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The Social Organization of Work,

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Randy Hodson and Teresa A. Sullivan

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1

G

The Evolution of Work

There is nothing better for a man, than that he eat and drink,and tell himself that his labor is good.

ECCLESIASTES 2:24 (NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE)

Every morning at six I drove myself out of bed, did not shave,sometimes washed, hurried up to the Place d’Italie and fought for a

place on the Metro. By seven I was in the desolation of the cold, filthykitchen, with the potato skins and bones and fishtails littered on the

floor, and a pile of plates, stuck together in their grease, waiting fromovernight. I could not start on the plates yet, because the water was

cold, and I had to fetch milk and make coffee, for the others arrived ateight and expected to find coffee ready. Also, there were always severalcopper saucepans to clean. Those copper saucepans are the bane of a

plongeur’s life. They have to be scoured with sand and bunches ofchain, ten minutes to each one, and then polished on the outside withBrasso. Fortunately, the art of making them has been lost and they are

gradually vanishing from French kitchens.

(GEORGE ORWELL, DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON,PP. 107–108. COPYRIGHT � 1933 BY GEORGE ORWELL AND RENEWED

1961 BY SONIA PITT-RIVERS. REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OFHARCOURT, INC.)

These two quotations point out the contradictory nature of work: it is both a

salvation and a curse. Work creates prosperity and meaning in life, but it can

also contribute to poverty and alienation. This chapter will review changes in the

nature of work across time so that you can better understand its possibilities and

limitations. This entire book is an effort to sort out the varied experiences of

workers in order to make sense of work in modern society.

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First, what is work? Work is the creation of material goods or services, which

may be directly consumed by the worker or sold to someone else. Work thus

includes not only paid labor but also self-employed labor and unpaid labor,

including production of goods and services done in the home.

K E Y T R A N S F O R M A T I O N S I N T H E

N A T U R E O F WO R K

In this chapter we explore some of the ways inwhich work has changed as well as the conse-quences of these changes for individuals and forsociety. The organization of work has variedgreatly over time. The division of labor and theextent of social inequality also vary significantly overtime. The changing nature of work thus has importantimplications for personal satisfaction, for economicsecurity, for relations between men and women,and for our ideas about the meaning of work and itsplace in social life.

The Social Organization of Work

The social organization of work is the entire set ofrelations between management, workers, coworkers,and customers. In this section we outline a set ofthemes that describe the social organization of workand that will be explored throughout the remainingchapters of the book. These themes highlight theorganizational and technical aspects of work, thedemographics of the workforce, the consequencesof work for economic security and social inequality,and the meaning of work for individuals.

The Division of Labor The most fundamentaltransformation in the nature of work over time hasbeen the increasing division of labor (Durkheim,1966 [1897]). In primitive societies each memberengaged in more or less the full range of workactivities. The only differences in work activitywere those based on age and gender. In later feudalsociety most workers were engaged in agriculturalwork, but some specialized in a single type ofproduct so that they became, for example, tailors,

cobblers, or bakers. In modern industrial societieswork has become so specialized that each trade isbroken down into seemingly innumerable special-ties. The meat-packing industry provides a goodexample of an extremely specialized division oflabor: ‘‘In the slaughter and meat-packing industryone can specialize as: a large stock scalper, bellyshaver, crotch buster, gut snatcher, gut sorter, snoutpuller, ear cutter, eyelid remover, stomach washer(sometimes called belly bumper), hindleg puller,frontleg toenail puller and oxtail washer’’(Wilensky and Lebeaux, 1986:33). Specializationconstantly creates new lines of work requiringnew skills. Specialization, however, can also reducethe range of skills needed to perform jobs. A muchnarrower range of skills, for example, is needed to bea ‘‘gut snatcher’’ than to butcher and clean a wholeanimal. Greater specialization can thus have bothpositive and negative consequences for workers asthey struggle for dignity and meaning at work.

The modern division of labor also occursbetween different regions and even between differentnations—some areas specialize in agriculture, some indifferent types of manufacturing, and others in serviceindustries, such as health care or banking and invest-ment. For further discussion of the modern divisionof labor, see Chapters 8, 9 and 10 on manufacturing,high technology employment, and services.

Technology Technological developments havemultiplied productivity over time. Starting withonly simple hand tools, people advanced throughthe use of steam and electric-powered tools to theautomation of many aspects of production throughassembly-line technology and robotics. Morerecently, computer technologies have again revo-lutionized work in what many have called a secondindustrial revolution. The workers and nationsthat successfully harness the power of computer

4 P A R T I F O U N D A T I O N S


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technologies will be the winners in the competitiveglobal economy of the twenty-first century (Bal-doz, Koeber, and Kraft, 2001).

Inequality Not only do the division of labor andtechnology change over time, but the ways in whichpeople work together also change. Work alwaysinvolves social relations between people. Relation-ships exist between employer and employee,between co-workers, between trading partners, andbetween suppliers and consumers. These relationsare called the social relations of production.Social relationships at work can be cooperative andegalitarian, as in primitive societies, or competitive,hierarchical, and unequal, as in industrial societies. Inprimitive societies people decided jointly how toproceed with a given task and shared equally in itsresults. Cooperative arrangements were grounded inthe reality that most skills were held in common. Insocieties with a more advanced division of labor,such egalitarian arrangements are replaced by morehierarchical ways of organizing work, in which someskills are held as more important than others and inwhich some societal members have vastly greaterpower and wealth than others. The relationshipbetween peasants who till the land and landownersis among the earliest hierarchical organizations ofwork. The most important contemporary form ofhierarchy at work is the relation between ownersand employees (Perrucci and Wysong, 2003).

Bureaucracy The nature of business enterprises isalso crucial to the meaning and experience of workand to the success of enterprises. In the contemporaryworkplace hierarchical relations often take the formof bureaucracy. A bureaucracy is a hierarchicalsystem with clearly designated offices and responsi-bilities and a clearly defined chain of responsibilityleading to the top position. The behavior of all partiesin a bureaucracy, no matter how high up, takes placewithin the dictates of clearly stated rules. Bureaucraticprocedures characterize modern corporations andgovernments and are the major way in which workis organized in contemporary society (Scott, 1998).Post-bureaucratic forms of work organization basedon greater worker involvement and initiative are,

however, emerging today and are expected to havea defining influence on the experience and meaningof work in the twenty-first century.

Women, Minorities, and Immigrants Whoworks, and in what capacity, is also key to under-standing the nature of work and its consequences.During much of industrial society, men have beenmore likely than women to leave home to work infactories and offices. This difference is rapidly erodingtoday with women making up over 46 percent ofthe labor force in the United States and Canada.Minority ethnic populations in many societieshave traditionally been segregated into lower-paying occupations and trades. The spread of var-ious forms for protective legislation for minoritypopulations addresses these inequalities althoughthe attainment of full equality has often beenelusive (Wilson, 1997). New immigrants to acountry also typically occupy the lowest rungsof the occupational ladder with succeeding gen-erations climbing to greater heights. The accele-rated movement of peoples around the world inthe twenty-first century has increased the signi-ficance of immigrant populations and workers inmany nations and the challenges of assimilatingthese workers and their families (Jasso et al.,2000). These dramatic changes have spurred thedevelopment of new concepts in sociology, such asoccupational segregation, tokenism, gender-typing,and comparable worth. Chapter 4 on class, gender,and race focuses on these and related issues.

The Professions The hierarchy of authority inthe workplace is further complicated by the grow-ing significance of highly educated professionalworkers. These workers claim special rights andprivileges based on their possession of specializedknowledge gained through long study. At thebeginning of the twentieth century, only 4 percentof the labor force in the United States was made upof professional workers. At the beginning of thetwenty-first century, 20 percent of the labor forceis made up of professional workers, making themone of the largest occupational categories. Manystudents in college are following courses of study

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that prepare them to become members of a parti-cular profession. The professions are discussed ingreater detail in Chapter 11.

Meaning and Dignity in Work People’s ways ofthinking about the role of work in their lives alsochange over time. In primitive societies people didnot experience work as an activity separate from thebroader round of daily events. In agricultural socie-ties work was seen as an inevitable burden, madeeven heavier by the abuses of greedy landlords, badweather, and variable market prices. Capitalism sawthe emergence of a work ethic that identified workwith piety and grace. Many fear that the work ethicgrounded on frugality and unquestioning efforthas been lost in contemporary society. Perhaps ithas. But if so, it has been replaced by a vision ofwork as a route of upward social mobility (Ospina,1996). These different visions of the meaning ofwork become parts of social ideologies—systems ofideas that justify the economic and political arrange-ments of a society as appropriate and desirable. Inall settings, however, workers desire autonomyand respect in order to experience dignity in their dailylives at work (Hodson, 2001). For further discussionof the importance of meaning at work see Chapter 3.

Globalization An increasing share of economicexchange occurs between nations. In addition,large corporations located in industrially advancednations typically have many branch plants and jointventures outside their home nation. The worldeconomy is thus characterized by dense networksof economic links between nations and betweentransnational corporations. These new realitiesincrease world competition, pushing down pricesfor many commodities. But they also allow cor-porations to transfer production to areas withlower-priced labor, thus placing the workers ofeach nation in ever sharper competition with eachother and creating downward pressures on wages,health and safety protections, and environmentalprotections (Chase-Dunn, Kawano, and Brewer,2000). The realization of a truly integrated globaleconomy beginning in the late twentieth century ispossibly the most significant transformation in the

world of work since the Industrial Revolution andis an important background reality for most, if notall, of the issues discussed in this book.

Consequences of Work for Individuals

Individual workers often seem reduced in impor-tance in the large-scale, bureaucratic world of mod-ern organizations. Their individual contributionsseem interchangeable or even expendable. This rea-lity can lead to a sense of alienation from work, inwhich people feel detached from their activity, fromone another, and, eventually, from their own selves.

The modern organization of work also has posi-tive consequences for individuals. Many individualsreceive a share of the expanded productivity of mod-ern industry. Industrial societies produce a muchwider range of material goods and services than pre-industrial societies; these goods include more andbetter food, as well as many items that would havebeen considered luxuries in previous societies or werecompletely unavailable, such as central heating andtelevision. Improved services include better medicalcare and higher education. For many people, workexperiences also continue to be a primary source offulfillment and self-realization (Hochschild, 1997).

Consequences of Work for Society

Self-Interest The very nature of society has beenfundamentally altered by the changing organizationof work. The most significant change is the trans-formation from rural society, based on deeply feltbonds of commonality, to urban society, based on morefragmented, fluid, and changing relationships, oftengrounded in self-interest. Traditional rural societiesplaced a high value on conformity and on maintain-ing solidarity in the face of external threats. Thesevalues were necessary because of the harshness andvulnerability of peasant life. In industrial societies therelationships between people are based on distinctyet interdependent contributions rather than oncommonly shared abilities and positions (Durkheim,1966 [1897]). Modern societies thus make greaterallowances for, and may even encourage, diversityand competition among their members.



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Organizational Size The greater size of economicorganizations has also produced changes in how bothwork and society are organized. Products once man-ufactured in millions of households and, later, inthousands of small factories are manufactured todayfor the entire world by a few giant corporationsoperating in a handful of locations. Giant companiesthat produce automobiles, tobacco products, petro-leum, and computers provide some of the clearestexamples. Such corporations have tremendous powerover workers, customers, suppliers, and even nations.The increasing size of organizations further contri-butes to the loss of individuality and intimacy at theworkplace. Direct personal relationships are oftenreplaced in these corporations by bureaucraticallyadministered rules. In this context, the way in whichindividuals experience work depends to a significantextent on whether their smaller work groups provideopportunities for them to realize positive self-images.We explore the controversial role of the large cor-poration in modern society further in Chapter 15.

Markets The role of markets in the organizationof work has increased over time. In primitive socie-ties several people got together for the hunt, orseveral people joined together to dig roots or gather

edible plants. All members of the group, perhapsfifteen to twenty in number, then shared equally inthe proceeds of these labors. Today, thousands ofpeople labor together at one site to manufacture,for example, saline solution bags for hospitals, whiletens of thousands of other employees of the samecorporation work in different parts of the world tomanufacture other pharmaceutical products. Theseworkers are integrated in a network of markets inwhich they exchange their earnings from manufac-turing saline solution bags for a diversity of goodsand services such as housing, food, and entertain-ment. These workers may never have occasion tomake use of the products they themselves manufac-ture. Modern industrial systems have brought aboutthe organization of the world into a single inter-connected economic unit. Today we live in a trulyglobal economy. As Figure 1.1 points out, thesetransformations in social arrangements are paralleledby changes in how we think about and understandnot only work but other aspects of our lives as well.

Greater organizational size and bureaucracyallow increased productivity because of efficienciesassociated with producing a great number of similaror identical things. These sorts of efficiencies are calledeconomies of scale. Rationalized planning further

Reformation,Enlightenment,

French andIndustrial

Revolutions

Church-mediatedsocial thought

Traditional world’semphasis on:

Community and kinship

Landed interests

Monarchy

Tradition

Religion

Rural and village life

Work on land or insmall manufacture

Science-basedsocial thought,includingsociology

Modern world’semphasis on:

Individual andimmediate family

Business andindustrial interests

Democracy

Reason

Science

Urban life

Factory and large-scale bureaucraticwork organization

1500 1600 1700 1800 20001900

F I G U R E 1.1 Traditional

Societies versus Modern

Societies

SOURCE: Tony J. Watson, 1980. Sociol-

ogy, Work and Industry. London: Rout-

ledge and Kegan Paul, p.8. Reprinted by

permission of International Thomson

Publishing Services. Ltd.,



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increases productivity. Giant economic organizationsproduce standardized products in quantities unthinkableunder previous industrial systems. The resulting powerof large corporations over people, the environment, andsociety often necessitates at least some government reg-ulation of many economic activities and industries.

Social Stratification

Modern forms of work produce abundant goods andservices, but they distribute these goods and servicesunequally. This unequal distribution of rewards andpower in society is known as social stratification.Members of society receive shares based on theirpositions, and their families’ positions, in the divisionof labor. In this way, the organization of work inmodern societies influences not only our work livesbut also our entire lives from birth to death. Somemembers of society labor long days and weeks,perhaps even holding down two or more jobs, butreceive relatively little for their efforts. Some cannotfind work and suffer poverty throughout all or partsof their lives. Many work regularly and receive areasonably good living for their efforts depending ontheir exact location in the division of labor. Some donot have to work at all but have inherited richesunimaginable to the majority of people.

T H EO R I Z I N G W O RK

Understanding the nature and consequences ofwork is a core conceptual project in the socialsciences. The three founding figures in sociology,Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber,provided path-breaking ideas on the nature of workthat set the stage for modern theories of society.Each theorist conceptualized industrialization asentailing profound challenges to human dignityand to a fair and just society. For Marx, the centralchallenge was the control of labor by capitalists andtheir exploitation of workers, resulting in alienationfrom meaningful work. For Durkheim, the focalpoint was the breakdown of social norms govern-ing workplace relations due to the drive toward

endless expansion generated by modern industry.For Weber, the key issue was the imposition ofbureaucratic rationality in the world of work andthe resulting stifling of human creativity.

Karl Marx on Alienation and Exploitation

According to Marx, the exploitation of workers by

capitalists and the resulting alienation from work

result in the denial of workers’ humanity (Marx,

1959). Our species’ humanity is realized through

meaningful work, and the alienating nature of work

under capitalism robs workers of their inherent

potential for human growth and development.

The exploitation of workers arises because capital-

ists own the means of production (the technology,

capital investments, and raw materials) and treat

labor as if it were just another inanimate factor of

production. For a capitalist, labor is to be hired as

cheaply as possible, used up, and discarded.Marx argued that the exploitation and misery

of workers results directly from the laws of capitalism

in which the market system demands that every

capitalist buy labor as cheaply as possible in order

to produce and sell goods and still turn a profit. If

capitalists do not exploit their employees, they will

be undercut by other capitalists who do (Marx,

1967). In Marx’s vision, capitalism robs workers

of the creative, purposive activity that defines their

nature as human beings by subordinating their pro-

ductive activity to profit making and thus reducing

it to a means to acquire material sustenance. Marx

saw the solution to the problems of industrial capit-

alism as the overthrow of capitalists by workers and

the imposition of control by a new class—but one

resting on a broader base than the capitalist class.

Emile Durkheim on Social Disorganization

and Its Resolution

Writing several decades after Marx, Emile Durk-heim likewise saw industrial society as beingexploitative and abusive. He believed that eco-nomic life in modern society was in a state ofnormlessness (anomie) because of its unrelenting



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drive toward economic expansion. In primitivesociety, in contrast, people had been held togetherby shared values based on their common position ina relatively undifferentiated division of labor—sincemost people did basically the same tasks, theyshared common values about how to organizesociety and how to divide the available resources.Durkheim referred to societal cohesion based onshared values arising from common positions asmechanical solidarity (Durkheim, 1984).

In Durkheim’s vision, the division of labor intofiner and finer parts with workers having less andless power as their tasks were made ever simplerhad simply outstripped the development of theappropriate moral regulations for economic life.He saw this state as a painful transitional stage.The solution to the problems of industrial societyis not, in this vision, the violent overthrow ofcapitalism. A proletarian revolution would onlyreplace control by one group with control byanother group. Rather, the solution is for capitalistsand workers to develop a new shared moral orderthat orients the behavior of both groups towardcommon goals. These new shared values would arisefrom different but interdependent positions in thedivision of labor. Durkheim named this new basisfor social cohesion organic solidarity, reflecting theintegration of different parts with different functionswithin a unified system. For Durkheim new valuesdefending meaning in work and a just society wouldemerge through participation in voluntary workplaceassociations that collectively organize work and thatprovide safeguards against abuse, exploitation, andoverwork. Such associations would include industryassociations of employers and trade and professionalassociations among workers. The new values oforganic solidarity would be hammered out in nego-tiations within and between these associations.

Max Weber on Bureaucratic Rationality

Max Weber, writing at the dawn of the twentiethcentury, envisioned the evils of modern society interms of excessive rationality and bureaucracy, ratherthan in terms of exploitation, like Marx, or thebreakdown of norms and values, like Durkheim.

According to Weber, the essence of modern capit-alism is the rational calculation of profit and loss.This formal rational calculation replaces earlier lessrational motives, such as those based on allegiance totraditional values or traditional authority (Weber,1946). To Weber, capitalism is the science of apply-ing formal rationality to economic life.

Weber believed that the coercive organizationof economic life typical of slave and feudal societies,and of the early stages of capitalism, was not a viablebasis for organizing modern society. Formal ration-ality, as manifest in bureaucratic rules and procedures,however, did provide a workable, though flawed,solution for how to organize the modern industrialeconomy. Only bureaucratic forms of organizationcan engage in the long-term planning and integrationnecessary for a modern economy and society. As aresult of its technical efficiency, the extension ofbureaucracy to more and more spheres of economicand political life seemed inevitable to Weber.

Bureaucratic principles thus displace coercion,favoritism, and nepotism as less efficient foundationsfor economic life (Perrow, 1986). But, according toWeber, these same bureaucratic principles also leadto a depersonalization of social life. Along withDurkheim, Weber believed that the solution to theproblems of modern industrial capitalism lie inthe reintroduction of moral values. Weber andDurkheim differ, however, in the proposed sourceof new values. Durkheim saw these new values asemerging from occupational groups. Weber sawnew values as emerging from charismatic leaders.

Socio-Technical and Interactionist Theories

Two contemporary theoretical traditions also pro-vide important foundations for understanding themodern world of work: the socio-technical schooland the interactionist school. The socio-technicalschool rests on the observation that the specific,detailed social and technical arrangements at workset the stage for meaning, satisfaction, and produc-tivity. Such issues as being treated with civility andhaving positive relations with coworkers can createthe preconditions for an effective and humaneworking experience. While these issues are of



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somewhat smaller scope than the issues of exploita-tion, normlessness, and bureaucracy that motivatedearly theorists, they can still be extremely importantin the day-to-day experience of work. The insightsof the socio-technical school are widely used todayin designing work and form the basis for much oforganizational psychology. We discuss the socio-technical and human relations approaches in greaterdetail in Chapter 7 on technology and organization.

The interactionist school developed from stu-dies of social life in natural settings in the earlydecades of the twentieth century. Various socialactivities were studied, with the workplace play-ing a pivotal role. These studies observed thatpeople creatively made meaning out of their inter-actions with others through the use of symbols,such as styles of speech and manner of dress. Thesemeanings then guided their behaviors and interac-tions with each other. Applied to the workplace,these insights gave rise to two principal linesof study. One line investigates various occupationalsubcultures and studies how people draw meaningout of their work, even work that might be con-sidered tedious, mundane, or even meaninglessto outsiders (Trice, 1993). The second line ofinquiry investigates how the rules and norms thatguide work arise as a negotiated order. This line ofinquiry rests on the observation that rules are notsimply imposed from the top, but are constantlynegotiated and renegotiated in application bythose responsible for carrying them out. Theinteractionist approach has provided the theoreti-cal underpinning to a wealth of ethnographicstudies of work life as it is actually lived andexperienced (Fine, 1999). These studies, and otherapproaches to understanding work and the work-place, are described in greater detail in Chapter 2.

Classic and contemporary theories of work pro-vide a solid foundation for understanding the nature,problems, and joys of work in modern society. How-ever, the nature of work is constantly changing—seemingly at an ever-accelerating pace. Classic andeven contemporary theoretical models of work arethus constantly being challenged by changes in thenature of work. This constantly changing terrain ispart of what makes the study of work so exciting.

A H I S TO R Y O F W O R K

The theoretical model underlying the followinghistory of work argues that the social organization ofwork and the technology at a given stage of historydetermine the nature of society, including itsdegree of social inequality. These factors also createcontradictions and limitations that set the stage forthe next level of development (Lenski, 1984; Marx,1967 [1887]). An understanding of these broadchanges in the nature of work will help you under-stand the evolution of work and its possible futures.

Hunting and Gathering Societies

By about 300,000 BC the human species, Homosapiens, had evolved to its present form. Humanslived exclusively as nomadic hunters and gatherersuntil about 8,000 BC. Thus, the hunting and gather-ing stage includes about 97 percent of the collectivelife of our species and continues in isolated areas eventoday. Hunters and gatherers did not experience‘‘work’’ as a separate sphere of life. Activities neces-sary to secure sustenance took place throughout theday and were not clearly distinguished from leisureactivities—as people gathered berries, dug edibleroots, and hunted game, they did so in a relativelyleisurely manner, depending on the circumstances ofthe moment. People did not work hard becausethere was no point in creating a surplus. Surplusesof food or possessions could not be stored or trans-ported for future usage. Work, leisure, and socializ-ing formed an integrated flow of activities.

The Band A hunting and gathering band con-sisted of fifteen to twenty members, depending onhow many people the vegetation and animal lifecould support. The group’s hunting and gatheringactivities eventually depleted the resources in thearea immediately around the encampment, and thegroup was forced to move on. These nomadicmovements were cyclical; the group would movethrough the same areas year after year, followingthe seasons and the food supply.

Technology was very simple. The most impor-tant elements of technology were the various skills



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possessed by each member of the band. Withoutthe skills to make and bank fires and to locate andharvest edible plants and animals, the band wouldhave quickly starved. The technology also includedhides, lodge poles, and other equipment necessaryfor survival, such as bone needles, stone cutters andscrapers, and wooden spears.

Most skills were commonly shared so that anysingle member could do all or most of the tasksrequired of the group as a whole. However, therewere rudimentary forms of the division of laborbased on gender and age. Young people taggedalong with their elders and performed helping func-tions, such as gathering wood or picking berries. Inthis way they received the equivalent of modern on-the-job training. Older people who lacked the sta-mina or mobility for hunting and gathering tendedthe fire and prepared food or made tools.

The Gender Division of Labor A division oflabor based on gender initially resulted from biolo-gical differences between men and women. Fewpeople lived beyond childbearing age, so womenspent much of their adult life either pregnant ornursing. These activities restricted their physicalmobility, so they were less often involved in hunt-ing large game. Women specialized in gatheringroots, berries, and other edible plants and in hunt-ing small animals. Considerable evidence showsthat women’s gathering and small-game huntingwere often more productive economic activitiesthan men’s hunting of large game—in most hunt-ing and gathering societies, roots, berries, and smallgame made up a larger part of the diet than didlarge animals (Lee, 1981).

The social position of women throughoutmost of human history has been subordinate, tosome degree, to that of men. Gender inequalitywas less extreme in hunting and gathering societiesthan in many later societies. In hunting and gather-ing societies, the greater power of men rested ontheir monopoly over large-game hunting, whichprovided rare periodic surpluses of meat, and ontheir central role in the important arenas of contact,trade, and conflict with other groups (Suggs andMiracle, 1999).

Sharing The early forms of the division of laborbased on age and gender did not typically result inany great inequality of material rewards among themembers of a society. All members shared equally inthe food secured from the environment. Thisarrangement produced optimal benefits for everyonebecause of the unpredictability of hunting and gath-ering activities. If one person or family was successfulon a certain day, they could not store or transport thesurplus. Through equal sharing, however, all mem-bers were assured a share of the bounty of otherswhen their own efforts were unsuccessful. Becausefood and other possessions could not be accumu-lated in quantity, hunting and gathering societiesdid not develop distinct social classes based onpossession of different amounts of wealth. Instead,equal sharing of resources prevailed and provided afundamental precondition for the continuation ofthese societies—in hunting and gathering societiesthere was more to be gained by sharing than byhoarding.

Few true specialists existed in such societies.Some members may have taken on a leadership rolemore often than others, but even this role was oftenrotating. Incumbency in this role was based onpersonality traits or leadership ability and carriedwith it few, if any, privileges of position. Similarly,some individuals may have received recognition fortheir ability to minister to the sick, forecast theweather, or predict the movements of the animals.These individuals sometimes took on the role of ashaman or medicine man.

Motivation to Work In hunting and gatheringsocieties the motivation to work was straightfor-ward. The band lived a day-to-day existence. If onedid not engage in purposive activity on a regularbasis, then one either went hungry or relied onothers to share a portion of their food. Hungerand social pressure to participate in the group’sactivity provided a ready motivation to work. Inan account of the Andaman Islanders of the IndianOcean, the anthropologist A. Radcliffe-Browndescribes these norms in the following way:‘‘Should a man shirk this obligation, nothing wouldbe said to him, unless he were a young unmarried



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man, and he would still be given food by others, buthe would find himself occupying a position of infer-iority in the camp, and would entirely lose theesteem of his fellows’’ (Radcliffe-Brown, 1922:187).

Hunting and gathering people thought of workin ways that would seem quite foreign in the mod-ern world. They did not view work as a distinctactivity; life as a whole was seen in a sacred contextin which the various forces impinging on the groupwere held in awe and reverence. Groups that wereseasonally dependent on a particular plant or ani-mal, for example, might consider this item sacredand worship its spirit to assure its continued pre-sence. Such entities, called totems, were seen asrepresenting and protecting the group. The wor-ship of such totems was one of the earliest forms ofreligious expression. Other daily activities of hunt-ing and gathering were also undertaken withappropriate piety and observation of ritual. In thissense primitive people experienced work in a spiri-tual context.

The differentiation of society into classes didnot take place until the group was able to settle inone place and accumulate a surplus of goods. In

rare situations hunting and gathering societiessettled and flourished in environments with anabundance of naturally occurring food sources.Such settings were almost totally restricted to fish-ing communities, such as those in the PacificNorthwest of North America. In general, settledsocieties awaited the development of agriculture.The nature of economic life in hunting and gather-ing society is illustrated in Box 1.1.

Early Agricultural Societies

The major difference between settled and nomadicsocieties is that settled societies can accumulate asurplus of food and other goods. Accumulationbecomes possible because agricultural and pastoralactivities are more productive than hunting andgathering and because the group is able to accumu-late and store surpluses over time.

Agriculture developed independently in severalplaces around the world from 9,000 to 3,000 BC.These areas include Southeast Asia, the PersianGulf, and Mesoamerica. The development of agri-culture started with the harvesting of wild grains,

B O X 1.1 Acorn Gathering in Sacramento Valley

The Maidu were one of the principal tribes of the Sacra-mento Valley and adjacent sierras. Their country fol-lowed the eastern banks of the Sacramento River andencompassed the modern city of Sacramento, California.The collection and preparation of acorns for food wereamong the most important industries of the Maidu, incommon with most of the Central California tribes. Atthe time in the autumn when the acorns are ripe, every-one is busy. The men and the larger boys climb the treesand, by the aid of long poles, beat the branches, knock-ing off the acorns. The women and the smaller childrengather these in burden baskets, and carry them to thevillage, storing them in granaries or in the large storagebaskets in the houses. . . . In addition, eels were speared,split and dried. In preparing them for food, they wereusually cut into small pieces, and stewed. Salmon weresplit, and dried by hanging them over a pole. When

thoroughly dry, the fish was usually pounded till it wasreduced to a coarse flour, and kept in baskets. Deer andother meat was cut into strips and dried. Usually this wasdone in the sun; but occasionally a fire was lighted underthe drying meat to hasten the process, and to smoke theproduct slightly. Except on their hunting trips, the Maiduseem not to have been travelers. They rarely went farfrom home, even on hunts. The Northeastern Maidutraded with the Achoma’wi Indians, getting chieflybeads, and giving in exchange bows and deer hides.Those in the higher sierra traded for beads, pine nuts,salt, and salmon, giving in exchange arrows, bows, deerhides and several sorts of food.

SOURCE: Excerpted from Roland B. Dixon, 1977, ‘‘The Northern Maidu.’’

In A Reader in Cultural Anthropology, edited by Carleton S. Coon,

pp. 262–291. Huntington, New York: Krieger. Reprinted by permission of

the publisher.



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such as wheat, barley, and corn, and wild tubersand the eventual development of techniques toencourage the growth and yield of these plants.The technologies included the use of the diggingstick and, later, the hoe.

The First Surplus With the development of agri-culture and the domestication of animals came tre-mendous changes in the organization of society. Asurplus of food was produced, though at first it wasquite small. The work of perhaps eighty to onehundred farmers was required to support one non-farmer. On this scanty basis a new social order cameinto being. Instead of everyone in society occupyingthe same role, specialized positions came into beingwith differentiated activities. These positions includedwarrior, priest, and, eventually, other official positionssuch as scribe and tax collector. The production ofeveryday goods was still carried out mainly by theagricultural worker. Later, craft positions specializingin the production of religious, civic, and militarygoods also developed.

The life of the agriculturalist differed little fromthat of the hunter and gatherer, though it perhapslasted a little longer because of the better protectionfrom famine afforded by greater ability to storefood. Children still helped with basic work activ-ities until they were able to take on a fuller role,and the elderly returned to a helping role as dic-tated by declining strength and stamina. The rela-tive positions of men and women also changedlittle. ‘‘Since men had been hunting, men werethe inventors of systematic herding. Since womenhad been gathering plants, women were the inven-tors of systematic agriculture’’ (Deckard, 1983:199).Based on their continuing contributions to thehousehold economy, men and women enjoyedroughly equal access to the goods and services pro-duced by society. With the development of theplow drawn by a team of draft animals—typicallyhandled by men—women’s relative contributionand position may have declined somewhat.

The orientation of the agriculturalist to workdiffered from that of the hunter and gatherer. Forthe farmer, the land took on a sacred status similar tothat of animals and plants for hunters and gatherers.

A new element in the peasant’s orientation to workwas a focus on the importance of bountiful har-vests. Agriculturalists were tied to one spot all yearin order to protect their investment of time andresources in planted fields and to wait for andprotect the harvest. They thus depended on theland they farmed to produce a surplus that wouldsustain them throughout the year.

Plunder and Warfare With the accumulation ofsurplus also came the possibility of plunder by out-side groups. This possibility spurred the creation ofa warrior class. Some sociologists believe that thisincreased importance of warfare accounts forwomen’s more subordinate position in agriculturalsocieties. Because men assumed the principalresponsibility for warfare, their role in society grewin power and importance (Sanday, 2002). Thewarlord and priest became powerful roles in theorganization of agricultural society. The focus ofreligion in agricultural society shifted away frompersonalized spirits toward more abstract, powerful,and distant deities that could be approached onlythrough privileged religious intermediaries.

The Birth of Specialization Improvements inagricultural technology gradually allowed more andmore people to leave agricultural work. Theseimprovements included terracing and irrigation, theuse of animal and human fertilizers, and advances inmetallurgy that led to the proliferation of metal tools(Lenski, 1984). Box 1.2 on the Gheg of Albaniadescribes the life of a typical agriculturalist. Agricul-ture continued to be the dominant form of eco-nomic activity in Western Europe until well intothe Middle Ages. Throughout this long period fewchanges occurred in the life of the average person.This period, however, included the births and deathsof what are known as the classical civilizations andthe emergence of feudal society.

Imperial Societies

Imperial societies were based on the subjugation ofsmaller and weaker agricultural societies by largerand more militaristic societies and the extraction of



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food, goods, and slaves as tribute. Based on thesubjugation of these smaller societies and on modestimprovements in agricultural technology, the clas-sical empires grew to immense size. For instance,historians estimate that the Inca Empire included4,000,000 people at the time of the Spanish con-quest (Lenski, 1984). Other examples of such civi-lizations include the Mayans and the Aztecs ofCentral America, the Azande of East Africa, thePhoenicians and the Egyptians of the Mediterra-nean, and the Imperial Chinese (Lenski, 1984:149).Imperial societies gave rise to the first large cities. Inthese cities, several thousand people lived off theagricultural surplus of the surrounding areas. New

craft trades emerged in the cities to produce morerefined products for the rising tastes of the empires’rulers, officials, and attendants.

Slave and Free Labor Perhaps as much as two-thirds of craft work in the classical empires wasdone by slave labor (Cartledge, Cohen, and Foxhall,2002). Urban workshops were typically quite small,employing fewer than a dozen artisans. Most weresmaller, being composed of an artisan who hiredfree labor or bought slave labor to increase theoutput of pottery, cloth, woodenware, or metaltools. Because of the ready availability of slavelabor, few technological advances occurred in craft

B O X 1.2 Agriculturalists: The Ghegs of Northern Albania

In the mountainous regions on the eastern shore of theAdriatic Sea the Ghegs lived as agriculturalists untilrecent times. Over 90% of the Ghegs are farmers. . . .Cutting tools are of iron. They are made by blacksmithsin the market towns in which the Ghegs do their trad-ing. With hammer and tongs, a small anvil, and a pairof foot-pump bellows they forge nearly all of themetal objects needed by the mountaineers for farm-ing, herding, transport, and household carpentry. Theymake small anvils, hammers, nails, axes, adzes, knives,ploughshares, shovels, hoes, toothed sickles, doorhinges, horse shoes, and horse hobbles.

The Gheg at home in his mountains is a jack-of-all-trades. He may not be able to manufacture the specialobjects listed above, but he can adze out beams for hishouse, put together a new plough during the wintermonths when there is little work out of doors, or buildone of his massive chairs. Professional carpenters arerare, although some men show more skill in this thanothers.

The interiors of most houses are quite bare, withno carpets on the hewn plank floors, and little decora-tion on the walls. In the older houses a fireplace coversabout 10 square feet of floor area, and the smoke findsits way out through the thatch or roof tiles. In so doing,it cures meats hung in the rack above the fire.

The basic cloth is woven at home. The farmergives his wife the necessary wool from his sheep, bothwhite and black. She cards it with a homemade device,either a flick bow or a nail studded card, and spins it.

Her spinning kit consists of a distaff, a spindle, and abasket. Holding the distaff in one hand, she twists thewool with the other, and winds it onto the spindle inthe basket. Whenever she has nothing else to do, orwhen she is walking along the trail, the Albanianhousewife dutifully spins, and her spinning has soonbecome a reflex action, like knitting or bead-telling.

Farming is a family affair. The man buys the ironimplements which he needs in town, and makes therest of wood. He breaks the soil with a spade, andploughs it with oxen. As he ploughs each furrow, hiswife walks behind him with a basket of seed, sowing it.Later the women will do the weeding, and the wholefamily comes out to reap. . . . Women have charge ofmilking the cows and making butter, curds, andcheese. Small boys are usually employed as shepherds,and lead their flocks high on the mountains. In thesummertime many Gheg families drive their cattle upto the Alpine meadows on the mountain passes, andkeep them there weeks at a time while they makebutter and cheese. While on these heights they live insmall temporary houses.

Animal husbandry furnishes the Ghegs not onlywith much of their food, but also with a supply ofenergy, for they use oxen in ploughing, and horses fortravel and the transport of goods. In wintertime theykeep their cows and horses indoors.

SOURCE: Excerpted from Carleton S. Coon, 1977, ‘‘The Highland Ghegs.’’

In A Reader in Cultural Anthropology. Huntington, New York: Krieger,

pp. 347–356. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.



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production during the period of classical civiliza-tion. Slaves possessed neither the opportunity northe motivation to be innovative at work. Suchadvances would await the development of free tradesand free labor in the Middle Ages. Box 1.3 describesthe harsh conditions of slaves working in Romanmines.

In Rome, free craft workers eventually formedguilds to regulate the standards of their trade andprovide religious and social services for their mem-bers. During the decline of the Roman Empire andthroughout much of the Middle Ages, in an effortto stabilize production, the authorities forbade leav-ing a guild or refusing to follow in one’s father’strade (Lilley, 2002). ‘‘The Venetian government,for instance, strictly prohibited the emigration of

caulkers, and from a document of 1460 we learnthat a caulker who left Venice risked six years inprison and a two-hundred-lire fine if apprehended’’(Cipolla, 1980:189). Guilds thrived during this per-iod and would take on an important role in orga-nizing production throughout the Middle Ages.

The End of Classical Civilizations In the centu-ries following the birth of Christ, Roman civilizationdeclined because of the difficulties of maintaining aworldwide empire and because of direct challengesfrom Germanic tribes from Northern Europe andMongolian tribes from Western Asia. The end ofthe period of classical civilizations is typically datedsubstantially later, sometimes as late as the fall ofCharlemagne’s empire in Western Europe in the

B O X 1.3 Slave Labor in the Roman Mines

The miner of ancient times was nearly always either aslave or a criminal. This explains why the means usedremained almost unchanged for thousands of years. . . .It was considered unnecessary to make the work easierfor the slave, whose hard lot inspired no sympathy,although it kept him to the end of his days buried inthe gloomy depths of the earth, suffering all sorts oftorments and privations. There was mostly a super-abundance of slaves. After [military] campaigns therewere usually so many that great numbers of them weremassacred. So there was no dearth of labour. And so ithappened that in almost all the mines of the ancientsonly the simplest means were adopted.

The tunnels constructed in the rock by these sim-ple means are often of astonishing length. It has beencomputed and confirmed by observing the marks ofwedges that in even relatively soft stone the progressmade amounted to about half an inch in twenty-fourhours. This low efficiency was compensated to someextent by making the tunnels very low, by workingonly along the seams of the ore and by avoiding as faras possible the removal of unnecessary stone. Conse-quently, the galleries and tunnels were so narrow thata slave could squeeze himself through only with greatdifficulty. In many mines, in particular those of theEgyptians, Greeks, and Romans, children wereemployed, so that as little stone as possible would have

to be removed. Although the slaves must have becomeweakened by their sojourn in the mines and by theunhealthy posture during work, as well as throughsickness—in lead mines particularly through leadpoisoning—they must often have used very heavytools. Hammers have been found that weighedbetween 20 and 26 pounds.

At the same time there were no precautionsagainst accidents. The galleries were not propped upand therefore often collapsed, burying workmenbeneath them. In ancient mines many skeletons havebeen found of slaves who had lost their lives in this waywhile at work. Nor were attempts made to replenish thesupply of air or to take other steps for preservinghealth. When the air in the mines became so hot andfoul that breathing was rendered impossible the placewas abandoned and an attack was made at some otherpoint. These conditions must have become still moretrying wherever, in addition to the mallet and chisel,the only other means of detaching the stone wasapplied, namely fire. The mineral-bearing stone washeated and water was then poured over it. There wasno outlet for the resulting smoke and vapors.

SOURCE: Excerpted from Albert Neuberger, 1977, ‘‘The Technical Skills

of the Romans.’’ In A Reader in Cultural Anthropology, edited by Carleton

S. Coon, pp. 517–518. Huntington, New York: Krieger. Reprinted by

permission of the publisher.



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early 800s. People left the large cities and returnedto rural areas during these centuries. However,agricultural work was no longer undertakenby independent cultivators who were membersof agricultural societies or by slaves laboring inlarge holdings. Instead, agriculture was organizedaround large estates in which local landlords ruledfrom fortified manors and the cultivators werelegally tied to the land.

Feudal Society

In many ways feudal society was simply an exten-sion of agricultural society. The majority of peoplestill tilled the land in the same traditional ways.However, the way in which agricultural surpluswas extracted changed. In simple agriculturalsociety and in imperial societies, peasants had givenup a portion of their crops as tax to feed the rulers,priests, and warriors, or they were forced to workas slaves. In feudal society landlords extracted sur-plus both as a share of the peasants’ crops and in theform of forced labor on the landlords’ land. Thelatter imposition was called corvee labor, and peasantsworking under the feudal system were called serfs.Forced labor averaged three days per week. Theburden was lessened to the extent that the laborcould be performed by any member of the peasant’sfamily, but it was increased to the extent thatrequirements were greatest at planting and harvestwhen the peasants most needed to tend their own

fields. The movement of peasants off the manorwas either forbidden or might result in a fine. Finesmight be levied, for example, when a daughtermarried away to a different manor or a son movedto the city.

Extreme Inequality Incremental improvementsin technology expanded agricultural productivityduring the Middle Ages. These advances includedthe horseshoe, the padded horse collar, the wheeledplow, and the three-field system of crop rotation.These developments resulted in a gradual growth ofpopulation, but they did little to improve the posi-tion of the peasant who on average subsisted on ascant 1,600 calories per day (Lilley, 2002).

The ruling class absorbed the additional surplusin what was perhaps the most extreme period ofinequality in human history. Historians have esti-mated that between 30 percent and 70 percent ofserfs’ crops were expropriated in the form of taxesor duties by feudal lords or by the CatholicChurch. In much of the feudal system as practicedin Western Europe, ‘‘when a man died, the lord ofthe manor could claim his best beast or most valu-able movable possession, and the priest could oftenclaim the second best’’ (Lenski, 1984:269).

Artisans and Guilds What is most significantabout the Middle Ages from the standpoint ofchanges in work is the growth of a new class ofproducers, the free artisans. Artisans were typically

SOURCE: CALVIN AND HOBBES ª 1989 Watterson. Dist. by UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.



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the sons and daughters of serfs who had escaped therural servitude of their parents and had moved to atown or ‘‘bourg.’’ The citizens of medieval townshad a large degree of self-governance and were freefrom the obligations that characterized the ruralmanors. The trades of artisans included baking,weaving, and leather working. Instead of perform-ing these diverse activities as part of their dailyround of duties, the artisans specialized in a parti-cular trade, producing superior goods for othertown dwellers who included church officials, sol-diers, and merchants engaged in intercity trade.

The practitioners of the various crafts formedguilds for their mutual benefit. These guilds regu-lated the quality of goods, acceptable hours ofwork, and even prices. For example:

Chandlers had to use four pounds of tallow foreach quarter pound of wick. Makers of bonehandles were forbidden by their guilds to trimtheir products with silver lest they pass themoff for ivory. . . . In the interest of preservingfair competition, work on Sundays and saints’days was banned, thus preventing the impiousfrom gaining an unfair advantage over thepious. Night work was forbidden both in theinterest of fair competition and because poorlighting compromised meticulous workman-ship. (Kranzberg and Gies, 1986:2–3)

Merchants, too, organized themselves into guildsto regulate and standardize their activities. Prices,hours, and first rights to bid on cargo were amongthe many regulated practices (Lilley, 2002). Medievalguilds were similar to those of the classical civiliza-tions, but they played a considerably broader role inorganizing the economic and political life of themedieval city. In the classic civilizations the king orthe emperor and powerful landowners held politicalpower. In the Medieval cities, by contrast, the guildswere major actors in both economic and political life.

The training of new artisans was also strictlycontrolled by the guilds, again with the goal ofregulating quality and thus protecting the reputationand status of the guild. An additional goal was ensur-ing work for existing guild members by limiting thenumber of people who could practice a trade.

Apprentices were recruited from the extendedfamilies of artisans within the trade, from otherartisans’ families, and from rural areas. After yearsof on-the-job training, the apprentice would pro-duce what was judged to be a masterpiece andwould then be admitted formally to full guildmembership as a master craftsman. Over the courseof the Middle Ages, however, opening one’s ownshop became increasingly difficult as more andmore craftsmen competed for limited markets. Asa result, guilds became more restrictive in theirmembership criteria, and a new position emergedcalled the journeyman. A journeyman artisan hadsuccessfully completed his apprenticeship trainingbut did not own his own shop. Instead, he traveledfrom artisan to artisan, and sometimes from city tocity, looking for work as an artisanal helper.

An additional major change in work thatoccurred during the Middle Ages was the disappear-ance of slave labor. Massive public works were con-structed during this period, just as during the periodof classical civilization. These monuments, cathedrals,and monasteries were financed by surplus extractedprimarily from feudal serfs and secondarily from taxeson intercity trade. The labor, however, was not pro-vided by slaves or by serfs. Rather, these structureswere constructed by skilled artisanal workers, such asmasons, carpenters, blacksmiths, and glaziers. The useof free skilled labor for these construction projectsprovided an important impetus to the growth of theartisanal classes during the Middle Ages.

A New Vision of Work The advent of free arti-sanal work brought with it important new perspec-tives on the meaning of work and on relationsbetween members of society. Artisans strongly sup-ported traditional, highly skilled ways of work.Producing large quantities of goods quickly wasnot the overarching goal because there were nomass markets; the artisans served a very restrictedclientele. The guilds therefore encouraged groupsolidarity to lessen the danger of being undercut inlimited markets by price-cutting or by the sale ofshoddy merchandise. As members of a guild, arti-sans identified their interests with preservation ofhigh quality standards rather than with getting ahead



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of other artisans in their guild. These ideals of equal-ity and solidarity would later help inspire the revolu-tionary demands of the artisans and the peasants asthey sought to overthrow feudal society and install asociety based on freely producing craft labor.

Economic Expansion and the End of Feudal

Society Many changes led to the passing of feudalsociety and the transition to modern industrialsociety. This transition provides a fulcrum for muchof the social history written since that time. It wasalso a central concern for the forerunners of modernsociology—Karl Marx, Max Weber, and EmileDurkheim. The transition from feudal society toindustrial society was brought about by an expansionof population, trade, and markets. Between the years1000 and 1500, more than a thousand new townssprang up in Europe. Connected by usable roads,these towns provided the basis for regional specializa-tion, that is, for a division of labor based on theunique resources of different regions (Lilley, 2002).The Crusades also spurred the growth of importantnew markets for European goods, especially woolengoods. The exploration of the New World and theopening of trade routes to Asia were also boons tothe European economy. Finally, the huge store ofprecious metals seized from Indian civilizations inCentral and South America allowed a dramaticgrowth in the money supply and facilitated theexpansion of credit and trade.

The period between feudal society and indus-trial society was one in which increased trade pro-vided the impetus for changes in the organizationof work. This intermediate period, called the Age

of Merchant Capitalism, lasted from the fourteenthcentury to the advent of the first modern factoriesin England in the mid-eighteenth century. Figure1.2 provides a timeline that summarizes major his-torical transformations in the organization of work.

Merchant Capitalism

The earliest form of capitalism grew not as a way toorganize production but as a way to organize trade.Previously, craft workers had bought their own rawmaterials and retailed the finished goods from theirown shops. Under merchant capitalism the mer-chant capitalist increasingly took on these network-ing roles. This change frequently occurred becauseof the merchant’s monopoly over lucrative intercitymarkets for finished goods or for agricultural pro-ducts. For example, a leather merchant might havehad a corner on the purchasing of hides from acattle-raising region or on the market for leathershoes sold in neighboring areas. Local craftsmenthus had to work through the merchant to partici-pate in these markets.

The Merchant as Labor Contractor The systemof production under merchant capitalism was calledthe putting-out system because the merchant would‘‘put out’’ the raw materials to be worked up andwould later collect the finished products to be sold.

In England the typical form of cottage ordomestic industry was wool and, later, cottonweaving. . . . Merchants brought raw materialsto rural cottages and then picked up the wovencloth which they had finished in towns or large

300,000 B.C. 8000 2000 A.D. 800 1400 1750 1920 1960

Nomadichunting andgatheringsocieties

Settledagriculturalsocieties

Classicalcivilizations

Feudalsystem

Merchantcapitalism

Factorysystem

Massproduction

Postindustrialsociety

Globalization

2000

F I G U R E 1.2 Time Line of the Organization of Work



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villages. By having cloth woven in the coun-tryside, the merchants managed to escape thecontrol of the guilds. (Tilly and Scott, 1978:14)

In essence, craft workers became subcontractorsfor merchants and were paid a piece rate for theirwork. The system also brought many non-guildworkers into production because the merchant capi-talist would put out simple tasks, such as preparingand softening leather or cleaning and carding wool,to less-skilled workers, whose labor was cheaper.These workers included seasonally underemployedpeasants, recent immigrants from rural areas, widows,young women waiting to marry, and wives of under-employed husbands (Gullickson, 2002). Apprenticesand journeymen who could not find employment asartisans because of the encroachment on craft marketsby the merchant capitalists were also recruited intothe putting-out system. In rural areas this system wascalled cottage industry. In urban areas it was calledsweatshop production because the work typically tookplace in the often hot, cramped, and dirty attics ofpeople’s homes.

Putting-out arrangements were the earliest formof the system of wage labor typical of industrialproduction throughout the world today. The systemwas successful because it undercut the pricing struc-ture of guild regulations. The artisan made a fullrange of goods in his trade and wanted to be paidaccordingly. A tailor, for example, would want tomake a fair day’s wage for his labor, regardless ofwhether he worked that day on petticoats, shirts, orjackets. However, some tasks, such as making petti-coats, did not require the full range of the artisan’sskills and could be done reasonably well by lessskilled workers. The merchant would put out suchwork to a seasonally underemployed peasant or to ajourneyman tailor unable to set up his own shop, andwould pay this worker less than an artisan expectedto receive as a living wage. On this basis, the mer-chant capitalists undercut the artisans’ prices andencroached further and further into their markets.

Guild Resistance to Merchant Capitalism Theguilds resisted the putting-out system by imple-menting civic laws regulating the number of jour-neymen or apprentices that one person could

employ. However, the merchant capitalists’ controlof the intercity markets and their flexibility in put-ting out work to rural areas afforded them optionsunavailable to the craft workers of any given city.As a result, the putting-out system eventuallyreplaced the guild system in the manufacture ofmany basic commodities, most importantly in tex-tiles. The craft system of work typical of the guildslingers on to this day in such areas as specialty toolsand the manufacture of some luxury items. Thelegacy of the guilds is also felt in modern unionsand professional associations. However, artisanalproduction would never again be the way in whichthe majority of goods were manufactured insociety.

The social relations of work were profoundlytransformed by the putting-out system. In place offree artisans, two classes emerged with distinct andeven antagonistic relations: the merchant capitalistsand those whom they employed in the putting-outsystem. The merchant capitalists sought to pay aslittle as possible for each type of work they put out.Those who worked under this system sought tosecure a living wage for their labor, a goal oftenhampered by the availability of cheaper labor inanother city or region. These relations set the stagefor the historic conflict between capital and labor.

The daily lives of artisans were dramaticallyaffected by the advent of merchant capitalism. Wagesfell for craft workers as they were forced to cut theirprices to retain a share of markets (Gullickson, 2002).They were forced to work longer hours, and ingeneral their positions as members of the middle classwere gravely threatened. Even the average age ofmarriage among journeymen increased substantiallyat this time because of the difficulty of securing aposition as a master craftsman who could support afamily (Aminzade, 2001). Box 1.4 describes theworking and living conditions of a family employedas subcontracted labor to make cloaks in their urbanapartment.

Under the guild system, women had worked ashelpers in their husbands’ crafts and sometimes asmembers of their own guilds, though generally atlower earnings. Under the putting-out systemwomen were often employed directly by merchant



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capitalists, who used their low wages as leverage toundercut artisanal wages. By working at home,women were able to combine various forms of pro-ductive activity including paid work, domestic activ-ity, and care for children. Because paid work was onlyone part of their productive activity, they were oftenwilling to undertake this work for lower wages thanwere skilled artisans who needed to secure their entirelivelihood in this way (Crowston, 2001).

Spiritual Grace and Worldly Success Merchantcapitalism also witnessed the emergence of newtheologies based on the thought of Martin Lutherand John Calvin, whose writings gave voice andcontent to the Protestant Reformation. Thesetheologies suggested a new vision of work some-times called the Protestant work ethic (Weber,1958 [1904]). This vision identifies successful pur-suit of one’s occupational calling with spiritualgrace. If one prospers through diligent work, thisprosperity is seen as evidence of being among thosechosen to go to heaven. The Protestant work ethicwas well matched with the emerging worldview ofthe merchant capitalist, who was engaged in acompetitive struggle for success on earth. This ethicprovides a justification and a motivation for hardwork in the pursuit of worldly success. The Pro-testant work ethic also encourages savings and thus

lays a foundation for the accumulation of capital tobe reinvested in business and commerce. Savingsare encouraged by the ethic’s call for the realizationof worldly asceticism through frugality, austerity,and plain living. The ethic also provides a basis fordespising less successful individuals because theirlack of success implies that they are among thosewhom God has forsaken. Although few wouldsubscribe completely to this view today, elementsof the early Protestant work ethic are retained inmany aspects of modern Western culture (Chalcraftand Harrington, 2001).

The Industrial Revolution

The transition from merchant capitalism and putting-out industry to industrial capitalism was a violentone. Known as the Industrial Revolution, itinvolved the forcible movement of large numbersof peasants off the land and into factories. In thewords of Karl Marx, it is a history ‘‘written inletters of fire and blood.’’ The Industrial Revolu-tion took place first in England, significantlybecause the English were deeply involved inthe expanding woolen trade with Flanders (today’sBelgium). England’s role in the woolen trade setthe stage for the forcible removal of peasants fromthe land and their replacement by grazing sheep.

B O X 1.4 Sweatshops—Home Work in Early Capitalism

The three main features of the sweatshop have beendescribed as unsanitary conditions, excessively longhours, and extremely low wages. The shops were gen-erally located in tenement houses. As a rule, one of therooms of the flat in which the contractor lived wasused as a working place. Sometimes work would becarried on all over the place, in the bedroom as well asin the kitchen. Even under the best of conditions, thiswould have made for living and working in grime anddirt. . . . A cloak maker used one room for his shop,while the other three rooms were supposed to be usedfor domestic purposes only, his family consisting of his

wife and seven children. In the room adjoining theshop, used as the kitchen, there was a red-hot stove,two tables, a clothes rack, and several piles of goods. Awoman was making bread on a table upon which therewas a baby’s stocking, scraps of cloth, several old tincans, and a small pile of unfinished garments. In thenext room was an old woman with a diseased facewalking the floor with a crying child in her arms.

SOURCE: Excerpted from America’s Working Women, edited by Rosalyn

Baxandall, Linda Gordon, and Susan Reverby, pp. 101–102. Copyright

1976 by Rosalyn Baxandall, Linda Gordon, and Susan Reverby. Reprinted

by permission of Random House, Inc.



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This displaced peasantry, in turn, provided a readypool of labor for the early factories. The woolentrade also generated capital for investment in newfactories and machinery.

Replacing Agriculture with Industry Peasantswere forced off the land through the enclosure

movement, in which land previously held incommon by the peasants and the landlord and usedfor grazing livestock, was enclosed with fences(Hobsbawm, 1975). The land was then used forraising sheep. This change caused a dramatic dete-rioration in the situation of the peasants, who wereno longer able to use this land to support their fewfarm animals. Marx notes the actions undertaken bythe Duchess of Sutherland between 1814 and 1820as an example of this process:

[The] 15,000 inhabitants, about 3,000 families,were systematically hunted and rooted out. Alltheir villages were destroyed and burnt, alltheir fields turned to pasturage. British soldiersenforced this eviction, and came to blows withthe inhabitants. One old woman was burnt todeath in the flames of the hut, which sherefused to leave. Thus this fine lady appro-priated 794,000 acres of land that had fromtime immemorial belonged to the clan. (Marx,1967 [1887]: 729–730)

After the peasants had been forced off the landto make room for sheep, they were furtherhounded as vagabonds until they entered the earlyfactories, often as forced labor.

The government of England enforced themovement of displaced peasants into the early fac-tories through what Marx called ‘‘bloody legislationagainst vagabondage’’:

Beggars old and unable to work receive abeggar’s license. On the other hand, whippingand imprisonment for sturdy vagabonds. Theyare to be tied to the cart-tail and whipped untilthe blood streams from their bodies. . . . For thesecond arrest for vagabondage the whipping isto be repeated and half the ear sliced off; butfor the third relapse the offender is to be exe-

cuted as a hardened criminal and enemy of thecommon weal. . . . Thus were agricultural peo-ple, first forcibly expropriated from the soil,driven from their homes, turned into vaga-bonds, and then whipped, branded, torturedby laws grotesquely terrible into the disciplinenecessary for the wage system. (Marx, 1967[1887]: 734–737)

Vagabondage laws, poor laws, and head taxeswere used to force displaced agricultural workersinto the early factories. The earliest factory workerswere thus frequently the victims of penal sanctionsrather than freely hired wage labor.

The emergence of these factories was the finalblow against the feudal guilds and their apprentice-ship systems for recruiting and training skilled work-ers. Indeed, many laws prohibiting the existence ofguilds, unions, and other combinations of workers—and even defining union membership as a crimepunishable by death—were passed in England in thesixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries(Hobsbawm, 1975). Factories also signaled an endto merchant capitalism, which was based on expand-ing production by putting out work to more andmore home-based workers, and ushered in the nextstage of society and economic history—industrialcapitalism.

The Factory System The defining characteristic ofindustrial capitalism is the development of the factorysystem. What made the early factories so terrible thatpeople refused to enter them except under the forceof law? To understand the position of the earlyfactory workers, it is helpful to know somethingabout how these factories operated. Workers werecentralized under one roof in the factory system.Such centralization avoided the costs of transportingpartly finished goods from one location to another asrequired by the putting-out system. Importantly, italso forced workers to labor according to the dictatesof the owners rather than according to their ownpace and rhythm. The centralization of work thusmeant that in order to have access to any work at all, aworker had to be willing to work the hours and daysdemanded by the employer. The result was an



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expansion in the length of the working day, anincrease in the intensity of work, and a decrease inthe number of religious and personal holidaysallowed (Pollard, 1963).

The massing of many workers in one locationalso allowed the development of machinery to dorepetitious tasks. A seemingly endless variety oftasks could be broken down into their simplestcomponents and mechanized. The widespreadintroduction of machinery had not been feasibleunder the putting-out system because too fewrepetitions of a task were performed at any onelocation to warrant the expense of machinery.The centralization of work in the factory thusfacilitated the introduction of machinery.

The push toward longer working days wasfurther intensified by the factory owner’s desire torun the new machinery as many hours per day aspossible in order to justify its purchase. Themachinery heightened productivity but ironicallyresulted in lower wages for workers because fewerskills were needed. Increased productivity anddecreased costs allowed factory owners to sell theirproducts at prices that drastically undercut artisanalproducers and even merchant capitalists. Thesedynamics resulted in the rise of factory productionover older social organizations of work (Thomp-son, 1967).

The Centrality of Textiles The Industrial Revo-lution in England had begun in the woolen indus-try. The focus shifted to cotton textiles as the importof cotton from the New World grew and marketsfor British textiles expanded in Asia and NorthAmerica. It is noteworthy that even the beginningsof the Industrial Revolution depended on the avail-ability of global markets. Several inventions alsofacilitated the rapid growth of the textile industry,including the flying shuttle (1733), the spinningjenny (1767), the water frame (1769), the spinningmule (1779), the power loom (1787), and the cot-ton gin (1792) (Faunce, 1981:14). These develop-ments generated tremendous growth in Britishindustry in a very brief period. ‘‘Output of printedcotton rose from 21 million yards in 1796 to 347million yards in 1830. Pounds of raw cotton con-

sumed increased from 10.9 million in 1781 to 592million in 1845’’ (Faunce, 1981:13). This boom incotton cloth production also sparked the rise ofcotton plantations in the American South and fueledthe slave trade as a source of cheap labor for thecotton fields.

The consequences of growth in the textileindustry spread rapidly to other British industries.Coal was needed to provide steam for powerlooms. Steel was needed to build railways to carrythe coal. More coal was needed to make coke forsmelting iron and steel. Machine tools were neededfor building and maintaining textile, mining, andrailway machinery. Ship manufacture advancedperhaps more rapidly than any other field becauseof the dependence of the Industrial Revolution onforeign trade. By the end of the nineteenth century,huge steel-bodied, steam-powered ships wouldreplace the slower, smaller sailing vessels allowinga further expansion in the tonnage of goods shippedaround the world.

A Detailed Division of Labor The division oflabor into finer and finer activities also advancedmore rapidly during this period than at any other inhistory. The English economist Adam Smithdescribed this process for the simple trade of pinmanufacture:

One man draws out the wire; anotherstraightens it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; afifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head;to make the head requires two or three distinctoperations; to put it on is a peculiar business; towhiten the pin is another; it is even a trade byitself to put them into the paper; and theimportant business of making a pin is in thismanner divided into about 18 distinct opera-tions, which in some manufactories are allperformed by distinct hands, though in othersthe same man will sometimes perform two orthree of them. . . . Ten persons, therefore,could make among them upwards of 48,000pins in a day. (Smith, 1776)

Under the artisanal system a pin maker mighthave repeated each of the 18 distinct operations



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several times before proceeding with the next step,thus increasing efficiency by not having constantlyto take up and put down each task. However, thesetasks would never have been assigned to differentworkers. Social theorists have offered stronglydivergent appraisals of the consequences of thisdetailed division of labor. Smith applauded thesystem because it lowered the price of pins. Marxcondemned it because it reduced the skills andlowered the wages of the workers who madethe pins.

In the early factories, work was organizedunder the supervision of foremen. These foremenwere more similar to subcontractors than to mod-ern day supervisors. They hired their assistants,trained them in their tasks, set them to work,supervised them on the job, and paid them outof the piece-rate earnings they received for thegoods produced. This system was typical of thetextile industry, iron making, gun making, saddlemaking, coach building, and most other tradesuntil the beginning of the twentieth century(Jacoby, 2004).

Forced Labor The position of workers deterio-rated rapidly during the early stages of the IndustrialRevolution. The earnings of weavers fell to as little asa tenth of what they had been before the introduc-tion of machinery (Hobsbawm, 1975). This resultedpartly from the reduced need for skilled workers inthe early factories. The early factory workers weremore likely to be women, children, indenturedlaborers, vagabonds forcibly placed in poor houses,and, in the New World, slaves and indentured ser-vants. Indentured laborers were workers undercontract to work for a certain amount of time—typically eight to ten years—for a set price or as partof their penalty for being found guilty for a crimesuch as petty theft or vagabondage.

The rights of those who labored in the earlyfactories were minimal. Slavery, forced labor, andindenturement reappeared and were relativelycommon, especially in the New World. The roleof indentured laborers in settling the new landsstarted as early as 1607 with their use by the VirginiaCompany. Conditions for these workers were

terrible. They suffered high levels of mortality andwere treated with great cruelty. In response someindentured workers ran away to live with theIndians. The Virginia colony’s governor dealtfirmly with recaptured laborers: ‘‘Some he apointedto be hanged Some burned Some to be brokenupon wheles, others to be staked and some to beshott to death’’ (quoted in Galenson, 1984:4). Aquarter of the labor force in the United States in theearly 1800s was made up of slaves. From the stand-point of the slave owners, this provided a workablesolution to the problem of labor shortages in theNew World and, simultaneously, a solution to theproblem of retaining and controlling their workers.Wage laborers thought less well of this solution as itset a harsh standard against which their own laborwas measured. Slaves were not consulted on thesystem.

Government involvement in the economy dur-ing the period of early industrialization occurred inthe form of military support for the establishment ofBritish colonies and the expansion of trade with thesecolonies. Indeed, this period of British political andeconomic history is sometimes called mercantilism toindicate the pivotal importance of establishing inter-national markets. Government involvement did not,however, include any but token efforts to establishminimum working or safety standards in Britishfactories.

Inside the factories the round of daily life wasextremely monotonous. The strict routine was quiteunlike preindustrial rhythms of work, which hadbeen based on seasonal variations and a degree ofpersonal discretion in organizing one’s daily tasks(Hobsbawm, 1975). The hours were extremelylong. Neither before nor after have people workedlonger or harder than during early industrial capit-alism: ‘‘In some huge factories from one fourth toone fifth of the children were cripples or otherwisedeformed, or permanently injured by excessive toil,sometimes by brutal abuse. The younger childrenseldom lasted out more than three or four yearswithout some illness, often ending in death’’(quoted in Faunce, 1981:16). Beginning in the early1800s, the working day was further extended fromtwelve hours to as many as sixteen hours by the use



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of gaslight. As a result, workers labored from beforedawn well into the night (Hobsbawm, 1975).

Women and Children In 1838 only 33 percent ofthe workers in British textile factories were adultmales (Hobsbawm, 1975). Women and children thusplayed a central role in the early Industrial Revolu-tion. They were employed because it was acceptableto pay them much less than men and because theywere easier to bully into the harsh discipline ofmechanized production. Young women were alsoconsidered more expendable to agricultural workand were thus more likely to be available for factorywork (Crowston, 2001). Given the conditions ofearly factory work, it would be inaccurate to considerthe participation of women at this time as a sign oftheir emancipation. The harsh working conditions ofwomen in the early factories are illustrated in a peti-tion to the state of Massachusetts that the women ofLowell brought against their employers (see Box 1.5).

Industrial Cities The cities in which this emergingworking class lived were no more healthy or pleasantthan the factories in which they labored:

The industrial town of the Midlands and theNorth West was a cultural wasteland. . . .

Dumped into this bleak slough of misery, the

immigrant peasant, or even the yeoman or

copyholder, was soon transformed into a non-

descript animal of the mire. It was not that he

was paid too little, or even that he labored too

long—though either happened often to

excess—but that he was now existing under

physical conditions which denied the human

shape of life. (Polanyi, 1957:98–99)

Not until the 1890s did sewage systems begin

to catch up to the need for them, even in the largest

industrial cities (Lilley, 2002). Epidemics of cholera

and typhoid took an appalling toll on workers in

the early industrial cities. Domestic cooking and

heating as well as factory production depended on

coal, and a thick layer of soot settled over every-

thing in the industrial city. As a result, thousands

died from tuberculosis and other respiratory ail-

ments—or had their lives shortened and crippled

by these diseases (Hobsbawm, 1975).The spread of factories separated work from

home. If people wanted to find gainful work, they

had to leave their families and venture out alone.

The removal of work to the factory undermined the

family’s function as the primary unit of economic

B O X 1.5 Complaint by Lowell Factory Women, 1845

The first petitioner who testified was Eliza R. Heming-way. Her employment is weaving—works by thepiece. . . . She complained of the hours for labor beingtoo many, and the time for meals too limited. In thesummer season, the work is commenced at 5 o’clock,a.m., and continued til 7 o’clock, p.m., with half anhour for breakfast and three quarters of an hour fordinner. During eight months of the year but half anhour is allowed for dinner. The air in the room sheconsidered not to be wholesome. There were 293 smalllamps and 61 large lamps lighted in the room in whichshe worked, when evening work is required. . . . About130 females, 11 men, and 12 children (between the agesof 11 and 14) work in the room with her. The children

work but 9 months out of 12. The other 3 months theymust attend school. Thinks that there is no day whenthere are less than six of the females out of the millfrom sickness. Has known as many as thirty. She herselfis out quite often on account of sickness. . . . Shethought there was a general desire among the femalesto work but ten hours, regardless of pay. . . . Sheknew of one girl who last winter went into the mill athalf past four o’clock, a.m., and worked till half past7 o’clock, p.m. She did so to make more money.

SOURCE: Excerpted from America’s Working Women, edited by Rosalyn

Baxandall, Linda Gordon, and Susan Reverby, pp. 49–50. Copyright 1976

by Rosalyn Baxandall, Linda Gordon, and Susan Reverby. Reprinted by

permission of Random House, Inc.



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production. To the extent that women were unable

to leave the house in the search for work because

of the demands of domestic activity and child rear-ing, their relative contribution to the household’s

economy was undermined (Kessler-Harris, 2001).

Women often supplemented their contribution,

however, by taking in boarders, doing laundry orsewing at home, or performing other income-

generating activities compatible with their domestic

responsibilities (Crowston, 2001).

The Skilled Trades Centralized work in factoriesunder close supervision, with machines dictatingthe pace, robbed workers of the skills and auton-omy necessary to take pride in their work. It is nowonder that early factory workers were alienatedand resentful. It would be inaccurate, however, tocharacterize all workers as having experienced a lossof skill and pride in their work at this time. Older,skilled ways of work prevailed among blacksmiths,shoemakers, stonemasons, and the new machinisttrades whose growth was spurred by the IndustrialRevolution. These workers continued to experi-ence strong feelings of pride in work and solidaritywith their fellow craft workers.

Industrial Capitalists The new class of factoryowners, called industrial capitalists, as well as thosewho aspired to become members of this class, devel-oped new ideologies to represent their view of work.One popular ideology among the capitalist class inNorth America in the latter part of the nineteenthcentury was Social Darwinism, patterned afterCharles Darwin’s evolutionary theory of the survivalof the fittest (Perrow, 1986). The Social Darwinistsviewed extreme competition and inequality not onlyas just but also as in the best interests of societybecause they would ensure that the most able indivi-duals would rise to the top. Similar lines of reasoningwere embodied in the philosophy of laissez-faire,which argued that economic systems work best whenundisturbed by government regulation. The growthof such individualistic ideologies and the waning ofcraft ideologies stressing pride in work and solidarityleft little middle ground for the development of ashared workplace ethic suitable for reconciling the

two opposing classes of industrial capitalism. Attemptsat reconciliation would await the development ofpostindustrial society.

In the long run, industrial capitalism allowed forsome improvement in the position of the workingclass. In the modern world ‘‘nearly every indicator ofphysical well-being corresponds to the extent of indus-trialization’’ (Tausky, 1984:30). Increased well-beingis based on greater agricultural and manufacturingproductivity and on workers’ abilities to demand ashare of these rewards. The latter, in turn, is basedon the continuing need for new skills as technologyadvances and on the organization of workers intounions and their successful petition for legal rightsand safeguards in the workplace.

Early Trade Unions In 1824 the illegality of tradeunions in England ceased, though every effortto destroy them was still made by employers(Hobsbawm, 1975). By the 1870s other importantlegal changes were also occurring in England. Theseincluded the passage of child labor laws and a lawlimiting the working day to ten hours. By the 1880sall children under the age of ten were required to befull-time students. Factory inspections were alsoincreased to provide at least some enforcement forthese laws. These changes occurred about fifty yearslater in North America, which experienced a slowerprocess of industrialization and a later emergence ofunions. In North America a variety of union formswould emerge, including local craft unions, theKnights of Labor, and national craft unions orga-nized under the banner of the American Federationof Labor. We discuss these early attempts at union-ization further in Chapter 6. In aggregate, thesechanges produced an increase in life expectancyfor workers and improved standards of living.

Monopoly Capitalism

By the early years of the twentieth century, indus-trial capitalism was displaced by monopoly capitalism(Jacoby, 2004). The greatly expanded size of com-panies at this time provided them with immensepower over competitors, suppliers, and consumers.Large companies could utilize more efficient types



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of mechanization and more powerful marketingtechniques than smaller companies and graduallycame to replace them in more and more industries.Economic power became centralized in an oligopolyof a few large companies in many industries. Otherindustries became dominated, at least regionally, bya single company—a monopoly. Today, railroadsand power companies are good examples of com-plete or almost complete regional monopolies.

Along with greater oligopoly and monopolypower came an increased involvement of govern-ment in the productive process. Governmentinvolvement grew for a number of reasons. Forone, there was a heightened need to establishsecure markets for the greatly expanded productiv-ity of the large companies. Industrial nationsstruggled for a share of world markets, and govern-ments took on an important role in securing suchmarkets through diplomatic and military action(Hobsbawm, 1975). The First and Second WorldWars were, to a significant extent, a result of suchglobal economic competition. In addition, compet-ing demands on the state by monopoly capitalists,small capitalists, and the growing working classencouraged greater government involvement inthe economy to stabilize class relations and to med-iate between these competing interests. This inter-vention was frequently less than evenhanded, withpowerful groups successfully using the governmentto support their interests.

Huge Centralized Factories The end of thenineteenth century and the beginning of the twen-tieth was a time of great change in the organizationof enterprises. Increased size and centralization werethe order of the day. Factories increased in size,sometimes employing many thousands of workers,and single companies acquired control of multiplefactories. ‘‘In 1851 there were fifty telegraph compa-nies; in 1866 Western Union operated fifty thousandmiles of line and had bought up all but a few remain-ing telegraph companies. . . . In the 1890s Carnegie’ssteel factories controlled two-thirds of steel produc-tion in the United States’’ (Tausky, 1984:46–47).American Tobacco Company controlled over 90percent of cigarette sales by 1890. The Westinghouse

Electric Company and General Electric Companycontrolled electrical equipment. The F.W. Wool-worth Company held a huge share of sales in generalmerchandise stores. Sears, Roebuck and Company,and Montgomery Ward and Company dwarfedtheir competitors in the mail-order business.Several dozen early car manufacturers were over-shadowed and forced out of business by the wildlysuccessful Ford Motor Company. E.I. DuPont deNemours and Company dominated chemical pro-duction, and the Standard Oil companies, ownedby the Rockefellers, dominated petrochemicals.These successes were partly based on efficienciesassociated with economies of scale and on the abil-ity to develop and deploy new technologies. How-ever, increasing centralization was also based on theuse of economic and political power to undercutcompetitors. Smaller companies had a difficult timecompeting against these corporate giants. Theywere forced to operate in regions or product linesas yet unconquered by the large companies, or tobecome suppliers of parts and services to the giantcorporations (Adams, 2004).

Along with greater size and concentration ofcompanies came increased bureaucracy. Bureau-cracy entails the systematic use of rules and thecreation of formalized job positions with clearlydelineated duties. Standardized procedures had tobe developed as the internal workings of companiesbecame more complex and there was less and lessreliance on various forms of subcontracting to fore-men. Foremen no longer hired their work crews,for example. Instead, a central personnel office didthe hiring. For workers, such bureaucratic proce-dures can have positive as well as negative conse-quences. Standardized practices protect workersfrom some of the worst abuses and favoritism offoremen, but they also tend to further depersonalizethe work environment.

Mass Production The immense size of economicorganizations at the beginning of the twentiethcentury brought about the possibility of new formsof technology and new means of organizing workand controlling workers. The most notable of thesewas the assembly line. The full-fledged use of the



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assembly line occurred first in the automobileindustry, but it built directly on existing forms ofmechanized production being used in other indus-tries at the time:

An unskilled operator snapped engine blocks,for example, onto specially designed tables andwatched a machine mill them automaticallyand accurately. Made this way, parts such ascylinder heads and engine blocks could befitted together without the need for handscraping of surfaces during assembly.

Once hand fitting had been eliminated andthe specialized machines had been arranged inthe sequence of manufacturing operations, thenext and revolutionary steps were to reduce thetransit time of work pieces from machine tomachine and to systematize their assembly. . . .The assembly line may have been inspired bythe disassembly lines in Chicago slaughterhouses, which circulated carcasses from butcherto butcher, or by Ford’s own gravity slidesand conveyors. . . . The first crude moving linecut the time needed for final assembly fromjust under 12.5 to about 5.8 man-hours.(Sabel, 1982:33)

With assembly-line production, job skills becomehighly specific to the technology and procedures usedin a given plant. Such jobs are considered semi-skilledbecause they require a specific skill but one that can belearned in a relatively short time, often one to twoweeks. A smaller portion of workers are required tohave broader based skills, such as those of the machi-nist, electrician, or tool and die maker. The organiza-tion of production around an assembly line and theresulting deskilling of jobs are sometimes referred to asthe ‘‘Fordist’’ organization of work in recognition ofits origins in Ford’s automobile factories.

The assembly line sets a rapid pace for workersand keeps them at required tasks much more clo-sely than even the harshest foreman (Jacoby, 2004).Assembly lines and other forms of advancedmechanization are organized under the principlesof scientific management. Scientific management isidentified with the work of Frederick Taylor, anAmerican industrial engineer, who believed that all

thinking should be removed from the realm of theworker. Instead, the worker was to execute dili-gently a set of motions engineered to ensure themost efficient performance of a given task. This so-called scientific plan came from first observing howworkers did the task, then progressively redesigningthe task to increase efficiency. The theory of scien-tific management was highly compatible with thenew assembly-line system of production. In com-bination, however, these new forces sparked fierceresistance from workers, who felt that the newproduction systems treated them like automatonsrather than human beings.

The daily life of production workers undermonopoly capitalism was somewhat better than ithad been in early industrial capitalism. The work-ing day was progressively shortened because ofheightened productivity and because of pressurefrom working-class trade union and political activ-ity. However, the monotony of work, if anything,was increased. In North America the emergence ofmonopoly capitalism coincided with a period ofheavy immigration of workers from Western Eur-ope, in the 1870s, and from Eastern Europe, in the1910s. These immigrants, both male and female,provided labor for many of the expanding mass-production industries. Ethnic groups often movedthrough the factories in successive waves—as onegroup moved upward toward craft and white-collarjobs, another group replaced them on the factoryfloor.

The shared situation of large numbers ofsemi-skilled workers in the mass-productionindustries facilitated solidarity and the identifica-tion of common grievances among these workers.Workers in such industries as automobiles andsteel organized into industrial unions to promotetheir collective welfare. In North America therewas a dramatic growth in union organizing duringthe Great Depression of the 1930s. Demands forhigher wages, however, were not the primarymotivation for these organizing drives. Rather,the workers resented the dehumanizing practicesof scientific management, the speed-ups imposedon the already rapidly paced assembly lines, andthe associated lack of job security. We discuss



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these union organizing drives in greater detail inChapter 6.

A More Complex Class Structure The class

structure of monopoly capitalism was significantlydifferent from that of early industrial capitalism.Society remained strongly divided between ownersand workers, who were themselves divided betweenskilled craft workers and less skilled workers. How-ever, there was a rebirth of the middle class as a resultof a heightened need for clerical and mid-level man-agerial workers in the new giant companies. Thedemand for professional services, such as educationand health care, also expanded as a result of arising standard of living—occupations which are thefocus of Chapter 11. Managers and administrativesupport occupations are discussed further in Chapters12 and 13.

Ideas about the meaning of work were alsochanging among capitalists, and especially amongthe new class of hired managers. The old ideologyof ‘‘survival of the fittest’’ provided little guidanceon how to placate angry workers or encouragetheir productivity. As a result, new ideologiesfocusing on persuasion and cooperation emerged.One ideology, associated with Elton Mayo andChester Barnard, early industrial sociologists, cameto be known as the human relations approach toindustrial management (Perrow, 1986). Workerswere seen as tractable and as desiring recognitionand personal treatment. Such an approach reflectedthe reality that workers had been robbed of suchindividual recognition and personal treatment bythe advent of industrial capitalism and the develop-ment of mass-production systems.

Postindustrial Society

The transition from mass production to the presentstage of industrial society, sometimes called postin-

dustrial society, resulted directly from the immenseproductivity of mass-production systems. This transi-tion began with two decades of stable economicgrowth in the world following the Second WorldWar. By the 1960s a smaller and smaller percentageof the labor force was needed to manufacture goods.

Similarly, farm productivity continued to rise. As aresult, new employment growth has taken placemainly in clerical, service, and professional work.Some of these jobs are rewarding and exciting; othersare as monotonous as factory work and frequently payworse. In combination, their growth signals theadvent of postindustrial society.

Service Industries A growing proportion ofworkers in the industrially advanced nations areemployed in service industries, such as transporta-tion, wholesale and retail trade, finance, insurance,real estate, professional and business services, publicadministration, entertainment, and health. In 1940less than half of the United States labor force wasemployed in service industries. By the early years ofthe 2000s the proportion exceeded 80 percent.

Jobs in service industries vary greatly. Someare low-skill jobs in food service and health care.These jobs are predominantly filled by women andminorities. Other jobs entail highly skilled profes-sional work. Examples include computer program-ming and systems analysis. The overall effect of thisvariability in service jobs is an increase in the diver-sity of employment situations rather than a clearimprovement or deterioration in the quality ofavailable work. In addition, the pace at whichnew skills are needed has accelerated dramaticallyas a consequence of rapid technological changesbased on the widespread use of microprocessorsand computers in the workplace. This results inan additional set of problems of adjustment andretraining for workers. We explore some of thechallenges of providing training for rapidly chan-ging careers in Chapter 5 on work and family.

Professional Jobs The number of highly skilledprofessional workers has also grown in postindustrialsociety. Professional workers include accountants,lawyers, and doctors and other health professionalsin professional service industries, as well as engi-neers, chemists, biologists, and related scientists inincreasingly sophisticated manufacturing industries.These workers hold a privileged position in thedivision of labor based on their possession of knowl-edge and expertise not widely available without



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rigorous, extended study and preparation. As a resultof their expertise, they command relatively highwages as well as a certain degree of autonomy indecision making (Sullivan, 2005). Box 1.6 describesthe competitive work environment of engineers in ahigh-technology company.

Class Diversity The proportion of skilled andsemi-skilled manual workers in the labor force hasremained relatively stable in postindustrial society.However, a new class of low-paid service workershas come into being. Their wages and conditionsare considerably worse than those of skilled craftworkers and those of most semi-skilled workers.Their conditions more closely resemble those ofthe declining segment of unskilled labor. In manyways their actual jobs are also similar to those ofunskilled laborers. Service workers move hambur-gers around the fast-food outlet or bedpans aroundthe hospital, just as laborers move materials aroundthe factory floor or construction site.

The class structure of postindustrial society isthus the most diverse of any society to date. Itincludes a capitalist class, a managerial class, a largeprofessional class, a large manual class, and a largelow-wage service class. The disparate situations ofthese classes include both opulence and continuingpoverty. It was once believed that postindustrialsociety would bring about an end to poverty. Con-

temporary social scientists now believe that such anexpectation was grossly exaggerated (Bluestone andHarrison, 2000). We discuss continuing problemsof poverty and marginality at greater length inChapter 4 on class, gender, and race and Chapter14 on marginal jobs.

Work Motivation What motivates people towork in postindustrial society? Some observersassert that the work ethic has died in recent yearsand that apathy rather than motivation typifies thework force. But this vision only represents a partialtruth. For people whose jobs yield only minimalrewards, there is little reason to work enthusiasti-cally. And even for these workers, dignity is oftenachieved by taking pride in their work. Alterna-tively, for those with advanced education, moredesirable job opportunities are available. Theseworkers are motivated by the high level of rewardsthey can expect, by the pride associated withadvanced training in a professional specialty, andby the expectation of their profession and theiremployer that they will be committed to theirwork (Leicht and Fennell, 2001).

In postindustrial society work can take on anoverriding importance in people’s lives, oversha-dowing family and community attachments thatprevailed in previous periods. Many factors supportthis tendency. Greater demands for geographic

B O X 1.6 Engineering the Future

Developing new product lines is the glamorous work.This is seen as the essence of creative engineering,what engineering is all about. It is high-pressure work:crunches, slips, and other forms of organized hysteriaaccompany the pressure to be creative, to produce, tobe smart. In development, engineers typically work onprojects . . . . Within development, engineers sortthemselves out by the type of work they do and theirperceived skill. Engineering is a highly competitivearena in which formal statuses are supplemented byinformal ratings. Informally, engineers are categorized

by their skill. There are the ‘‘brilliant’’ and the ‘‘gen-

iuses,’’ their status sometimes debated (‘‘the only way

he made the list of 100 brightest scientists is if he

mailed coupons from the back of cereal boxes’’) and

sometimes acknowledged (‘‘Peter is brilliant. There is

no question about that; he is a crackerjack engineer’’);

and there are journeymen (and the occasional journey

women), who might be ‘‘solid citizens—no rah rah.’’

SOURCE: Excerpted from Gideon Kunda, Engineering Culture, Philadelphia,

Temple University Press, pp. 39–40.



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mobility preempt family attachments and curtailfriendships of long duration. Fear of unemploy-ment intensifies competition for available positions.Retirement, access to health care, and social statusare all attached to one’s job. In postindustrialsociety, work has become a ‘‘master status’’ deter-mining a person’s overall position in society and hisor her enduring sense of dignity and identity.

Women’s Liberation? The position of women hassignificantly improved in postindustrial society.Women have entered jobs that were once exclusivelymale preserves, including those of airplane pilot, firefighter, and heavy-equipment operator. The improvedposition of women is partly the result of a reduction inthe demands on women to perform homemakingduties. These roles have declined in significancebecause of delayed marriage, reduced birth rates,labor-saving technologies, and the substitution of paidservices for work that women previously performed athome—such as child care. Women have also securedbetter jobs because of their high rate of college gradua-tion in combination with the increased importance ofhigher education in postindustrial society. In spite ofthese gains, however, women’s earnings for full-timework are still only about three-quarters of men’s.

Racial and Ethnic Diversity The movement ofpeople around the world in the search for greatereconomic opportunities is accelerating in thetwenty-first century. As a result, the economies ofboth developed and developing countries are char-acterized by increasing racial and ethnic diversity.This diversity represents both a challenge and anopportunity. The challenge is to train and integratethe new work force while minimizing discrimina-tion and resentment from other workers. The skillsand motivations of these new workers, however,also represent an important opportunity for heigh-tened economic growth and prosperity for all.Chapter 4 describes some of the special challengesfaced by female, minority, and immigrant workers.

Globalization The world today is characterized byan increasingly international economy, which hassignificantly displaced local markets. The economic

fates of nations and individuals are highly dependenton their position in this global economy. Thus, thenature and rewards of work are not determined solelyby social and economic relations within one’s workgroup or employing organization. Rather, the natureof one’s work is importantly determined by its loca-tion in the global division of labor.

The heightened international division of laborhas intensified competition between nations. Somenations appear trapped in the role of agriculturalproduction or mineral extraction; others are becom-ing centers of low-wage assembly work reminiscentof early industrial society; still others are character-ized by the growth of service and professionalemployment. The postindustrial world includes allof these different types of work and societies. Theinternational division of labor and the relationsbetween the industrially developed and the indust-rially developing world are key to understanding thecontemporary world of work. The growth of man-ufacturing in developing nations is directly linked tothe decline of manufacturing in industrially devel-oped nations and the growth of the service sector inthese societies, with all its positive and negativeconsequences. A report on Malaysian electronicsworkers in Box 1.7 illustrates how the conditionsof the early factories are being reproduced today inmanufacturing establishments in developing nations,even those producing high technology products forglobal markets. The nature of the modern globaleconomy and its influence on work is the focus ofChapter 16.

Work and Leisure

Do people work harder today than in the past?The answer is complex and perhaps surprising.Workers in postindustrial society typically workmany more hours than did hunters and gatherers.How can this be, given the vastly greater techno-logical efficiencies of modern industry? For hun-ters and gatherers it made sense to kill only one ortwo antelopes, not ten or twenty. They had onlylimited technologies to preserve, store, or trans-port any surplus, and so much of it would havegone to waste. Modern workers can profitably



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work longer hours in order to earn more moneyto acquire more possessions or buy an increasingarray of services, including luxury services—suchas travel and entertainment. The result is anincrease in the duration and intensity of labor inmodern society. Advertising, which accentuatesthe desire for goods, and ideologies, which valuehard work, further contribute to a culture of over-work (Schor, 2004).

The lure of more goods and luxuries is onlypart of the story though. Owners and managers alsowant employees to work longer and harder in orderto get maximum output and to minimize costsassociated with adding more employees. And,because owners control who works and who does

not, they can demand hard work and fire thosewho do not comply. Thus, workers in modernsociety often face the prospects of highly demand-ing work versus no work at all—with all the atten-dant insecurities and privations of unemployment.

The history of leisure, however, is not a linearone. The greatest intensification of work occurredduring the height of the Industrial Revolutionwhen the newfound power of factory owners wasunmediated by any competing forces, such as tradeunions or limits and protections later developed bydemocratic governments. Thus, the end of thesixteen-hour day in the late 1800s, the growth of tradeunions, and the emergence of legislation specifyinghours, overtime, and safety rules brought about a

B O X 1.7 Electronics Assembly in Malaysia

The large-scale entry of labor-intensive industriessuch as garment manufacturing, food processing,but especially electronics assembly greatly increasedthe absorption of rural Malay women into theindustrial labor force. . . . They represented a fairlywell-educated labor pool, which was often over-qualified for the mass semiskilled factory occupations.About 50 percent of these workers had at leastlower secondary education, and many had aspiredto become typists, secretaries, trainee nurses, orteachers. . . .

Maximum product output was extracted fromthese rural women by the factories. Quickly exhaustedoperators were replaced by the next crop of schoolleavers. By keeping the wages low, the factories moti-vated the operators to work overtime on a regularbasis, to take on more unpleasant tasks (which exposedthem to fumes and acids), or to work at an increasedpace in order to earn special cash allowances. Freshlyrecruited workers were routinely assigned to the pro-duction processes that required continual use ofmicroscopes. Thus most workers, by the end of a cou-ple of years, suffered from eye strain and deteriorationof their eyesight. . . .

The industrial firms not only exploited theworkers in this manner but they also attempted to

limit their employment to the early stage of adult life,a strategy that ensured fresh labor capable of sus-tained intensive work at low wages. In one factory

new workers were employed on six-month contractsso that they could be released or rehired at the samelow wage rates. Government legislation for the pro-tection of pregnant female workers has had the

unintended effect of reinforcing factory policy todiscourage married women from applying, althoughemployed workers who got married would stay on.Married workers were given advice on family plan-

ning and provided with free contraceptives by thefactory clinic.

The rapid exhaustion of the operators also

resulted in most of them leaving on their ownaccord after three to four years of factory employ-ment, although an increasing number remainedworking, even after marriage. Operators leaving

the factories have not acquired any skills whichwould equip them for any but the same dead-end jobs.

SOURCE: Aihwa Ong, ‘‘Global Industries and Malay Peasants in Peninsular

Malaysia,’’ from Women, Men, and the International Division of Labor,

pp. 429–431, edited by June Nash and Maria Patricia Fernandez-Kelly.

Copyright 1983 State University of New York Press. Reprinted by

permission of the publisher.



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gradual decline in working time and intensity. Thisperiod of declining hours appears to have con-cluded, at least in North America, with the end ofthe post-Second World War economic boom inthe mid-1970s. Since that time, average annualhours in the United States have begun to climbagain, increasing from around 1,700 to nearly1,900—Americans have simply had to work morehours to maintain their lifestyle in an increasinglycompetitive global economy (Jacobs and Gerson,2004). These additional 200 hours translate into anadditional five weeks of work per year.

Much of the growth in annual hours worked isdue to women, particularly married women andwomen with children, increasing their paid hours ofwork. The result is a growth not just in individual timeat work but also in total family time given to paid workand a decline in time available for home and leisure.Thus, many families experience greater time pressureand a sense of continuous multitasking in order to getneeded chores done. People are not spending less timewith their children. Rather, the losers appear to bepersonal leisure, time for interaction with one’s spouse,and sleep (Bianchi, Robinson, and Milkie, 2006; Sayer,2005). People do desire greater leisure and it competeswith paid work for their time and attention, but todaythe desire for leisure wins out for fewer people than thedesire (and need) for money. We will explore otheraspects of time, work, and leisure in Chapter 5 on workand family and in Chapter 16 where we compare workand leisure internationally.

The Future

Work is here to stay. The future, however, will in all

likelihood bring vast changes in its nature. The

international division of labor among nations specia-

lizing in agricultural and extractive products, manu-

facturing products, and services will generate con-

tinuing changes, tensions, and conflicts in the

international organization of production (Chase-

Dunn et al., 2000). Automation will increase pro-

ductivity but reduce the number of workers needed

in many industries. Automation will also lead to the

creation of new products and new jobs in other

industries. The future seems destined to bring

greater participation for workers in determining the

direction of their enterprises. But the nature and

degree of this participation remains very uncertain.

The future may bring greater or lesser safety, secur-

ity, satisfaction, and dignity for workers. It may

bring greater equality for women. As productive

members of society, all of us will determine by our

actions which of these possibilities will be realized.

The choice between these different futures is the

focus of the concluding chapter of the book.In Chapter 2, we explore the nature of the infor-

mation and data that can be used to address the ques-

tions and themes developed in this introductory chap-

ter. A brief grounding in the methods of scientific

sociology and in the data available for the study of

work, workers, and workplaces is an essential starting

point for understandings grounded on available facts.

SUMM ARY

The nature of work has changed dramaticallyover time. The division of labor has consistentlymarched ahead. The level of social inequality hasincreased and then declined. These changes havegiven rise to, and have sometimes been a result of,the development of new technologies. The posi-tion of women deteriorated in agricultural andindustrial society relative to hunting and gatheringsociety but has improved again in postindustrialsociety.

Drastic changes have also occurred in the family,which has lost many of the functions it once had as acenter of economic production. Market forces haveentered almost all areas of social life and exert aprofound influence on the way we live in modernsociety. Most recently, this means that our lives asproducers and citizens are being profoundly influ-enced by our position in the international division oflabor. Finally, the increasing division of labor andthe growth of large, complex organizations have



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encouraged the growth of complex governmentalstructures charged with the function of ensuring thestability and success of a highly complex economicsystem.

Changes in the nature of work have broughtaffluence for many, but they have also produced

alienation and continuing poverty for many others.Changes in the organization of work have been apivotal force moving the world from a past domi-nated by localism and tradition to a modern societydominated by rapid change and an interconnectedworld economy.

K E Y CO N C E P T S

division of labor

social relations ofproduction

bureaucracy

ideology

economies of scale

social stratification

feudal society

artisan

guilds

merchant capitalism

putting-out system

Protestant work ethic

Industrial Revolution

enclosure movement

indentured labor

assembly line

class structure

postindustrial society

service industries

Q U E S T I O NS FO R T HO U G H T

1. What are the key characteristics of a globaleconomy, and why has it come into being?What do you think will be the most importantdevelopments in work between now and 2060when today’s college students will beginreaching retirement age?

2. What are some of the ways your work roleshave influenced your life? How have yourparents’ work roles influenced your life?

3. Compare the social organization and lifestyle of

a hunting and gathering band to the social

organization and lifestyle of a modern work

group in a large business enterprise along as

many dimensions as possible.

4. What changes in people’s lives resulted from

the development of agriculture? What are the

most important consequences of these changes?

5. How did the wealthy extract surplus fromthose who produced food in feudal society?How is this different from how the sources ofwealth emerge today?

6. Describe two ideologies that have been used todefine the meaning of work at different periodsin history. What different aspects of work dothey highlight?

M UL T I M E D I A R E S O U R C E S

Print

Carleton S. Coon (editor). 1977. A Reader in Cultural

Anthropology. Huntington, New York: Krieger. A

wealth of fascinating examples of work and life in

primitive societies.

De Graff, John (editor). 2003. Take Back Your Time: Fight-

ing Overwork and Time Poverty in America. San



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Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler. Essays on why

workers in advanced economies continue to work

such long hours and strategies for how to combat this.

Hobsbawm, Eric J. 1975. The Age of Capital. New York:

Scribner. The most accessible and well-written his-

tory of the industrial revolution in England.

Gerhard Lenski. 1984. Power and Privilege. New York:

McGraw-Hill. Considered by many to be the best

sociological account of the progressive development

of more and more complex societies.

Alice Kessler-Harris. 2001. In Pursuit of Equality: Women,

Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in

20th Century America. New York: Oxford Univer-

sity. A detailed history of the experiences and

struggles of working women in North America.

Karl Marx. 1967 [1887]. Capital, Volume 1. New York:

International Publishers. The original critical inter-

pretation of the industrial revolution and the rise of

capitalism.

Adam Smith. 1937 [1776]. The Wealth of Nations. New

York: Random House. The original positive inter-

pretation of the expanding division of labor and its

benefits for society.

Internet

American Sociological Association (ASA). www.asanet.org

Official web site of the professional association for

sociologists in the United States. The latest news,

research, and events in American sociology.

Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association.

www.csaa.ca The latest news, research, and events in

Canadian sociology.

Organizations, Occupation and Work section of the

ASA. www.northpark.edu/sociology/oow The ASA

section focusing specifically on issues concerning

work.

Jobs and Employment Practices. www.workindex.com

Human resources information on hiring, compen-

sation, benefits, employment law, training, and

retirement. Valuable for employees, employers, and

human resources professionals.

Economic History. www.eh.net Information and services

for students and researchers interested in economic

history.

R E C O M M E N D E D F I L M

The Good Earth (1937). A profound and moving depic-

tion of the challenges of peasant life in pre-Second

World War China. Based on a novel of the same

title by Pearl Buck.



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