LABOUR, PRIMITIVE. It is often thought that all native peoples are naturally indolent, and that only by the pressure of white authority can they be induced to perform hard and con sistent work. As regards normal tribal conditions this idea is quite erroneous. Even in the primitive agriculture of the Pacific long hours are spent for days at a time in steady toil, embracing a series of operations, from the arduous clearing and breaking up of the ground to the careful monotonous weeding, which cover a cycle of weeks or even months of work. In the hewing-out, carv ing, launching and sailing of a canoe, again, extraordinary patience and effort are displayed. Such facts can be paralleled from the economic life of any native folk who have not been too greatly changed by civilization.
The secret of such arduous and consistent labour lies in the nature of the motives behind it. The desire to utilize a share of the product, or to reap some other material reward is a constant in ducement to work. The real scheme of motivation, however, is much more complex. Other incentives are often equally strong.
In primitive society great emphasis becomes attached to the personal relation between a man and his work; the absence of any widespread system of delegated employment renders the product peculiarly his own, and allows scope for the development of the spirit of craftsmanship and delight in the task for its own sake. This largely accounts for the extra finish and decoration so often applied to weapons and tools beyond the corresponding increase in utility. Social factors also are of the greatest importance : vanity in seeing his handiwork admired, an intense spirit of rivalry, rooted in the desire to attract public attention, coupled with obedi ence to tribal usage and traditional teaching, are responsible for much of the exacting labour of the primitive workman. The pro duction of food is often not dictated by pressure of immediate physical wants, hut by social considerations, as the need of sup plies for a marriage or a mourning feast, or by the wish to gain prestige by the accumulation of stocks of surplus wealth.
no drudge for an idle husband ; a certain economic equality is observed within the family. Other broad divisions of employ ment are made on the basis of age and rank. Specialist craftsmen occur to a limited degree, as canoe-builders and carvers in Poly nesia, or the caste of smiths in central Africa. Specialization in work is closely associated with the knowledge of technique and magic.
The large scale on which some native enterprises are conducted, as house-building, gardening and fishing, demands for them to be effective, that there must be strong forces of organization to en sure that the contribution of each person is adequate, and, more important, that it is harmoniously welded into the whole scheme of work. In general, the bonds which secure co-operation in labour are represented by the ties of kinship between members of the working group, by the authority of chief and elders, by the obedience to magical rules, and by the prestige of the local magi cian. In such tasks, competent leadership is of the greatest impor tance. To relieve the fatigue of labour and beguile its monotony, primitive man adopts a number of devices, as music, work-songs and choruses, or in some communities, narcotics. Working in company also has in itself a cheering effect. A powerful factor in assisting to keep the activity of individual workers up to full pitch is the pressure of public opinion, often made explicit through traditional tales and proverbial sayings. Since care and skill in work usually bring reputation to a person and act as a distinct marriageable asset, young folk in a primitive community are pro vided with an additional incentive to industry.
The study of such problems of motive and organization in work has a practical as well as a theoretical interest, since it bears on certain aspects of native labour in Africa and the Pacific.
See B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), "Labour and Primitive Economics," Nature (Dec. 26, 1925) ; also K. Bucher, Arbeit and Rhythmus (6th ed., 1924) ; R. Thurnwald, "Die Gestaltung der Wirtschaftsentwickelung" in Erinnerungsgabe fur Max Weber, i. (1923), L. H. D. Buxton, Primitive Labour (1924) .
(R. F.)