Introduction
Because
of the large amount of labor saved by giving workers specialized tasks in
Industrial Revolution era, classical economists such as Adam Smith and
mechanical engineers such as Charles Babbage were proponents of division of
labor. 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. Historically, an increasingly complex
division of labor is associated with the growth of total output and trade, the
rise of capitalism, and of the complexity of industrialized processes.
The
concept and implementation of division of labor has been observed in ancient
Sumerian (Mesopotamian) culture, where assignment of jobs in some cities
coincided with an increase in trade and economic interdependence. In addition
to trade and economic interdependence, division of labor generally increases
both producer and individual worker productivity. In contrast to division of
labor, division of work refers to the division of a large task, contract, or
project into smaller task each with a separate schedule within the overall
project schedule. (Durkheim,
Emile 1997)
Definition of key terms;
The
division of labor is the specialization of Labor economics who perform specific
tasks and roles in different aspects of social lives (Wadeson, N. 2013)
Division
of labor an approach to the completion of a complex task which involves
breaking the task into a number of simpler tasks and assigning these tasks to
specialists who generally perform only their assigned task (Robert M. Solow and Jean-Philippe
Touffut 2010)
Division
of labor, instead, refers to the allocation of tasks to individuals or
organizations according to the skills and or equipment those people or
organizations possess. Often division of labor and division of work are both
part of the economic activity within an industrial nation or organization (Durkheim, Emile 1997)
The
small, roving band of hunter-gatherers, the Pygmies the Hadza of Tanzania, was,
perhaps, the most egalitarian of traditional African societies. Isolated,
continually on the move, with the minimum of structure, the band of hunters had
a continually fluctuating membership, the mothers with little children stay at
home doing domestic works and caring for the little child of one year to five
years, while five up to fifteen years old they are for keeping animals, above
fifteen up to twenty five they are engaging in hunting and gathering with their
fathers, while adult men are to settle community disputes hence adult women are
to prepare young ladies for coming marriage.
Nomadism
applied in varying degrees to the pastoralists the Turkana of Kenya, exhibit
considerable mobility and flux in the composition of their settlements and
camps; at the other end, the Nandi of Kenya and the Gogo of Tanzania are more
sedentary and interested in agriculture. In fact, there is a pattern in the
movements of all pastoralists, dictated as it is by the availability of water
and grazing. In Ugogo (Tanzania) sons-in-law are required by custom to help
build for their father-in-law, In return, the father-in-law provides an ox
which will be slaughtered in the compound as a feast for the living and a
sacrifice to the dead.
It is a fact, too, that pastoralists carry out a fair
amount of cultivation, since all the three have the same division of labor, the
children below five years stay at home with pregnant mothers helping in
domestic activities, six to twelve years they are keeping cattle’s with some of
adults, fourteen to forty years old they are participating in agriculture and
social protections, the remained adults are to settle disputes.
Pastoralism has always been precarious and
conducted in remote and marginal areas. Many pastoralist peoples exploited
neighboring groups of cultivators or classes of cultivator-serfs, denying them
full rights of membership of their society, particularly the right to own
cattle. The inequality inherent in this situation has especially tragic
consequences in countries with cattle-owning aristocracies such as Rwanda and
Burundi societies(Hill, Lisa 2004).
In
general, however, pastoralist societies were more egalitarian than chieftain
societies, and stratification was one of their most conspicuous features. The
whole society was divided into a greater or lesser number of age-sets or
generation-sets, each of which was composed of a number of age groups or
batches of individuals initiated annually. Among some peoples, The Jie of
Uganda, on the other hand, had only two generation sets, each composed of five
age sets with a depth of five or six years, and this situation was comparable
to that of the Masai of Kenya in Tanzania with their twofold division of
warrior and elder.
Ages-sets
and generation-sets possessed public duties. The elders presided over society
as a whole, and the junior adults or warriors acted as a disciplinary force.
This status of warrior was a means of prolonging adolescence socially in a
polygamous society where there was necessarily a wide disparity in the age for
marriage. Girls were married young, men married late, thus permitting a greater
number of men to be polygamous.
However, adolescent rebelliousness had to be
canalized for the good of society, and the chagrin of young men at losing their
sweethearts to old men had to be softened. The warrior peer-group had all these
functions. It acted as a kind of military or police force, with its own common
living, its own collective morality and allegiance. In the modern world, of
course, it becomes progressively difficult to maintain such an institution in
existence. Not only does school education threaten this system, but close
administration makes it virtually impossible for the warrior-youths to fulfill
their social role.
The
Luo of Kenya and northern Tanzania offer us an example of this kind of
situation. In all of these kinds of society, stratified, segmentary, atomized,
government was traditionally at a minimum, and social control was exercised
very largely through the blood-feud. Sanctions consisted in the warriors taking
revenge on behalf of their clan or settlement and exacting compensation for
injuries done.
Guilt was deemed to be collective and the obligation to punish
or take revenge was also strictly collective. Most of these societies evolved a
clan of priest-chiefs or prophets who exercised important reconciliatory
functions between warring clans and groups. The priest-chief exercised no
permanent office, and had no administrative powers. He was summoned ad hoc to
deal with a given situation and to give expression to the will of disputing
social groups to bury their differences.
Accord was symbolized and affected
usually in a sacrificial feast. Some societies, like that of the Masai, had a
paramount religious leader, the head of the clan of priest-chiefs, who
possessed important prophetic functions. His task was especially to give unity
and direction to the action of the whole tribe in moments of crisis, war,
famine and so on hence eighteen to forty five were to deal those crisis, With
political and strategically ability, such a prophet could exercise considerable
influence over his people.
It
appears, therefore, that in these types of society decision making took place
at a reasonably low social level. However, there were recognized norms of behavior
to which people were expected to conform and to which appeal was made when
conflicts arose. The role of the priest-chiefs shows this. Moreover, and this
is demonstrated by the role of the prophet paramount, such norms did not
necessarily apply to alien peoples.
The pastoralist societies offer us a
flagrant example of the way in which relationships between ethnic groups were
sometimes not subject to any recognized norms. Conflicts between tribesmen
could be resolved according to precedent, and on account of the will of the
conflicting parties to be reconciled to each other. Conflicts between ethnic
groups were implacable. The herds of cattle possessed by neighboring tribes
were there to be plundered; their owners had no rights. One's own tribesmen, on
the other hand, had very strict rights over his herds, and compensation for
theft could be demanded and enforced.
The
pastoralist societies, as already indicated, were not so bound by familial ties
as many sedentary peoples. Grazing livestock over vast distances required an
understanding between individual stock-owners that neither would molest the
other, and that watering and grazing rights would be respected. Associations
between individuals based on the magical blood-pact, or on the exchange of
stock, afforded the individual a form of security in his movement over vast
distances, far away from kinsmen and clansmen. Such pacts or bonds were among
the most sacred and inviolable in traditional Africa.
Conclusion;
The
division of labor has its complementary ways of division according to various tribes
and other groups in East Africa as it has some of the very difficult ways of
division of labor but in fact it is good just because it provides an emphasis
to the young generations on how to keep busy working hard due to fact that they
are preparing their own lives, hence societies has to be fulfilled by people
who are experts.
References;
Hill,
Lisa (2004). Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson
and the Division of Labour. University of
Adelaide
Emile
Durkheim, (1893) seminal work, (De La
Division Du Travail Social The Division of Labor in Society),"dedicated
himself to the establishment of sociology as a legitimate and respected science
and as an instrument of rational social action." Alpert, Harry.
"Emile Durkheim: A Perspective and Appreciation." American
Sociological Review JSTOR. Web. 6
April2014.
Merton, Robert K. (1994), Durkheim's Division of Labor in Society,
Oxford University Printing
Press.
Cowan,
Tyler (2008). "Division of
labor". The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism. Thousand Oaks,
CA:
SAGE Cato Institute.
F. Froebel, F., J. Heinrichs and O.
Krey,(1991) The New International Division of Labor,
Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.
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