"Work Time" and "leisure Time"
Sahlins' argument partly relies on studies undertaken by McCarthy and McArthur in Arnhem Land, and by Richard Lee among the !Kung. These studies show that hunter-gatherers need only work about fifteen to twenty hours a week in order to survive and may devote the rest of their time to leisure. Lee did not include food preparation time in his study, arguing that "work" should be defined as the time spent gathering enough food for sustenance. When total time spent on food acquisition, processing, and cooking was added together, the estimate per week was 44.5 hours for men and 40.1 hours for women, but Lee added that this is still less than the total hours spent on work and housework in many modern Western households.
Read more about this topic: Original Affluent Society
Famous quotes containing the words work, time and/or leisure:
“One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.”
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915)
“My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one,
and come away.
For lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;”
—Bible: Hebrew The Song of Solomon (l. II, 10–12)
“Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market.
He has no time to be anything but a machine.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)