Single-Author Journal Articles by Rachel E Smith
Oceania, 2021
This article discusses how dependency's antonym, 'self-reliance' expresses and shapes aspirations... more This article discusses how dependency's antonym, 'self-reliance' expresses and shapes aspirations for development, and ideas about citizenship in Vanuatu. This 'keyword' was popularized in the process of decolonization and nation-building in Vanuatu, and influenced by Dependency Theory, Pan-Africanism, Black Internationalism, and trans-Pacific visions of decolonization and development. But vernacular ideas of 'self-reliance' also articulate different aspirations for development at 'grassroots' community level, as will be shown in two case studies. The first is a community with a high degree of engagement in New Zealand's seasonal worker programme. The second is around the cultivation of kava- a plant with relaxant and soporific propertiesfor burgeoning domestic and export markets.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2020
https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.13244
‘Theory of mind’ in developmenta... more https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-9655.13244
‘Theory of mind’ in developmental psychology focuses on how children develop the ability to infer others’ beliefs, desires, and intentions. Anthropologists have taken up the notion of ‘theory of mind’ to explore the way cultural differences in representations of beliefs, desires, and intentions affect everyday lives. In Oceania, anthropologists have noted that inferences about others’ intentions are not accorded a privileged role in social interaction. In Vanuatu, I find, it is often the material, rather than immaterial, aspects of relatedness that are elaborated upon. People think about knowledge, creativity, meaning, and intention not as confined to a bounded mental or inner domain, but as discoverable through the body, and in the world at large. I argue here that this propensity to locate meaning and moral purpose as external to the mind corresponds to a ‘porous’ view of self and mind, and that this in turn may open people to experience vivid, intense, and often tangible forms of spiritual encounter.
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2019
Published version Open Access at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-9655.1302... more Published version Open Access at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-9655.13029
Whilst there has been renewed interest in the development potential of temporary migration programmes, such schemes have long been criticized for creating conditions for exploitation and fostering dependence. In this article, which is based on a case study of Ni‐Vanuatu seasonal workers employed in New Zealand's horticultural industry, I show how workers and employers alike actively cultivate and maintain relations of reciprocal dependence and often describe their relation in familial terms of kinship and hospitality. Nevertheless, workers often feel estranged both in the Marxian sense of being subordinated to a regime of time‐discipline, and in the intersubjective sense of feeling disrespected or treated unkindly. I show how attention to the ‘non‐contractual element’ in the work contract, including expressions of hospitality, can contribute to anthropological debates surrounding work, migration, and dependence, and to interdisciplinary understandings of the justice of labour migration.
Papers by Rachel E Smith
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2021
Significance The sensory presence of gods and spirits is central to many of the religions that ha... more Significance The sensory presence of gods and spirits is central to many of the religions that have shaped human history—in fact, many people of faith report having experienced such events. But these experiences are poorly understood by social scientists and rarely studied empirically. We present a multiple-discipline, multiple-methods program of research involving thousands of people from diverse cultures and religions which demonstrates that two key factors—cultural models of the mind and personal orientations toward the mind—explain why some people are more likely than others to report vivid experiences of gods and spirits. These results demonstrate the power of culture, in combination with individual differences, to shape something as basic as what feels real to the senses.
Nature Human Behavior, 2021
How do concepts of mental life vary across cultures? By asking simple questions about humans, ani... more How do concepts of mental life vary across cultures? By asking simple questions about humans, animals and other entities – for example, ‘Do beetles get hungry? Remember things? Feel love?’ – we reconstructed concepts of mental life from the bot- tom up among adults (N = 711) and children (ages 6–12 years, N = 693) in the USA, Ghana, Thailand, China and Vanuatu. This revealed a cross-cultural and developmental continuity: in all sites, among both adults and children, cognitive abilities travelled separately from bodily sensations, suggesting that a mind–body distinction is common across diverse cultures and present by middle childhood. Yet there were substantial cultural and developmental differences in the status of social–emotional abilities – as part of the body, part of the mind or a third category unto themselves. Such differences may have far-reaching social consequences, whereas the similarities identify aspects of human understanding that may be universal.
PNAS, 2021
Hearing the voice of God, feeling the presence of the dead, being possessed by a demonic spirit-s... more Hearing the voice of God, feeling the presence of the dead, being possessed by a demonic spirit-such events are among the most remarkable human sensory experiences. They change lives and in turn shape history. Why do some people report experiencing such events while others do not? We argue that experiences of spiritual presence are facilitated by cultural models that represent the mind as "porous," or permeable to the world, and by an immersive orientation toward inner life that allows a person to become "absorbed" in experiences. In four studies with over 2,000 participants from many religious traditions in the United States, Ghana, Thailand, China, and Vanuatu, porosity and absorption played distinct roles in determining which people, in which cultural settings, were most likely to report vivid sensory experiences of what they took to be gods and spirits. religion | porosity | absorption | spiritual experience | voices T he ancient texts of the great religions describe voices that speak from the air, visions that others cannot see, dead people who walk among the living. They are extraordinary stories, but the phenomenological events that they describe are deeply human and far more common than many realize (1). For the people who experience them, these moments can feel so vividly sensory that they are interpreted as evidence that an invisible other-a god, a spirit-is real. Such events change lives and in turn shape history. Augustine's conversion to Christianity, one of the most influential events in the history of Christianity, was sparked by hearing a disembodied voice (2), and on the eve of the Montgomery bus boycotts , terrified by threats, Martin Luther King, Jr., heard God say that he would be with him and resolved to go forward (3)-a decision of momentous significance for the Civil Rights Movement. Spiritual presence events-the various anomalous, often vividly sensory, events which people attribute to gods, spirits, or other supernatural forces (4)-do not happen for everyone. Within a religious community, people vary in how frequently they experience such events (5); there are deeply religious people who want to hear gods and spirits speak and cannot and atheists who report anomalous sensory events nearly indistinguishable from religious experiences (6). One might suspect that voices and visions are signs of mental illness, but many people report anomalous sensory experiences in the absence of psychiatric distress (7). Moreover, the ethnographic record suggests that such events are more common in some cultural settings than in others (8, 9). Spiritual presence events thus present a striking example of variability in human sensory experience. Why are certain people, and people in certain social worlds, more likely to experience these extraordinary events? We bring to this question a theoretical perspective that centers on people's cultural models of, and personal orientations toward, their own minds. In many aspects of everyday life, cultural models (10) or, in other parlance, "folk theories" (11) and personal orientations (attitudes, motivations, and tendencies) (12), play complementary roles in shaping people's experience and behavior: Cultural models represent how the world works (that is, how it is often understood to work in a particular social-cultural setting), and personal orientations lead an individual to engage with that world in a particular way. Neuroscientific studies suggest that hallucinations arise through judgments of events at the edge of awareness-an indistinct noise in the next room, one's own inner voice-and that interpretation alters the phenomenological quality of such events (13, 14). Building on this work, we propose that the relevant cultural model which undergirds spiritual presence events is a model of experience itself and that the relevant personal orientation is an orientation toward experience. The central claim of this paper is that cultural models of the mind and personal orientations toward the mind shape people's phenomenological experiences and their interpretations of these experiences in ways that manifest as cultural and individual differences in reports of spiritual presence events. For cultural models, we focus in particular on what we call "porosity": the idea that the boundary between "the mind" and Significance The sensory presence of gods and spirits is central to many of the religions that have shaped human history-in fact, many people of faith report having experienced such events. But these experiences are poorly understood by social scientists and rarely studied empirically. We present a multiple-discipline, multiple-methods program of research involving thousands of people from diverse cultures and religions which demonstrates that two key factors-cultural models of the mind and personal orientations toward the mind-explain why some people are more likely than others to report vivid experiences of gods and spirits. These results demonstrate the power of culture, in combination with individual differences, to shape something as basic as what feels real to the senses.
PNAS, 2021
Other supplementary materials for this manuscript include the following: Datasets S1 to S4 Analys... more Other supplementary materials for this manuscript include the following: Datasets S1 to S4 Analysis scripts available at https://github.com/kgweisman/sense_spirit.
PNAS, 2021
Hearing the voice of God, feeling the presence of the dead, being possessed by a demonic spirit-s... more Hearing the voice of God, feeling the presence of the dead, being possessed by a demonic spirit-such events are among the most remarkable human sensory experiences. They change lives and in turn shape history. Why do some people report experiencing such events while others do not? We argue that experiences of spiritual presence are facilitated by cultural models that represent the mind as "porous," or permeable to the world, and by an immersive orientation toward inner life that allows a person to become "absorbed" in experiences. In four studies with over 2,000 participants from many religious traditions in the United States, Ghana, Thailand, China, and Vanuatu, porosity and absorption played distinct roles in determining which people, in which cultural settings, were most likely to report vivid sensory experiences of what they took to be gods and spirits. religion | porosity | absorption | spiritual experience | voices T he ancient texts of the great religions describe voices that speak from the air, visions that others cannot see, dead people who walk among the living. They are extraordinary stories, but the phenomenological events that they describe are deeply human and far more common than many realize (1). For the people who experience them, these moments can feel so vividly sensory that they are interpreted as evidence that an invisible other-a god, a spirit-is real. Such events change lives and in turn shape history. Augustine's conversion to Christianity, one of the most influential events in the history of Christianity, was sparked by hearing a disembodied voice (2), and on the eve of the Montgomery bus boycotts , terrified by threats, Martin Luther King, Jr., heard God say that he would be with him and resolved to go forward (3)-a decision of momentous significance for the Civil Rights Movement. Spiritual presence events-the various anomalous, often vividly sensory, events which people attribute to gods, spirits, or other supernatural forces (4)-do not happen for everyone. Within a religious community, people vary in how frequently they experience such events (5); there are deeply religious people who want to hear gods and spirits speak and cannot and atheists who report anomalous sensory events nearly indistinguishable from religious experiences (6). One might suspect that voices and visions are signs of mental illness, but many people report anomalous sensory experiences in the absence of psychiatric distress (7). Moreover, the ethnographic record suggests that such events are more common in some cultural settings than in others (8, 9). Spiritual presence events thus present a striking example of variability in human sensory experience. Why are certain people, and people in certain social worlds, more likely to experience these extraordinary events? We bring to this question a theoretical perspective that centers on people's cultural models of, and personal orientations toward, their own minds. In many aspects of everyday life, cultural models (10) or, in other parlance, "folk theories" (11) and personal orientations (attitudes, motivations, and tendencies) (12), play complementary roles in shaping people's experience and behavior: Cultural models represent how the world works (that is, how it is often understood to work in a particular social-cultural setting), and personal orientations lead an individual to engage with that world in a particular way. Neuroscientific studies suggest that hallucinations arise through judgments of events at the edge of awareness-an indistinct noise in the next room, one's own inner voice-and that interpretation alters the phenomenological quality of such events (13, 14). Building on this work, we propose that the relevant cultural model which undergirds spiritual presence events is a model of experience itself and that the relevant personal orientation is an orientation toward experience. The central claim of this paper is that cultural models of the mind and personal orientations toward the mind shape people's phenomenological experiences and their interpretations of these experiences in ways that manifest as cultural and individual differences in reports of spiritual presence events. For cultural models, we focus in particular on what we call "porosity": the idea that the boundary between "the mind" and Significance The sensory presence of gods and spirits is central to many of the religions that have shaped human history-in fact, many people of faith report having experienced such events. But these experiences are poorly understood by social scientists and rarely studied empirically. We present a multiple-discipline, multiple-methods program of research involving thousands of people from diverse cultures and religions which demonstrates that two key factors-cultural models of the mind and personal orientations toward the mind-explain why some people are more likely than others to report vivid experiences of gods and spirits. These results demonstrate the power of culture, in combination with individual differences, to shape something as basic as what feels real to the senses.
Book Chapters by Rachel E Smith
One Hundred Years of Argonauts: Malinowski, Ethnography and Economic Anthropology, 2024
What ‘drives man to strenuous, prolonged, and often unpleasant effort?’ This was one of the quest... more What ‘drives man to strenuous, prolonged, and often unpleasant effort?’ This was one of the questions that Bronisław Malinowski would continue to return to throughout his career. His answer was that ‘the psychological problem of value’ is key (Malinowski 1925: 927), but grounded in kinship and social organization, magic and religion.
Compared with his influence on anthropological theories and debates over exchange, the question of work in Malinowski’s writings has garnered relatively little attention (apart from contributions by his own students). Malinowski, from the time of his earliest publications (Malinowski 1993) and initial fieldwork, posed the question of incentives and stimuli to work in different ways. In his Trobriands ethnography he investigated the question in a more systematic and empirical way in order to dispel the caricature of isolated, self-interested ‘economic man’ in prevailing economic and social theory, and simultaneously the idea that labour in ‘savage’ societies was compelled by bare necessity, with minimal social organisation. In this chapter, I track how Malinowski raised the question of incentives to work in different ways over the course of his career, including his approach in Argonauts. I also explore aspects of the Labor Question that he overlooked in his early monographs, but which later figured prominently in his call for a new “Practical Anthropology,” in which anthropologists would contribute to, and influence, colonial policy.
WORK, SOCIETY, AND THE ETHICAL SELF Chimeras of Freedom in the Neoliberal Era, 2021
Book chapter in WORK, SOCIETY, AND THE ETHICAL SELF
Chimeras of Freedom in the Neoliberal Era, av... more Book chapter in WORK, SOCIETY, AND THE ETHICAL SELF
Chimeras of Freedom in the Neoliberal Era, available from Berghahn Books https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/HannWork
Rather than accept formal commodity-like contractual definitions of ‘free’ labor, this chapter reflects on the ambivalence in Mauss’s concept of “prestations totales” (‘total services’) to reconsider the ‘voluntary character’ of work. It discusses Vanuatu’s colonial and unfree labor history, as well as the impact of overseas labor migration on attitudes to work in contemporary Vanuatu. It shows how the meaning and value of ‘free work’, both in terms of working without payment, or working autonomously, depends on the worker’s standpoint within their social and political relations, and how they confront their social obligations.
The Quest for the Good Life in Precarious Times: Informal, Ethnographic Perspectives on the Domestic Moral Economy, edited by Chris Gregory and Jon Altman, 2018
in Kastom, property and ideology: Land transformations in Melanesia, edited by Siobhan McDonnell, Matthew Allen and Colin Filer
Just as the people whose ethnic origin is of Vanuatu are known by the demonym 'Ni-Vanuatu', so I ... more Just as the people whose ethnic origin is of Vanuatu are known by the demonym 'Ni-Vanuatu', so I shall refer to people who identify as originating from Lamen Island as Li-Lamenu, meaning 'people of Lamen' in the vernacular.
Blogs and Digital media by Rachel E Smith
Open Encylopedia of Anthropology, 2024
This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licens... more This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credit(s).
Most of our lives are spent working, as we frequently engage in purposeful activity to build and maintain our physical and social worlds. The anthropology of work and labour provides a comparative perspective on how people make a living within their natural and social environments, while bringing into focus how people everywhere are interconnected and impacted through global historical processes. Its history and theoretical purchase have been shaped by theoretical shifts within the discipline and by wider political-economic transformations. This overview traces these shifts and begins by discussing how early ethnographic fieldwork helped to overturn Eurocentric assumptions about work. The anthropology of work and labour helped criticize theories of social evolution, but in the process, it often excluded the impacts of colonialism and capitalism on people’s lives. It also developed the idea of the division of labour to understand and critique how different forms of labour are allocated and valorised. From the mid-twentieth century, anthropologists increasingly developed a critical perspective on capitalism, its alternatives, and its consequences. A major contribution of the anthropology of work and labour is that it elucidated perspectives and experiences of people in the peripheries and margins of capitalism. Research into work in industrial centres has clarified the ways in which industrial processes have played out in different regions and political-economic contexts as well as how power is accrued and maintained by elites and professionals. The entry concludes by highlighting key anthropological contributions to understandings of work and labour during the contemporary era, often referred to as ‘late capitalism’.
Book Reviews by Rachel E Smith
The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 16:1, 84-86 (2015)
Reports and Consultancy by Rachel E Smith
Invited Talks by Rachel E Smith
This paper draws on my doctoral research in a rural community in central Vanuatu, many of whom ha... more This paper draws on my doctoral research in a rural community in central Vanuatu, many of whom have been engaged as seasonal workers in New Zealand and Australia’s horticultural industries since 2008. The construction of a durable modern ‘good house’ (gudfala haos) was Li-Lamenu people’s main stated goal for working overseas. At the intersection of spatiotemporal frameworks of kinship and reproduction, and imaginaries of a different future, the ‘good house’ represents Li-Lamenu people’s determination to secure a home, and a good future for their household in the face of anxieties and uncertainties over the future. In this paper, I interrogate the moral as well as material ‘standards of living’ that motivate the construction of a ‘good house’. Whilst the house is presented in terms of care for the family, the preoccupation with the ‘good house’, and the channelling of resources and money into its fabric, may suggest an increasing prioritisation of the household over wider networks of kin.
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Single-Author Journal Articles by Rachel E Smith
‘Theory of mind’ in developmental psychology focuses on how children develop the ability to infer others’ beliefs, desires, and intentions. Anthropologists have taken up the notion of ‘theory of mind’ to explore the way cultural differences in representations of beliefs, desires, and intentions affect everyday lives. In Oceania, anthropologists have noted that inferences about others’ intentions are not accorded a privileged role in social interaction. In Vanuatu, I find, it is often the material, rather than immaterial, aspects of relatedness that are elaborated upon. People think about knowledge, creativity, meaning, and intention not as confined to a bounded mental or inner domain, but as discoverable through the body, and in the world at large. I argue here that this propensity to locate meaning and moral purpose as external to the mind corresponds to a ‘porous’ view of self and mind, and that this in turn may open people to experience vivid, intense, and often tangible forms of spiritual encounter.
Whilst there has been renewed interest in the development potential of temporary migration programmes, such schemes have long been criticized for creating conditions for exploitation and fostering dependence. In this article, which is based on a case study of Ni‐Vanuatu seasonal workers employed in New Zealand's horticultural industry, I show how workers and employers alike actively cultivate and maintain relations of reciprocal dependence and often describe their relation in familial terms of kinship and hospitality. Nevertheless, workers often feel estranged both in the Marxian sense of being subordinated to a regime of time‐discipline, and in the intersubjective sense of feeling disrespected or treated unkindly. I show how attention to the ‘non‐contractual element’ in the work contract, including expressions of hospitality, can contribute to anthropological debates surrounding work, migration, and dependence, and to interdisciplinary understandings of the justice of labour migration.
Papers by Rachel E Smith
Book Chapters by Rachel E Smith
Compared with his influence on anthropological theories and debates over exchange, the question of work in Malinowski’s writings has garnered relatively little attention (apart from contributions by his own students). Malinowski, from the time of his earliest publications (Malinowski 1993) and initial fieldwork, posed the question of incentives and stimuli to work in different ways. In his Trobriands ethnography he investigated the question in a more systematic and empirical way in order to dispel the caricature of isolated, self-interested ‘economic man’ in prevailing economic and social theory, and simultaneously the idea that labour in ‘savage’ societies was compelled by bare necessity, with minimal social organisation. In this chapter, I track how Malinowski raised the question of incentives to work in different ways over the course of his career, including his approach in Argonauts. I also explore aspects of the Labor Question that he overlooked in his early monographs, but which later figured prominently in his call for a new “Practical Anthropology,” in which anthropologists would contribute to, and influence, colonial policy.
Chimeras of Freedom in the Neoliberal Era, available from Berghahn Books https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/HannWork
Rather than accept formal commodity-like contractual definitions of ‘free’ labor, this chapter reflects on the ambivalence in Mauss’s concept of “prestations totales” (‘total services’) to reconsider the ‘voluntary character’ of work. It discusses Vanuatu’s colonial and unfree labor history, as well as the impact of overseas labor migration on attitudes to work in contemporary Vanuatu. It shows how the meaning and value of ‘free work’, both in terms of working without payment, or working autonomously, depends on the worker’s standpoint within their social and political relations, and how they confront their social obligations.
Blogs and Digital media by Rachel E Smith
Most of our lives are spent working, as we frequently engage in purposeful activity to build and maintain our physical and social worlds. The anthropology of work and labour provides a comparative perspective on how people make a living within their natural and social environments, while bringing into focus how people everywhere are interconnected and impacted through global historical processes. Its history and theoretical purchase have been shaped by theoretical shifts within the discipline and by wider political-economic transformations. This overview traces these shifts and begins by discussing how early ethnographic fieldwork helped to overturn Eurocentric assumptions about work. The anthropology of work and labour helped criticize theories of social evolution, but in the process, it often excluded the impacts of colonialism and capitalism on people’s lives. It also developed the idea of the division of labour to understand and critique how different forms of labour are allocated and valorised. From the mid-twentieth century, anthropologists increasingly developed a critical perspective on capitalism, its alternatives, and its consequences. A major contribution of the anthropology of work and labour is that it elucidated perspectives and experiences of people in the peripheries and margins of capitalism. Research into work in industrial centres has clarified the ways in which industrial processes have played out in different regions and political-economic contexts as well as how power is accrued and maintained by elites and professionals. The entry concludes by highlighting key anthropological contributions to understandings of work and labour during the contemporary era, often referred to as ‘late capitalism’.
Book Reviews by Rachel E Smith
Reports and Consultancy by Rachel E Smith
Invited Talks by Rachel E Smith
‘Theory of mind’ in developmental psychology focuses on how children develop the ability to infer others’ beliefs, desires, and intentions. Anthropologists have taken up the notion of ‘theory of mind’ to explore the way cultural differences in representations of beliefs, desires, and intentions affect everyday lives. In Oceania, anthropologists have noted that inferences about others’ intentions are not accorded a privileged role in social interaction. In Vanuatu, I find, it is often the material, rather than immaterial, aspects of relatedness that are elaborated upon. People think about knowledge, creativity, meaning, and intention not as confined to a bounded mental or inner domain, but as discoverable through the body, and in the world at large. I argue here that this propensity to locate meaning and moral purpose as external to the mind corresponds to a ‘porous’ view of self and mind, and that this in turn may open people to experience vivid, intense, and often tangible forms of spiritual encounter.
Whilst there has been renewed interest in the development potential of temporary migration programmes, such schemes have long been criticized for creating conditions for exploitation and fostering dependence. In this article, which is based on a case study of Ni‐Vanuatu seasonal workers employed in New Zealand's horticultural industry, I show how workers and employers alike actively cultivate and maintain relations of reciprocal dependence and often describe their relation in familial terms of kinship and hospitality. Nevertheless, workers often feel estranged both in the Marxian sense of being subordinated to a regime of time‐discipline, and in the intersubjective sense of feeling disrespected or treated unkindly. I show how attention to the ‘non‐contractual element’ in the work contract, including expressions of hospitality, can contribute to anthropological debates surrounding work, migration, and dependence, and to interdisciplinary understandings of the justice of labour migration.
Compared with his influence on anthropological theories and debates over exchange, the question of work in Malinowski’s writings has garnered relatively little attention (apart from contributions by his own students). Malinowski, from the time of his earliest publications (Malinowski 1993) and initial fieldwork, posed the question of incentives and stimuli to work in different ways. In his Trobriands ethnography he investigated the question in a more systematic and empirical way in order to dispel the caricature of isolated, self-interested ‘economic man’ in prevailing economic and social theory, and simultaneously the idea that labour in ‘savage’ societies was compelled by bare necessity, with minimal social organisation. In this chapter, I track how Malinowski raised the question of incentives to work in different ways over the course of his career, including his approach in Argonauts. I also explore aspects of the Labor Question that he overlooked in his early monographs, but which later figured prominently in his call for a new “Practical Anthropology,” in which anthropologists would contribute to, and influence, colonial policy.
Chimeras of Freedom in the Neoliberal Era, available from Berghahn Books https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/HannWork
Rather than accept formal commodity-like contractual definitions of ‘free’ labor, this chapter reflects on the ambivalence in Mauss’s concept of “prestations totales” (‘total services’) to reconsider the ‘voluntary character’ of work. It discusses Vanuatu’s colonial and unfree labor history, as well as the impact of overseas labor migration on attitudes to work in contemporary Vanuatu. It shows how the meaning and value of ‘free work’, both in terms of working without payment, or working autonomously, depends on the worker’s standpoint within their social and political relations, and how they confront their social obligations.
Most of our lives are spent working, as we frequently engage in purposeful activity to build and maintain our physical and social worlds. The anthropology of work and labour provides a comparative perspective on how people make a living within their natural and social environments, while bringing into focus how people everywhere are interconnected and impacted through global historical processes. Its history and theoretical purchase have been shaped by theoretical shifts within the discipline and by wider political-economic transformations. This overview traces these shifts and begins by discussing how early ethnographic fieldwork helped to overturn Eurocentric assumptions about work. The anthropology of work and labour helped criticize theories of social evolution, but in the process, it often excluded the impacts of colonialism and capitalism on people’s lives. It also developed the idea of the division of labour to understand and critique how different forms of labour are allocated and valorised. From the mid-twentieth century, anthropologists increasingly developed a critical perspective on capitalism, its alternatives, and its consequences. A major contribution of the anthropology of work and labour is that it elucidated perspectives and experiences of people in the peripheries and margins of capitalism. Research into work in industrial centres has clarified the ways in which industrial processes have played out in different regions and political-economic contexts as well as how power is accrued and maintained by elites and professionals. The entry concludes by highlighting key anthropological contributions to understandings of work and labour during the contemporary era, often referred to as ‘late capitalism’.