The Economics of Labor

Glenn R. Storey

doi:10.1017/9781009677202.005

As human societies formed multi-scalar organizations assembling household units, labor and resources were needed to support supra-family activities. Perhaps most important was the way that labor was mobilized in reciprocal relationships between household and in support of community and political institutions. In colloquial parlance, ‘work’ and ‘labor’ are interchangeable, the essential human actions in all economic activities involving subsistence procurement, manufacture, building, transport, warfare, and ritual. Though in many respects isomorphic, we will speak mostly of labor. One difference is that work applies to expenditure of energy in individual and group tasks. Labor is social work engaged between parties (including for supernaturals); the social connections activated in labor parties could be the key motivator for people to work at all (Weiss and Rupp 2011:91). Labor contrasts with organic work (breathing, masticating, pumping blood) or habitual work (tying shoes, brushing teeth). Lucassen (2021:2) quotes Charles and Chris Tilly’s definition of work: “human effort adding use value to goods and services.” Weiss (2014:39) defines work as “agentic activity for changing the environment and creating artifacts,” a definition pleasing to archaeologists. Weiss and Rupp recommend a person-centric approach, finding out what it is like to be working – the lived experience (2011:83, 87). To Lucassen, empirical study of labor should focus on descriptions of men’s and women’s daily practice in their own words (2021:xvii). Lucassen concluded that the “satisfaction, pride, pleasure and the propensity for cooperation and the pursuit of equality in remuneration for effort” characterize labor (2021:45). All that tallies with George Cowgill’s admonition that archaeology should be eliciting human “lived experience” (2013:132–133).

The Economics of Labor

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