ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that community stability is best understood in terms of the stability of community institutional structure, rather than in terms of such traditional indicators as employment stability, the stability of resource supply, economic stability, or population stability. In many areas of the United States, natural resource development and community growth and decline have historically gone hand-in-hand. Subsistence use of resources is a complex resource allocation issue in Alaska, where it has been codified into both state and federal law. The cyclical nature of economic development in southeast Alaska since Russian discovery and subsequent purchase by the United States has been due to the region's dependence on exploitation of its natural resources. The process of modernization has made its impact felt in all areas of institutional life in southeast Alaska. The traditional lifestyle of southeast Alaska may be gradually disappearing. But that institutional sphere known as subsistence, rather than being extinguished, appears to be undergoing a transformation.
