production and division of labor in a West Indian peasant community

Abstract

The idea that a division of labor is fundamental in the organization of society is an old and respectable one associated with such names as Comte (1 875243-244), Durkheim (1933), and Murdock (1949:7-9,213-214). The phrase "sexual division of labor" perhaps sounds old-fashioned now when we are more accustomed to speak of sex roles and more attuned to the perception that rigid labor divisions between the sexes may be in the analytic categories of the observer as well as in the realities of the observed (Nelson 1974). This paper deals with the sexual division of labor on the West Indian island of Barbuda, or in contemporary usage, the sexual differentiation of social and economic roles.' It deals equally with the organization of production in this peasant economy. I shall try to uncover the relationship between the two, to look beneath cultural prescriptions and observable behavior to the productive capabilities of the landscape and the organizational means of exploiting those capabilities, for it is here we shall find some understanding of the separate social and economic responsibilities of men and women.Descriptions of the sexual division of labor are commonplace in ethnographic writing. The list of possible illustrative examples is almost endless, but let me select two from well-known works dealing with peasant communities, since a peasant community i s my own subject. These two show a difference In conviction about the behavioral reality of the sexual division of labor. Arensberg's description of the division in rural Ireland (1937:5563) expresses strong conviction of its behavioral reality, of the complementarity of men's and women's roles and the cohesion that depends on it, and of i t s economic necessity. Pitt-Rivers, on the other hand, conveys uncertainty about any strict division of labor in behavior (1961 :85-87). In rural Andalusia, economic necessity does not enforce the complementarity of men's and women's labor, but encourages behavior that contradicts cultural ideals about what is appropriate to the sexes; rules do not govern behavior although they govern preference and ideals (Pitt-Rivers 1961 :86-87). But what Subsistence and cash production on the West Indian island of Barbuda fall into two organizational categories: that for which household personnel is sufficient and that for which personnel from different households must organize into a cooperative team. This difference in productive organization is associated with exclusive areas of social and economic responsibility divided between men and women, although physical labor sometimes overlaps. Underlying the organization of production and hence the sexual distinction of roles, are the productive capabilities of the landscape and the customary system of land tenure that permits its most efficient use.production and division of labor 253

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