2 The Organization of Work in
Preindustrial Times
All work has to be organized in some way. Even work performed by a solitary individual cannot
e done in a random fashion; it is necessary to decide what needs to be done, the procedures to be
adopted, the equipment to be used, the time to be allocated, and the sequence of activities to be
followed. When several individuals are involved in a productive activity, things get a lot more
complicated. Now it also is necessary to determine who does what, who will make decisions and
exert authority over others, how individual tasks will be coordinated with the tasks performed by
others, and how the workers will be motivated to do what they are supposed to do. Sometimes, all
this can be done in an ad hoc manner as the need arises, but it is far more efficient to have structures
and procedures already in place so it is not necessary to expend an undue amount of time and effort
to get organized every time something has to get done.
The organization of work encompasses a great variety of structures and procedures. Some are
ased on traditional a
angements—“We’ve always done it this way”—that may or may not be
effective. Others are the result of a great deal of prior thought and analysis. Most organizational
modes fall somewhere in between, representing mixtures of longstanding precedents and new ways
of doing things. In this chapter, we will concern ourselves with means of organizing work based
on established social roles and statuses. In Chapter 4, we will
ing the story into the modern era
when we look into organizational structures and procedures deliberately designed according to
principles that are supposedly “rational.” In both cases, organizational forms will be put into a
larger social context. While organizations have a large influence on the kinds of societies we live
in, the converse is also true. In every society, the organization of work reflects existing social
structures and processes, with all that entails—both good and bad.
Traditional Societies and the Organization of Work
Hunters and gatherers do not need elaborate means of organizing their activities. When they go
out to get some food, it is already quite clear what needs to be done and who is going to do it. The
ange of tasks is small, and there is not much day-to-day variation in these tasks. One of the key
organizational issues, how tasks are to be allocated, is resolved by reliance on established social
categories, which are limited in number. There isn’t much specialization and division of labor, and
work roles are allocated on the basis of what sociologists call ascribed statuses. An ascribed status
is a position in society that is based on characteristics an individual cannot change, most notably
age and sex, and very often race and ethnicity.
Unlike an achieved status, which is derived from ability, effort, training, or some combination
of all these, an ascribed status is largely immutable. Ba
ing a sex-change operation, there isn’t
anything we can do about being either male or female, and like it or not, aging is an inevitable
process that ca
ies us from infancy to old age. It must be said, however, that biology need not be
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destiny, as there is substantial variation from one society to another in regard to what is properly
“men’s work” and “women’s work.” In similar fashion, when viewed cross-culturally, age
categories are quite flexible; the roles, responsibilities, rights, and privileges associated with a
given chronological age vary a great deal from one place or historical period to another. In one
society, a 14-year-old may be considered an adult who is expected to take on the tasks and
esponsibilities appropriate to adulthood, while in other societies, one may not step into a fully
adult role until the mid-20s or even later. At the other end of the life span, in some societies, an
elderly person may be considered a vital source of information regarding the best way to get things
done, while in others, he or she may be deemed obsolete, i
elevant, and worn out.
Later chapters will explore how race, ethnicity, and gender continue to influence the jobs held
and the work done in today’s world. In regard to work roles in the oldest economic activity,
gathering and hunting, ascribed attributes have had a substantial, and in some cases overwhelming,
influence. As we saw in Chapter 1, gathering is socially defined as the work of women and
children, while hunting is something that men do. A similar pattern can be seen in traditional farm
work, where gender and age have been the primary influences on the allocation of work
esponsibilities, although there is quite a bit more variation in gender-based work roles. Tasks
equiring considerable physical strength may be a male’s domain, but there are many examples of
women performing the most arduous farm chores. Farming is also a more complex activity than
gathering and hunting in terms of the kinds of tasks that need to be performed, and many of these
tasks can be, and have been, performed by women. As one tabulation of the allocation of work
oles in a large number of different societies indicates, the cultivation of crops was largely a male
activity in only 28% of the horticultural societies and 59% of the agrarian societies. In all the rest,
cultivation was primarily the work of women or was equally shared by both women and
men.1 Specific farm tasks often reflect a sex-based division of labor, but the apportionment of these
tasks may vary from society to society. In traditional China, picking cotton, tea, and mulbe
y
leaves was considered “women’s work,” while rice cultivation was supposed to be exclusively a
man’s domain. By contrast, transplanting and harvesting rice in Japan and Southeast Asia was
mostly done by women.2
Two other key sources of ascribed status are race and ethnicity. Race is often defined as a
iological category manifested by certain physical attributes such as skin color, hair texture, and
shape of facial features. In reality, race is at least as much a social category as a biological one.
Although it is often assumed that people can be neatly sorted into specific races, in fact, racial
identity is quite elusive. The movement of people through time and space has resulted in a great
deal of genetic mixing, rendering the notion of “pure” races a fiction that has had many unfortunate
consequences throughout history. That race is a social construct becomes evident when individuals
are identified as belonging to a particular race even though their biological heritage may be mixed.
On the societal level, official statistics such as census figures have sorted people into racial
categories, but these categories have not remained constant over time—another indication of the
a
itrariness of racial labels.3 On the individual level, ideas about racial identities often
overemphasize a single genetic component, as with the “one-drop rule,” whereby a metaphorical
one drop of “African” blood is deemed a sufficient basis for identifying a person as “black” or
“African American.”
Race is sometimes treated as interchangeable with ethnicity, notably with the use of “Hispanic”
as a racial category in government statistics. But as a sociological category, ethnicity is not based
on supposed biological differences; it centers on shared language, culture, and history. Yet as with
ace, the division of humanity into distinct ethnic groups is a hopeless endeavor. Unless a
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population remains confined to a small, isolated area for a long period of time, their ethnicity will
eflect a wide variety of influences from other places. As with race, ethnic “purity” is rarely found
among humans, who have always moved around, bo
owed cultural elements from other people,
inter-ma
ied with them, and in general formed ethnic identities that are amalgamations of
indigenous and bo
owed elements, all of which have evolved over time.
Although race and ethnicity have much less substance than is often assumed, they are anything
ut i
elevant to the apportioning of an individual’s place in society. As the sociologist W. I.
Thomas noted many years ago, if people define situations as real, they are real in their
consequences.4 If racial and ethnic identities are assumed to reflect actual differences, and if some
groups and individuals find it advantageous to make these assumptions, race and ethnicity can be
transcendent realities. And as we shall see, these imputed differences can affect many aspects of
work organization.
The Family as a Basis of Work Organization
Along with gender, age, race, and ethnicity, the family one is born into is a significant ascribed
status—after all, we can’t choose our mother, father, siblings, and other blood relatives. Modern
societies are inconsistent when it comes to delineating the connection between family-based status
and an individual’s economic opportunities. The inheritance of a family business is considered to
e entirely proper, but in an organizational setting, it is seen as illegitimate to use family
connections as a basis for hiring and promotions, a practice known as nepotism. Whether viewed
as a legitimate influence or not, family ties often have been incorporated into the organization of
work, and they continue to be important today.
Family membership was especially evident in preindustrial workplaces. Most of the work was
done in family settings, so much so that there was scarcely any distinction between “family” and
“work unit.” One description of the French rural economy in the 17th and 18th centuries can be
applied to many other times and places:
The family and the enterprise coincide: the head of the family is at the same time the head
of the enterprise. Indeed, he is the one because he is the other … he lives his professional
and his family life as an indivisible entity. The members of his family are his fellow
workers.5
Although this description of the linkage between work and family implies that the head of the
operation was a man—presumably the husband and father—women, be they wives or daughters,
also made essential contributions to family enterprises. On the farm, they were engaged in a variety
of tasks, ranging from garden cultivation to the
ewing