Division of labour
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"We have much studied and much perfected, of late, the great civilized invention of the division of labor; only we give it a false name. It is not, truly speaking, the labor that is divided; but the men:—Divided into mere segments of men—broken into small fragments and crumbs of life; so that all the little piece of intelligence that is left in a man is not enough to make a pin, or a nail, but exhausts itself in making the point of a pin, or the head of a nail."--The Stones of Venice (1851-1853) by John Ruskin |
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The division of labour is the specialization of cooperating individuals who perform specific tasks and roles. Because of the large amount of labour saved by giving workers specialized tasks in Industrial Revolution-era factories, some classical economists as well as some mechanical engineers such as Charles Babbage were proponents of division of labour. Also, having workers perform single or limited tasks eliminated the long training period required to train craftsmen, who were replaced with lesser paid but more productive unskilled workers.
See also
- Asset poverty
- Complex society
- Economic sector
- Economies of scale
- Family economy
- Fordism
- Identity performance
- Industrialisation
- Kyriarchy
- Mechanization
- New international division of labour
- Newly industrialized country
- Precariat
- Precarious work
- Productive and unproductive labour
- Price system
- Role suction
- Surplus product
- Temporary work
- Urbanisation
- Winner and loser culture
