Concept of Work

Herbert Applebaum is Director of Commercial Construction at Hartz Mountain Industries and former editor of the Anthropology of Work Review. He is the author of Work in Market and Industrial Societies and Perspectives in Cultural Anthropology, both published by SUNY Press, and Royal Blue: The Culture of Construction Workers and Work in Non-Market Societies.

"This book focuses throughout on one theme: how work was regarded throughout the history of western civilization. In focusing on this theme, the author touches on very basic issues in sociology and social science form complex organization, to gender stratification, social stratification, and the sociology of religion. But these underlying issues are never allowed to divert the reader's attention form the main focus of the work. This singular focus makes the book an extremely important contribution." — Kevin T. Leicht, Pennsylvania State University"This book gives us both the conditions of work at particular times and the concepts of work expressed in the contemporaneous writing of major figures. Thus, we have a picture of what people were working at, their occupations — and working with, their tools — and the attitudes toward that laboring voiced by philosophers and other thinkers in their textual work. The amount of information contained in its pages is truly awesome." — Miles Richardson, Louisiana State University

• Introduction: Methodology—Perspective—Work as Concept PART ONE: The Concept of Work in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome 1. Work in Homeric Society2. Work in Archaic and Classical Greece3. The Hellenistic World and the Concept of Work4. Work and the Concept of Work in the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire5. Work in the Ancient World PART TWO: The Concept of Work in the Middle Ages 6. The Attitudes toward Work among the Jews and among the Christians7. Work and the Monastic Movement8. Work in Medieval Europe: Fifth to Tenth Centuries9. Work in Medieval Europe: Eleventh to Fifteenth Centuries10. Agricultural Work and Its Perspectives During the Late Middle Ages11. Medieval Guilds, Masonry, and Apprenticeship12. Women and Work in the Medieval Ages13. Work and the Concept of Work in the Middle Ages PART THREE: Work in the Modern World—1500-1990 14. Luther, Calvin, and the Protestant Concept of Work15. The English Enlightenment: Middle Sixteenth Century to Seventeenth Century16. Work and the Enlightenment in France, Scotland, and America17. Nineteenth Century: Capitalism, Socialism, and the Work Ethic18. Twentieth Century: Selected Philosophies and Perspectives on Work19. Modern Technology and Work20. The Work Ethic, Consumerism, and Leisure21. Work and the Concept of Work in Modern Society Summary: Work—Past, Present, and Future Bibliography Index