Although it is of course a marginal activity, wood-logging is noneless an example, among others, of an economiq practice whose underliyin logic is alien to be dominant mode of production. An ethnographic survey carried in the Ardennes region of France in 1984, and repeated in 1986 and 1987, has shown that there has been a revival of this user's right which can be related to the tow oil shocks of th 1970s and, at the same time, to the crises the local mtallurgical industry has been undergoing. Although the conjonction of these tow phenomena does tend to point to the economic character of this activity, ethnographic observation enables us to put such an interpretation into perspective. The revival of wood-logging has certainly enabled the local population (essentially working class) to make some savings, but above all it has led to the rehabilitation of certain forms of social behaviour the the ideology of technical progress end efficiency has repressed. The principle on which this practice rests is as follows. The wood-loggers cover their own needs in firewood and avoid, inasmuch as this is possible, any monetary trasaction; on the other hand, they encourage self-production, fiendly arrangements such as reciprocal gift system, mutual aid and exchange of services, all of wihwh go well beyond the strict definition of wood-loggind. The principle behind these non-monetary forms of exchange, based on the production of use values or, in other words in the ability to produce goods and services wich are intended for exchange, is to stress not the economic value ordinary attributed to such a good on the market but rather its usefulness.