Anthropologists refer to the division of labor as the different tasks that people do to provide for their physical needs and to reproduce their culture. We base these tasks on such criteria as age, gender, and skill. How this division is manifested varies across cultures and according to societal type. In the foraging, tribal, and
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, economic production was organized around the home, and households were relatively self-sufficient. Households were multifunctional, acting, among other things, as eating establishment, educational institution, factory, and infirmary. Everyone belonging to the household, including family members, servants, and apprentices, did their part in the household’s productive labor. The word ‘‘housework,’’ first
World systems theorists were among the first to use the concept of an international division of labor by illustrating how the production of goods and services for ‘‘core’’ or more developed countries relied on the material resources of ‘‘peripheral’’ or developing nations (Wallerstein 1974). Their work describes the changing political and economic relationships among nations