Talk:Division of labour/Archives/2012

Congratulations
I created the stub for this article in late 2001. It was one of my first Wikipedia articles. I haven't looked at it since -- until today. I am very impressed at the content everyone has added to it since my initial paragraph. Please give yourselves a collective pat on the back! -- Cheers, Derek Ross | Talk 05:19, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Durkheim's views
Someone posted the following against Durkheim's section


 * SURELY THE 1600s DATE IS INCORRECT  -   IT IS GENERALLY AGREED THAT THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION TOOK PLACE IN THE LATE 18TH - 19TH CENTURIES ?

It is a valid point, but does not belong in the body of the article. Obviously the Industrial Revolution is dated 1760 or possibly 1700 but never 1600. But since I don't know what Durkheim actually said I don't want to change it.

--GwydionM 17:34, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh no! The liberals have gotten to this article also!

 * "Wikipedia often uses foreign spelling of words, even though most English speaking users are American. Look up "Most Favored Nation" on Wikipedia and it automatically converts the spelling to the British spelling "Most Favoured Nation", even there there are far more American than British users. Look up "Division of labor" on Wikipedia and it automatically converts to the British spelling "Division of labour," then insists on the British spelling for "specialization" also.[3]. Enter "Hapsburg" (the European ruling family) and Wikipedia automatically changes the spelling to Habsburg, even though the American spelling has always been "Hapsburg". Within entries British spellings appear in the silliest of places, even when the topic is American. Conservapedia favors American spellings of words."

You just can't make this stuff up. - Ta bu shi da yu 08:45, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

The fact that most users of the English language version of Wikipedia are Americans is an accident of the availability of technology, and of GDP. It is not at its heart an intellectually or culturally American resource, if either notion makes any sense at all.

I'd also like to introduce the following list (proudly cut and pasted from Wikipedia's article on the English language) of countries in which English is spoken natively by a majority. I do this by way of illustration of the fact that most native speakers of English are not American.

English as exclusive official language: Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Botswana, Brunei, Dominica, Gambia, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Liberia, The Bahamas, United Kingdom (de facto), Australia (de facto), USA (de facto)

As non-exclusive: Cameroon, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Kenya, Kiribati, Kosovo, Lesotho, Malta, New Zealand (de facto), Pakistan, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Zimbabwe.

Does this list appear to be North-Americo-centric? How absurd: if it seems to centre anywhere, then it is surely Africa in terms of population and proportion of nation states in which English is spoken as lingua franca. This is an accident of history and of the influence of The British Empire that should be acknowledged rather than solipsistically brushed aside.

P.s Conservapedia is a shockingly misconceived and ill-founded resource, and also seems to attract non-sequitur and embarrassment to cite fact like no other document I have ever come across.

Kingshalmaneser 12:09, 07 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Not to mention that a British academic first termed the Divison of Labour. Arawn 03:50, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

This is CLEAR? I'd hate to see unclear!
In the section titled Sexual division of labour it says:

''The clearest exposition of the principles of sexual division of labour across the full range of human societies can be summarised by a large number of logically complementary implicational constraints of the following form: if women of childbearing ages in a given community tend to do X (e.g., preparing soil for planting) they will also do Y (e.g., the planting) while for men the logical reversal in this example would be that if men plant they will prepare the soil. The 'Cross Cultural Analysis of the Sexual Division of Labor ' by White, Brudner and Burton (1977, public domain), using statistical entailment analysis, shows that tasks more frequently chosen by women in these order relations are those more convenient in relation to childrearing. This type of finding has been replicated in a variety of studies, including modern industrial economies. These entailments do not restrict how much work for any given task could be done by men (e.g., in cooking) or by women (e.g., in clearing forests) but are only least-effort or role-consistent tendencies. To the extent that women clear forests for agriculture, for example, they tend to do the entire agricultural sequence of tasks on those clearings. In theory, these types of constraints could be removed by provisions of child care, but ethnographic examples are lacking.''

Is there some reason the guy couldn't say:

There are many examples across several cultures of women's jobs being dictated or at least influenced by a need to raise and care for dhildren, but that men don't seem to have the same restrictions. If for example women are expected to prepare the soil for planting, they often are also expected to actually plant, but if men are usually expected to plant, then they also tend to prepare for planting (at least this is my best guess on what the guy is trying to say) White Brudner and Burton (look up if you want the whole reference) compiled statistics that they believe support the idea that the clusters of types of jobs chosen by, or perhaps for, women are in some way related by the almost universally female task of child raising. This might change if men provided child care, but we couldn't find anyone actually doing that.

Did I leave something out? did I get it wrong? Would it make more sense if I used 30 percent more words? sheesh. Oh and could the guy have chosen a less coherent example? If women prepare they also plant but with men its if they plant they also prepare? While I understand he's trying to give examples of 'logically complimentary implicational constraints' (or 'related limits' if you don't have a dictionary handy) but why not give an example where the sets of related limits are actually different for women than for men, especially since that seems to be the point of what he's (not) explaining

How in fact does this whole section say anything other than:

'Women do different jobs than men because they have babies'

oh and

'some guys got money from the government to prove it too'

???

Dburson 18:06, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Threats to division of labor
I added three entries to this blank entry. I really leaped at this opportunity to finish someone's unfinished work... If anyone disagrees with the entries, be sure to say so and why here. Thanks. 74.195.16.39 (talk) 14:07, 19 April 2009 (UTC)

Modern debates
It seems to me that this section needs to be rewritten or be completely removed. First of all the text provides no useful information. It is also terribly biased("Labour hierarchy is to a great extent inevitable, simply because no one can do all tasks at once;") which consists an obvious POV. And last, but not least, it does not fit the spirit of the rest of the article. --JokerXtreme (talk) 10:11, 2 September 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure I understand why you think that saying that "Labour hierarchy is to a great extent inevitable, simply because no one can do all tasks at once..." is biased. Could you please explain? I agree that, in its current form, the section does not fit in well with the rest of the article. However, a modern view on the subject is essencial. Maybe you could bring it up to scratch?  Dr Dec  ( Talk )    19:29, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

Well it is stated as a fact not as an opinion, not even as an opinion that is accepted by most(even which I'm not sure it is). And it certainly does not reflect what it is supposed to be...a debate. I'm not sure what exactly its purpose is. I cannot write it from scratch, unless I write something with the quality of that section. That's why I think it should be removed until it is rewritten. --JokerXtreme (talk) 09:02, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

When every individual person labors upon some small element of a task, or some task within a great system, they remove themselves from the greater picture, and become so isolated that they might not only never see the forest for the trees, but become so tangled in their own branches that they never even know of other trees. They forgo a connection to others in the pursuit of self-betterment, the pursuit of the illusion of perfection which can never be attained in so social a being as man. It is here that society suffers at the seams, where it breaks apart in its loss of shared knowledge, shared language, shared lives. When every individual believes he supports others by being so far removed from them, the illusion of mutual benevolence and the interdependence of human beings is reduced only to what it is we can produce for one another, and not in the actual application of human decency, empathy, and respect. Misery and ruin are only inevitable to the individual when they are abandoned and set to account for their own failure, even if it be by chance or at the designs of another. Society provides no remedy, and the concept of connection through commodity production is not just laughable but appalling, and in practice reveals its weaknesses and horrors to all who seek the capacity to unveil the suffering of the many for the fragile glass houses of the few. By the conjunction of our own elements can be begin to understand ourselves as a whole. By the partition of employments, our ability to bear witness to one another, and to ourselves, is segmented beyond recognition. Tis by this false additional force, ability, and security, that society becomes dangerously segmented, and we are all left cutting ourselves on the jagged pieces of a broken mirror. 142.166.170.254 (talk) 17:15, 22 December 2010 (UTC)Seth

Intro spelling note
For sure, "labor" is the US spelling. But is it needed here? Such a note probably belongs on the page "Labour" (FWIW there is no note on spelling there). I've removed the note here, and put a note there. 118.90.121.17 (talk) 04:04, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Plato interpretation--no evidence
The following statement is at best tendentious, and should not be presented as fact: "In Plato's Republic, the origin of the state lies in the natural inequality of humanity, which is embodied in the division of labour." The evidence cited: '"Well then, how will our state supply these needs? It will need a farmer, a builder, and a weaver, and also, I think, a shoemaker and one or two others to provide for our bodily needs. So that the minimum state would consist of four or five men...." does not support the claim, as the line from the Republic refers to the need for the state to provide for human needs, not a pre-civilized population of different specialties in labor. It is true that Plato believed that humans were intrinsically different, but his division is into rulers, soldiers, and laborers, with no subdivision among laborers. Indeed the four or five men in the "minimal state" referred to here would all be the same type of person.

A similar error occurs in the section on Smith: "Therefore, while for Plato the level of specialization determined by the division of labour was externally determined, for Smith it was the dynamic engine of economic progress." It is certainly false that Plato believed that the level of specialization was determined by intrinsic human characters or other non-economic factors, as if some men were born to be ship-captains and other men were born to operate olive oil presses. The specializations will arise from a combination of character, environment, and the nature of the state.

Unless a good argument can be made for these tendentious claims, they should be considered subjective interpretation and removed from the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.251.43.16 (talk) 17:02, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Section on 'Global division of labor'
Makes an unsubstantiated and inaccurate claim: "There exist, as yet, few comprehensive studies of the global division of labour..." This has been a topic of scholarship for well over a century. As just one example, see World-systems theory. DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 09:42, 3 April 2012 (UTC)