success of a project than
skills and competence, which can be
learned (Leonard and Marshall 1982).
Implementation of Social
Control Mechanisms
In many societies worldwide, levelling
mechanisms are fundamental in
controlling the individual and in
functioning to maintain community social
order and social status ranking. An
individual is prevented by a variety of
social pressures, obligations, proscriptions
and punishments from advancing
economically beyond his or her defined
social role. On the contrary, people are
commonly enmeshed by sets of reciprocal
rewards for conduct appropriate to their
social status. As a consequence, in many
developing-country societies, an individual
who decides to devote time to economically
productive activities, as opposed to socially
productive activities, is commonly
regarded as a deviant who must bear heavy
social costs.
Individuals and households incur
additional risks by participating in a
collective aquaculture enterprise that they
would not face in private undertakings.
These are no different from the additional
risks encountered in any collective
innovation. Especially important is the
individual's perception of the balance of
costs and benefits (rewards), or
"distributive justice", among all
participants (Popkin 19791. Participants
tend to avoid situations perceived as being
unfair and to seek out those with a clear
demonstration of equity (Homans 1961).
Perceptions that a group endeavor has
obvious winners and losers can torpedo
the undertaking in the short term and,
worse, lead to long-term and profound
social upheaval within a community.Social controls, levelling mechanisms,
or sanctions are widely applied to either
households or individuals within
communities when a majority perceives
that wealth accumulation by a few
members is to the detriment of the gr~~,
To prevent such an occurrence from
causing deep discord, some objective
criterion of balance or distributive justice
is generally recognized,
Thus, the rules of access to a collective
or common property resource must depend
on some invariable criteria. In aquaculture
this might be, for example, distribution of
harvest share proportionate to units of
labor supplied. However, a system of
benefits strictly proportionate to inputs
does not recognize inherent inequalities of
individual or household energy, talent, or
motivation, or the ability of a deprived
household to supply labor. The
enforcement of strict equity principles
could therefore lead to resentment. This
may be managed, as on community
managed aquaculture projects in Panama
(Molnar et al. 1985), for example, by
informal compensatory mechanisms,
which, despite the normatively mandated
equal rewards, distribute the harvest by
size and quality classes according to
individual inputs. In other communal
aquaculture projects in PanamA, records
arekept to apportion accurately the harvest
benefit by labor input (Molnar et al. 1985).
Also inPanama, conforming to the rules of
the rural culture, which are enforced by
peer pressure, a greater share of the
harvest than is mandated by input is
obtained by impoverished families, the
infirm, or the otherwise unfortunate
(Molnar et al. 1985).
Such mechanisms tend to be blurred
where an enterprise is operated within a
kinship or fictive kinship network and
resource use is characterized by sharing,
pooling, generalized exchange and
nonreciprocal giving, rather than by the
reciprocity or commercialism characteristic