Work and Skills

John P. Ziker

Work is the labor, task, or duty that is one's accustomed means of livelihood. Anthropologists among social scientists have debated the significance of work in industrial and nonindustrial societies. In anthropology, emphasis is given to the association of the work concept to pertinent social relationships. Skills are learned powers of competence, developed aptitudes, or abilities. Skills develop in areas of art, technology, language, and other forms of perception and expression. By analyzing skills and the processes that bring skills about, dichotomies, such as those that exist between art and science and high and low technology, may be overcome. Nevertheless, the extension of human skills through technology has resulted in the historical withdrawal of people from the production processes and ...

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