Jim Weil

Work, Anthropology of

Work encompasses direct subsistence pursuits, paid employment, and other activities contributing to survival and enhancement of individual and group life. Such efforts may be coerced, onerous, and deficient in rewards, but they can also bring fulfillment. Assumptions and conceptual breakthroughs that have shaped the study of work within anthropology are outlined. Work is identified as a prominent theme in classic ethnographic accounts. The genealogy of anthropological research more explicitly focused on work is traced. Recent scholarship examining the margins of work at its intersections with unemployment, underemployment, and leisure is reviewed, along with reflexivity in the work of anthropologists themselves.