ABSTRACT
This chapter presents part of a wider study of longshoremen undertaken as an anthropologist in St Johns, Newfoundland, and more fully reported elsewhere. It examines how ‘normal’ work roles are adapted to serve the needs of institutionalized pilferage, how this influences relationships on the dock – particularly within the dock work gang and how the men involved perceive their actions in terms of a prevailing morality. The techniques governing pilferage can be explained only in the context of normal work roles and their organization. This is because organization of both legitimate and illegitimate work is based on the same work group structure – the dock work gang. It is apparent that a system for the operation of pilferage exists, if by system we mean a set of inter-connected parts organized together to perform a particular job with the boundary to the system being largely congruent with the work gang.
