Work (human activity)

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Several terms redirect here. For other uses, see Work (disambiguation), Labour (disambiguation), Job (disambiguation), and Occupation (disambiguation).
A blacksmith working
A World War II aircraft worker, Vega Aircraft Corporation, Burbank, California, 1942.
Piano tuner
is an example of an unusual profession.

Work or labour (or labor in American English) is the intentional activity people perform to support the needs and wants of themselves, others, or a wider community.[1] In the context of economics, work can be viewed as the human activity that contributes (along with other factors of production) towards the goods and services within an economy.[2]

Work is fundamental to all societies, but can vary widely within and between them, from

gathering natural resources by hand to operating complex technologies that substitute for physical or even mental effort by many human beings. All but the simplest tasks also require specific skills, equipment or tools, and other resources, such as material for manufacturing goods.[citation needed] Cultures and individuals across history have expressed a wide range of attitudes towards work. Outside of any specific process or industry, humanity has developed a variety of institutions for situating work in society. As humans are diurnal, they work mainly during the day.[3]

Besides objective differences, one

division of labour is a prominent topic across the social sciences as both an abstract concept and a characteristic of individual cultures.[4]

Some people have also engaged in critique of work and expressed a wish to abolish it, e.g. Paul Lafargue in his book The Right to Be Lazy.[5]

Related terms include occupation and job; related concepts are

job title and profession
.

Description

Three women wearing heavy clothing and long bonnets, carrying long hammers, standing around a pile of rocks
Bal maidens with traditional tools and protective clothing spalling ore, 1858

Work can take many different forms, as varied as the environments, tools, skills, goals, and institutions around a worker. This term refers to the general activity of performing tasks, whether they are paid or unpaid, formal or informal. Work encompasses all types of productive activities, including employment, household chores, volunteering, and creative pursuits. It is a broad term that encompasses any effort or activity directed towards achieving a particular goal.

Because sustained effort is a necessary part of many human activities, what qualifies as work is often a matter of context. Specialization is one common feature that distinguishes work from other activities. For example, a

professional athlete who earns their livelihood from it, but a hobby for someone playing for fun in their community. An element of advance planning or expectation is also common, such as when a paramedic provides medical care while on duty and fully equipped rather than performing first aid off-duty as a bystander in an emergency. Self-care and basic habits like personal grooming are also not typically considered work.[citation needed
]

While a later gift, trade, or payment may retroactively affirm an activity as productive, this can exclude work like volunteering or activities within a family setting, like parenting or housekeeping. In some cases, the distinction between work and other activities is simply a matter of common sense within a community. However, an alternative view is that labeling any activity as work is somewhat subjective, as Mark Twain expressed in the "whitewashed fence" scene of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.[6]

Women carpenters working at the Tarrant Hut Workshops, 3 miles from Calais, 26 June 1918
A thatcher at work

History

Humans have varied their work habits and attitudes over time.

Protestantism and proto-capitalism
emphasized the moral and personal advantages of hard work.

The periodic re-invention of

office work
retains traces of expectations of sustained, concentrated work, even in affluent societies.

Kinds of work

Serving staff
is an example of a common profession.

There are several ways to categorize and compare different kinds of work. In economics, one popular approach is the three-sector model or variations of it. In this view, an economy can be separated into three broad categories:

In complex economies with high specialization, these categories are further subdivided into

quaternary sector, but this division is neither standardized nor universally accepted.[citation needed
]

Another common way of contrasting work roles is ranking them according to a criterion, such as the amount of skill,

skilled trades
is one example with a long history and analogs in many cultures.

Societies also commonly rank different work roles by perceived status, but this is more subjective and goes beyond clear progressions within a single industry. Some industries may be seen as more prestigious than others overall, even if they include roles with similar functions. At the same time, a wide swathe of roles across all industries may be afforded more status (e.g.

manual labor) based on characteristics such as a job being low-paid or dirty, dangerous and demeaning
.

Other social dynamics, like how labor is compensated, can even exclude meaningful tasks from a society's conception of work. For example, in modern market-economies where

wage labor or piece work predominates, unpaid work may be omitted from economic analysis or even cultural ideas of what qualifies as work.[citation needed
]

At a political level, different roles can fall under separate institutions where workers have qualitatively different power or rights. In the extreme, the least powerful members of society may be stigmatized (as in untouchability) or even violently forced (via slavery) into performing the least desirable work. Complementary to this, elites may have exclusive access to the most prestigious work, largely symbolic sinecures, or even a "life of leisure".

Unusual Occupations

In the diverse world of work, there exist some truly bizarre and unusual occupations that often defy conventional expectations. These unique jobs showcase the creativity and adaptability of humans in their pursuit of livelihood. [7]

Workers

Individual workers require sufficient health and resources to succeed in their tasks.

Physiology

Women working at the Dun Emer Press, c. 1903
A woman at work in an English biscuit factory

As living beings, humans require a baseline of good health, nutrition, rest, and other physical needs in order to reliably exert themselves. This is particularly true of physical labor that places direct demands on the body, but even largely mental work can cause stress from problems like long hours, excessive demands, or a hostile workplace.

Particularly intense forms of manual labor often lead workers to develop

sedentary
throughout the workday may also suffer from long-term health problems due to a lack of physical activity.

Training

Learning the necessary skills for work is often a complex process in its own right, requiring intentional training. In traditional societies, know-how for different tasks can be passed to each new generation through oral tradition and working under adult guidance. For work that is more specialized and technically complex, however, a more formal system of education is usually necessary. A complete curriculum ensures that a worker in training has some exposure to all major aspects of their specialty, in both theory and practice.

Equipment and technology

A potter shapes pottery with his hands while operating a mechanical potter's wheel with his foot, 1902.
Men at work on a building site in the City of London

Tool use has been a central aspect of human evolution and is also an essential feature of work. Even in technologically advanced societies, many workers' toolsets still include a number of smaller hand-tools, designed to be held and operated by a single person, often without supplementary power. This is especially true when tasks can be handled by one or a few workers, do not require significant physical power, and are somewhat self-paced, like in many services or handicraft manufacturing.

For other tasks needing large amounts of power, such as in the

maintenance. Over several millennia, invention, scientific discovery, and engineering principles have allowed humans to proceed from creating simple machines that merely redirect or amplify force, through engines
for harnessing supplementary power sources, to today's complex, regulated systems that automate many steps within a work process.

In the 20th century, the development of

calculations, document transcription, and basic customer service requests. Research and development of related technologies like machine learning and robotics
continues into the 21st century.

Beyond tools and machines used to actively perform tasks, workers benefit when other passive elements of their work and environment are

air quality, and even the underlying architecture
.

In society

Human-hours worked per week
in the United States
Labor is supply, money is demand

Organizations

Even if workers are personally ready to perform their jobs, coordination is required for any effort outside of individual

subsistence to succeed. At the level of a small team working on a single task, only cooperation and good communication may be necessary. As the complexity of a work process increases though, requiring more planning or more workers focused on specific tasks, a reliable organization
becomes more critical.

Economic organizations often reflect social thought common to their time and place, such as ideas about

joint-stock companies goes hand-in-hand with other changes, like the growth of centralized states and capitalism.[citation needed
]

In industrialized economies,

corporate entity, the same workers can claim a larger share of the value created by their labor. While a union does require workers to sacrifice some autonomy in relation to their coworkers, it can grant workers more control over the work process itself in addition to material benefits.[9]

Institutions

The need for planning and coordination extends beyond individual organizations to society as a whole too. Every successful work project requires effective resource allocation to provide necessities, materials, and investment (such as equipment and facilities). In smaller, traditional societies, these aspects can be mostly regulated through custom, though as societies grow, more extensive methods become necessary.

These complex institutions, however, still have roots in common human activities. Even the free markets of modern capitalist societies rely fundamentally on trade, while command economies, such as in many communist states during the 20th century, rely on a highly bureaucratic and hierarchical form of redistribution.[citation needed]

Other institutions can affect workers even more directly by delimiting practical day-to-day life or basic legal rights. For example, a

landholder
, even requiring permission to physically travel outside the land-holding. How institutions play out in individual workers' lives can be complex too; in most societies where wage-labor predominates, workers possess equal rights by law and mobility in theory. Without social support or other resources, however, the necessity of earning a livelihood may force a worker to cede some rights and freedoms in fact.

Values

Societies and

John Paul II said in Laborem exercens
that by his work, man shares in the image of his creator.

Christian theologians see the fall of man as profoundly affecting human work. In Genesis 3:17, God said to Adam, "cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life".[13] Leland Ryken said out that, because of the fall, "many of the tasks we perform in a fallen world are inherently distasteful and wearisome."[14] Christian theologians interpret that through the fall, work has become toil, but John Paul II says that work is a good thing for man in spite of this toil, and that "perhaps, in a sense, because of it", because work is something that corresponds to man's dignity and through it, he achieves fulfilment as a human being.[15] The fall also means that a work ethic is needed. As a result of the fall, work has become subject to the abuses of idleness on the one hand, and overwork on the other.[citation needed] Drawing on Aristotle, Ryken suggests that the moral ideal is the golden mean between the two extremes of being lazy and being a workaholic.[16]

Some Christian theologians also draw on the doctrine of redemption to discuss the concept of work. Oliver O'Donovan said that although work is a gift of creation, it is "ennobled into mutual service in the fellowship of Christ."[17]

technological progress might eliminate or diminish the need for work: "the goal should not be that technological progress increasingly replace human work, for this would be detrimental to humanity",[18] and McKinsey consultants suggest that work will change, but not end, as a result of automation and the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence.[19]

For some, work may hold a spiritual value in addition to any secular notions. Especially in some

mystical strands of several religions, simple manual labor may be held in high regard as a way to maintain the body, cultivate self-discipline and humility, and focus the mind.[20]

Current issues

The contemporary

slave labor and human trafficking. Though ideas about universal rights and the economic benefits of free labor have significantly diminished the prevalence of outright slavery, it continues in lawless areas, or in attenuated forms on the margins of many economies.[21]

Another difficulty, which has emerged in most societies as a result of

self-identity, unemployment can have severe psychological and social consequences beyond the financial insecurity it causes.[citation needed
]

One more issue, which may not directly interfere with the functioning of an economy but can have significant indirect effects, is when governments fail to account for work occurring out-of-view from the public sphere. This may be important, uncompensated work occurring everyday in private life; or it may be

criminal activity that involves clear but furtive economic exchanges. By ignoring or failing to understand these activities, economic policies can have counter-intuitive effects and cause strains on the community and society.[22]

Workplace

Cleaning the floor in a Virginia community center
This section is an excerpt from Workplace.[edit]
A workplace is a location where someone works, for their employer or themselves, a place of employment. Such a place can range from a home office to a large office building or factory. For industrialized societies, the workplace is one of the most important social spaces other than the home, constituting "a central concept for several entities: the worker and [their] family, the employing organization, the customers of the organization, and the society as a whole".[23] The development of new communication technologies has led to the development of the virtual workplace and remote work.

See also

In modern market-economies:

Labor issues:

Related concepts:

References

  1. ^ "Work". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. 12 July 2020. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  2. ^ "Labor". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster. 12 July 2020. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  3. PMID 31534436
    .
  4. ^ Johnson, Paul M (2005). "Division of labor". A Glossary of Political Economy Terms. Auburn University, Dept. of Political Science. Retrieved 19 July 2020.
  5. ^ "Work Definition". Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved 23 November 2021.
  6. ^ "work | Definition, History, & Examples". Britannica. Retrieved 2022-07-06.
  7. ^ "Unusual and Bizarre jobs around the world". Blogristan. 20 September 2023.
  8. S2CID 46227429
    .
  9. ^ "How today's unions help working people: Giving workers the power to improve their jobs and unrig the economy". Economic Policy Institute. Retrieved 2022-07-06.
  10. ^ "Protestant ethic | Definition & Facts". Britannica. Retrieved 2022-07-06.
  11. ^ 2:15, English Standard Version
  12. ^ Sayers, Dorothy L. "Why Work?" (PDF). faith-at-work.net. Archived from the original (PDF) on Jan 18, 2012. Retrieved 29 July 2012.
  13. ^ English Standard Version
  14. ^ Leland Ryken, Work and Leisure in Christian Perspective (Portland: Multnomah, 1987), 120.
  15. John Paul II, Laborem exercens
    , § 9.
  16. ^ Ryken, Work and Leisure, 176.
  17. ^ Oliver O'Donovan, "Christian Moral Reasoning," in David J. Atkinson and David H. Field (eds), New Dictionary of Christian Ethics and Pastoral Theology (Leicester: IVP, 1995), 123.
  18. ^ Pope Francis (2015), Laudato si', paragraph 128, published 24 May 2015, accessed 19 January 2024
  19. ^ McKinsey Global Institute, AI, Automation and the Future of Work: Ten Things to Solve For, Briefing Note June 2018, accessed 19 January 2024
  20. ^ "The Project Gutenberg eBook of St. Benedict's Rule for Monasteries". gutenberg.org. Retrieved 2021-04-19.
  21. ^ "Unemployment and mental health - The Health Foundation". www.health.org.uk. Retrieved 2022-07-06.
  22. ISBN 978-0-309-07027-0
    .
  23. ^ Paul Jackson, Reima Suomi, e-Business and Workplace Redesign (2004), p. 37.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Work_(human_activity)&oldid=1214763220"