Anthropology of Work

Anthropology of Work

References for Theme: Anthropology of Work

Applebaum, Herbert

The Concept of Work: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern (1992)

Bell, Diane

"Women's Business Is Hard Work: Central Australian Aboriginal Women's Love Rituals" (1981)

Bowles, Samuel; Gintis, Herbert

Chamoux, Marie-Noëlle

"Sociétés avec et sans concept de travail" (1994)

Darrah, Charles N

"Anthropology and the workplace--workforce mismatch" (2005)

Descola, Philippe

La nature domestique: symbolisme et praxis dans l'écologie des Achuar (2004)
Beyond Nature and Culture (2013)
(p.322) Marx’s position is indicative of the more general tendency of modern thought to regard production as the element that determines the material conditions of social life and as the principal way for humans to transform nature and, by doing so, transform themselves. Whether or not one is a Marxist, it is now commonly thought that the history of humanity is primarily founded on the dynamism introduced by a succession of ways of producing use value and exchange value of the materials that the environment provides. But it is fair to question whether this preeminence ascribed to the process of productive objectivization applies generally to all societies. To be...
Beyond Nature and Culture (2013)
(p.323) The idea of production as the imposition of form upon inert matter is simply an attenuated expression of the schema of action that rests upon two interdependent premises: the preponderance of an individualized intentional agent as the cause of the coming- to- be of beings and things, and the radical differencebetween the ontological status of the creator and that of whatever he produces. According to the paradigm of creation- production, the subject is autonomous and his intervention in the world reflects his personal characteristics: whether he is a god, a demiurge, or a simple mortal, he produces his oeuvre according to a preestablished plan and with a defi...
Beyond Nature and Culture (2013)
(p.325) As a way of conceiving action on the world and a specific relationship in which a subject generates an object, production thus does not have a universal applicability. It presupposes the existence of a clearly individualized agent who projects his interiority on to indeterminate matter in order to give form to it and thus bring into existence an entity for which he alone is responsible and that he can then appropriate for his own use or exchange for other realities of the same type. Now, to return to our two examples: the production model does not correspond either to the concept of a continuous autopoietic process as...
Beyond Nature and Culture (2013)

Firth, Raymond

Godelier, Maurice

Herzberg, Frederick

Work and the Nature of Man (1966)

Ingold, Tim

Jimenez, Alberto Corsin

"Working out Personhood: Notes on 'Labour' and its Anthropology" (2003)

Kaplan, David

"The darker side of the "original affluent society"" (2000)

Malinowski, Bronislaw

Argonauts of the Western Pacific (2002)
(p.158-159) THE canoe, painted and decorated, stands now ready to be launched, a source of pride to the owners and to the makers, and an object of admiration to the other beholders. A new sailing craft is not only another utility created; it is more: it is a new entity sprung into being, something with which the future destinies of the sailors will be bound up, and on which they will depend. There can be no doubt that this sentiment is also felt by the natives and expressed in their customs and behaviour. The canoe receives a personal name, it becomes...
Argonauts of the Western Pacific (2002)
(p.167-175) …it is important to realise that a Kiriwinian is capable of working well, efficiently and in a continuous manner. But he must work under an effective incentive: he must be prompted by some duty imposed by tribal standards, or he must be lured by ambitions and values also dictated by custom and tradition. Gain, such as is often the stimulus for work in more civilised communities, never acts as an impulse to work under the original native conditions. It succeeds very badly, therefore, when a white man tries to use this incentive to make a native work. This is the...
Argonauts of the Western Pacific (2002)
(p.62-63) Half of the natives’ working life is spent in the garden, and around it centres perhaps more than half of his interests and ambitions. And here we must pause and make an attempt to understand his attitude in this matter, as it is typical of the way in which he goes about all his work. If we remain under the delusion that the native is a happy-go-lucky, lazy child of nature, who shuns as far as possible all labour and effort, waiting till the ripe fruits, so bountifully supplied by generous tropical Nature, fall into his mouth, we shall not...