What have anthropologists discovered about people’s sources and causes of satisfaction

or dissatisfaction at work?
By Elsie McDowell

Work: what is it? Why do people do it? Who are people doing it for? These are just some of
the questions that anthropologists have posed about the nature of work. In this essay, I am
going to argue for the importance of distinguishing between work and labour, contrary to
some anthropological writing on the matter. I will then argue that for most people, work, in
this case referring to paid employment – though not by default stable or contracted
employment - is more about kinship relations than it is about the work itself. Thus,
satisfaction or dissatisfaction at work is, for many, rooted in the ability to provide for kin, and
in the face of even the worst working conditions people often cite providing for kin as why
they endure them. That said, as some anthropological literature has suggested, satisfaction at
work varies widely between individuals. For example, for artisans in particular, satisfaction is
about their craft itself, but this experience has been radically changed by technology.

So first, what actually is work? In her recent book on the matter, Sian Lazar stresses that
anthropologists must avoid generalising about what work entails, as it varies widely across
social contexts (Lazar, 2023). She describes work as “those activities human beings
undertake to provision themselves, their households, and their communities to produce life.”
(Lazar, 2023). Labour and work are largely used interchangeably throughout How We
Struggle: Towards a Political Anthropology of Labour, which she argues avoids the pitfall of
disregarding the “social reproduction labour” that women disproportionately carry out for
their families (Lazar, 2023). Whilst I fully agree with Lazar on the need not disregard this
labour, I think it is useful to distinguish labour from work, because women are very often
doing this social reproduction labour on top of paid work. That is not to say that Lazar does
not mention this, she very much does, but distinguishing between paid and unpaid labour (or
commodified and non commodified labour as Lazar describes it) makes it easier to recognise
that for many women, especially those from marginalised groups, they carry out “social
reproduction labour” in their own home and then are paid to do very similar work for another
household. This “outsourcing” of social reproduction labour is in and of itself one of the
factors that has allowed some women, especially middle class women, to enter the global
workforce. The so-called Fordist model of employment, where an employee is generally
assumed to be a man working to provide for his family relies on him having a wife or other
female relative at home doing the domestic labour. This was largely a myth in all of the
places where this model was presented, but it has had a lasting impact on the structure of the
global workforce (Lazar, 2023). Thus, it is often the case that for a woman to enter the
workforce she has to pay another woman to do the domestic labour that she is otherwise
expected to do for her. Therefore, I think a more Arendtian model is useful here. 20th century
German political theorist Hannah Arendt describes the “vita activa” (literally ‘active life’)
which is split into three categories: work, labour, and action (Arendt, 2019 [1958]). Labour
refers to the activities that humans carry out in order to keep themselves alive, work refers to
the activities humans carry out to create physical products that can outlast themselves, and
action moves beyond work and labour to create something new; it is the condition of political
life (Arendt, 2019 [1958]). These ideas are useful, but also limited: work and labour are not
always so clearly separated from each other, such as for workers who bring their children to
their place of work, who are therefore simultaneously engaged in the labour of childcare and
their work. Take market vendors across the Global South in particular, for example, who
frequently do this (Lazar, 2023). Work today is also more than just creating physical
products, it often involves the creation of services, if not on an individual scale but as a
collective organisation or company. This division is also blurred by the fact that people are
generally working in order to keep themselves alive too, albeit less directly than with labour,
as rather than cooking so that they can eat, they are working so that they can buy the
ingredients they need to cook so that they can eat. Thus, labour and work are interrelated, but
not the same.

Now that I have established what work actually entails, what have anthropologists discovered
about how people gain satisfaction/dissatisfaction from their work? For many, work is not as
much about gaining satisfaction from the work they are doing in and of itself but how well
they are able to provide for their kin. Lazar uses the example of Thai migrant worker Adun in
Bangkok, who initially worked in a shoe making factory in order to economically provide for
his wife and children who were living in the countryside (Lazar, 2023). When the Thai
government liberalised the national market, foreign direct investment in the nation expanded
rapidly, so Adun switched to working in construction to take advantage of the property boom
(Lazar, 2023). When the Asian Financial Crisis struck, Adun, like thousands of his
counterparts, switched to motorcycle taxi driving in Bangkok (Lazar, 2023). This case study
shows how individual decisions about how to earn money very much interact with national
and global events, especially as the world economy has become ever more globalised.
Underpinning all of these decisions, though, is not a search for job satisfaction per se but a
desire to provide for kin, even when they are not living nearby. Anthropologists looking at
work have often suggested that migration, both within and between nations, is a particularly
important process to understand when studying work. This idea that provision for kin can
occur even when kin are not nearby holds especially true for migrant workers who send home
remittances. Again, Lazar details various case studies of mothers in Mexico who have
migrated to the US in search of work, and send their wages back to their children, who are
often living with their grandmother or other female relative (Lazar, 2023). Thus, satisfaction
at work is intergenerational; often parents withstand immediate sacrifices so that their
children have a greater opportunity to access job and educational satisfaction in the future.

In her 1983 ethnography The Traveller Gypsies, Judith Okley focuses on traveller
communities in the UK. She describes traveller communities as largely independent of wage
labour, yet “they are neither isolated from nor ignorant of the larger society and economy.”
(Okley, 1983). At the time she was writing, few in the gypsy community were literate, but
amongst those who had some interaction with the formal education system there was a
recognition that there were Gorgio (non-gypsy) skills and Gypsy skills, the latter of which
could only be learnt through children shadowing their parents at work (Okley, 1983). Thus,
providing for kin through work goes beyond just the economic aspects of it, and also
encompasses the skills and knowledge passed down to children. Thus, satisfaction is not just
about happiness or contentment at work, but about a more holistic attitude towards the impact
that work has on kinship structures.

This is not to say that this is the only source of satisfaction at work, and undoubtedly some
level of happiness at work plays into workplace satisfaction, especially within more
economically privileged contexts where individuals are able to consider personal satisfaction
without such severe economic constraints. For example, Trevor Marchand examines the
pursuit of pleasure amongst artisans, specifically woodworkers, in his book The Pursuit of
Pleasurable Work. This aligns more closely with the Arendtian model of work in that
individuals are creating an object that could outlast their own life through their work. In one
section of the aforementioned book, Marchand looks at students on a woodworking course,
who are debating the use of power tools in woodworking. Some students argue that the use of
power tools takes away from the sensory experience of woodworking, as the use of protective
equipment means that vision and touch are impaired, and that with these tools there is less
attention to traditional techniques (Marchand, 2021). Others argue that power tools are more
efficient, and are simply a new technique to be mastered, rather than something that is
replacing traditional techniques (Marchand, 2021). This shows that work satisfaction is
intimately tied up with the craft of woodworking itself, not just a sense of obligation or love
towards kin. That said, this satisfaction from craft is something that is very difficult to
achieve for most people; Marchand notes that in the fifteenth century, few carpentry
apprentices whose names appeared on the Carpenters’ Company records appeared again in
later records, reflecting that few were able to progress beyond the high cost for setting up a
workshop after their training (Marchand, 2021). The story is similar today, as Marchand
outlines how the average cost of £10,000 to set up a carpentry workshop meant that few of
the students were able to become the independent artisans post-graduation that they had
aspired to be (Marchand, 2021). Thus, satisfaction from work itself is something that is only
accessible to the economically privileged, and though for many, especially amongst artisans,
job satisfaction is rooted in their craft, in reality having to provide for both yourself and any
dependent kin means that this is hard to achieve.

In a different context, Oakley describes how wage work is seen as undesirable in many
traveller communities. This is not because they fit the often perpetuated stereotypes of
travellers as lazy or workshy, but because within these communities freedom and flexibility
are seen as far more important than the regularity of contracted work (Okley, 1983). As
Okley notes, “the presumptions that Travellers will spontaneously accept wage-labour and
that no Travellers achieve affluence within their own society, on their own terms, are
thoroughly ethnocentric.” (Okley, 1983). Perhaps the most important contribution that
anthropology can make to the popular understanding of work is that attitudes towards work
originate from peoples’ social and cultural contexts, and from systems where people may
value one characteristic, such as freedom, over another, such as stability. This is not wrong,
but the nature of human culture. The ability to not be highly-specialised and instead have a
wide toolkit of practical skills at one’s disposal is highly valued in traveller society, as it
allows people to work different jobs at different times during the year, based on what jobs are
required (Okley, 1983). Property ownership and the large accumulation of consumer goods
are not seen as particularly desirable in the way that they are within the home-residing
population of the UK. Thus, satisfaction is more derived from the ability to combine earning
money to provide for kin with the ability to be flexible and have time for non-work related
activities. These two contrasting examples show that the sources of satisfaction and
dissatisfaction at work are very much contextual, and are shaped by a variety of economic,
social, and cultural factors.

To conclude, the ability to provide for kin is, for many people around the globe, the most
important factor in their level of satisfaction with their work. However, this is not to say that
it is the only source of workplace satisfaction. On the contrary, the sources of satisfaction at
work vary widely between communities based on what values are seen as of the most
importance. For most people, though, making decisions relating to their employment that are
solely based on personal satisfaction are not possible, as it requires a level of economic
privilege to not choose your employment solely around providing for yourself and your kin.
Moreover, it is important to distinguish between the concepts of work and labour, so that
anthropologists are fully able to understand how labour, such as “social reproductive labour”,
interacts with wage based work.

Bibliography

TH Eriksen 2023 Small places, large issues: an introduction to social and cultural
anthropology (5th ed.) London: Pluto

S Lazar 2023 How we struggle: a political anthropology of labour London: Pluto

J Okely 1983 The Traveller-Gypsies Cambridge: CUP

THJ Marchant 2021 The pursuit of pleasurable work: craftwork in Twenty-first Century
England New York: Berghahn

H Arendt 2018 The human condition Chicago: University of Chicago Press