Karl Marx's Critique of Political Economy and Measurement of Gender Inequality
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Transcript of Karl Marx's Critique of Political Economy and Measurement of Gender Inequality
KARL MARX’S CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY AND
MEASUREMENT OF GENDER INEQUALITY
Pradip Baksi
Abstract
Karl Marx‟s critique of political economy is a sublation or Aufhebung of classical
political economy, for opening up the frontiers of its future as a science, aimed at
self-emancipation of the wage-labourer. He divided his corresponding task into 6
topics: capital, landed property, wage-labour; the state, foreign trade and, world
market. His output continues to be published within the Marx-Engels-
Gesamtausgabe[MEGA] I-IV. Some of these materials are in the publication
mode; the rest are either in the research mode or, are contained in his
correspondences. Everything therein is open ended. One of the open issues here is
that of wage-labour. Wage-labour and wageless-labour together constitute the
universe of discourse of labour in the world as a whole. Both kinds of labour can
be taken care of by time use studies. This paper proposes a research programme for
extending the wage-labour related component of Marx‟s critique of classical
political economy, by utilizing the data generated on wageless-labour in gender
inequality revealing time use studies.
Keywords: Critique of political economy; wage-labour; wageless-labour; time use
studies; Measurement of Gender Inequality.
Introduction
Karl Marx began his Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political
Economy (1859) with the following statement:
“I examine the system of bourgeois economy in the following order: capital,
landed property, wage-labour; the state, foreign trade, world market.
The economic conditions of existence of the three great classes into which
modern bourgeois society is divided are analysed under the first three headings;
the interconnection of the other three headings is self-evident. The first part of
the first book, dealing with Capital, comprises the following chapters: 1. The
Commodity, 2. Money or simple circulation, 3. Capital in general. The present
part consists of the first two chapters. The entire material lies before me in the
form of monographs, which were written not for publication but for self-
clarification at widely separated periods; their remoulding into an integrated
whole according to the plan I have indicated will depend upon circumstances”
[Marx/Engels, Collected Works(MECW), 29: 261].
Some 40 years ago, while writing in another context, Maximilien Rubel had
reminded us of this master plan of investigations [Rubel, 1973]. Today, more than
150 years after the above indicated sentences were written by Marx, we have his
first book on Capital, indicated above, in the shape of 15 volumes [23 books] of
the MEGA, Section II.
This section of the MEGA contains 6 different editions of the Capital, Volume I
[MEGA II. 5-10], published during the years 1867-90; containing 1092, 1741,
1441, 1519, 1183 and 1286 pages, respectively; 4 of these editions are in German,
1 in French and 1 in English. In the English edition of 1887, MECW 35, Part VI,
Chapters XIX-XXII, pages 535-64 are titled: Wages. At the very beginning of
Chapter XX of the Capital, Volume I subtitled: Time Wages, Marx again stressed
that an exposition of all the forms of wages “…belongs to the special study of
wage-labour, not therefore to this work” [see Note 1]. It has not been possible for
me to personally check the variations, if any, in the texts of the Part/Section on
Wages in the other 5 editions of the Capital, Volume I, owing to lack of access.
However, I have been informed by Shree Paresh Chattopadhyay, who has the
necessary access: that in the first German edition of 1867, Section 4 of Chapter 5
has the title: „Value, respectively price of labour power in the transformed form of
wage.‟ This section has been divided into the sub-sections: (a) Change of Form
and, (b) The Two Basic Forms of Wage: Time Wage and Piece Wage. In the
Second German edition of 1872 there is an entire Part: Part 6, on Wage. There the
corresponding four chapters follow exactly as one reads them in the later editions:
the third German edition of 1883, the French edition of 1875 and, the fourth
German edition of 1890; according to Maximilien Rubel there are a few minor
changes in the French version of 1875 [see note 2].
Hints about some other parts of Marx‟s other five planned books remain scattered
in the various, already published or yet to be published volumes of MEGA I-IV. It
has been observed that Marx‟s corresponding lifelong investigations for self-
clarification involved the study of about 12 sciences and technologies and, the
current affairs of about 15 countries [Rojahn, 1998; Einführung, MEGA IV/32,
1999].The materials that he collected for self-clarification, for his second book on
Landed Property, have been partly published as his notes and excerpts on
ethnology (1974) and, on comparative history of landed property (1977). These
already published materials and the rest of it are slated to be included in some of
the volumes of MEGA IV.
In the present paper I propose that we extend Marx‟s critique of political economy
in the domain of wage-labour. It is the topic which he wished to cover under his
third book. Marx had stated that the desired remoulding of the materials he
collected and wrote for his self-clarification will depend upon the circumstances at
hand. In the circumstances of the first quarter of the 21st Century, the principal
form among the still surviving, historical „siblings‟ of wage-labour happens to be
the wageless-labour of women and children in patriarchal families. In many areas
of our planet some forms of precapitalist relations of production still exist. That
issue is mainly related to the forms of land relations and landed property, which
Marx had planned to tackle in his second book. However, even in those societies
where the transition to capitalism has been completed in the main, there too the
wage-labour in the marketplace and, the domestic wageless-labour in the
patriarchal households complement each other and, together they constitute the
universe of discourse of labour in the world as a whole. It may be added here that:
(1) wherever an entirely or partially bonded patriarchal family works on contract or
on piece rate , within the capitalist system of production – for instance, during the
sowing and harvesting seasons in agriculture, in the salt mines, brick fields, stone
quarries, artisanal fisheries etc. or, (2) when wage-labour is performed under
conditions of total or partial bondage of the individual worker, as it happens, for
instance, in the sexual services sector in many countries; or, (3) when an entire
emerging capitalist economy and civil society operates under the overarching
constraints imposed by an entrenched caste system, as in the case of the South
Asian countries like India or, (4) under the diktats of an imperial partocratic
bureaucracy, as in the case of countries like the erstwhile USSR or, (5) when
capitalist production is conducted within the penal colonies, prison systems and,
sweatshops of the special economic zones, where the individual worker is
practically a bonded labourer, then it becomes difficult to disentangle wage-labour
and wageless-labour at a given time.
In the face of all these complexities a path has been opened up for a common time-
measure of both wage-labour and wageless-labour by the time use surveys
conducted during the last 100 years [see Appendix I.]. This path may be further
extended today in the domain of critique of political economy, by using the data
sets of time-budgets or time use studies, available at the Centre for Time Use
Research – Information Gateway, the International Association for Time use
Research and, their publications like the Electronic International Journal for Time
Use Research, eIJTUR.
Section I
Marx‟s critique of political economy is aimed at the final self-emancipation of
wage-labourers from the system of wage-labour. That is the goal of communism
or, of the future human society, based on a sublation of state and civil society.
However, the arrival of such a condition must be preceded by a precondition,
where no one remains bound to any form of wageless-labour. Right now
patriarchal family is the largest and strongest citadel of wageless-labour. Marx
wrote in his excerpts from L.H. Morgan‟s Ancient Society (1877): “The modern
family contains in embryo not only slavery, but also serfdom … It contains within
itself in miniature all the antagonisms which later developed on a wide scale within
society and its state” [Marx, 1974: 120]. Humankind cannot pass out of the schools
of state and civil society and, graduate into human society or communism, with
this familial baggage of slavery and serfdom. In fact, a modern civil society and its
state are incompatible with all forms of wageless-labour.
In the modern era, these requirements were first understood from a legal-
constitutional standpoint by some of the leading thinkers of the first French
Revolution (Condorcet, 1790; Gouges, 1791). Subsequently, Fourier (1808) and,
Marx and Engels (1848) articulated the social-economic contents of these
requirements.
The formation of a civil society and the corresponding system of some kind of
rule-governed wage-labour all over the world, for all people, has to precede the
sublation of capitalism, its civil society and, state. This task has not been
accomplished till date.
It is known for at least the last 2000 years that human labour produces wealth in
human society [Manusmriti, 9.44; quoted in: Kovalevsky, 1879: 93; quoted in:
Marx 1977: 49].
Let us take a look at how that wealth-producing labour is itself produced.
Everywhere in the world the unpaid familial goods and services enter into the
commodity chain only as end products: as the wage-labour-time of the child
worker and adult worker, as nutrition for the worker, as the health and vigour of
the rested, cared for and, sexually serviced worker etc. etc. However, even when
the sum total of the unpaid familial goods and services [= labour-power of the
worker] enters into the labour market, nobody pays for the past unpaid familial
goods and services, for the unpaid dead labour of the mothers/wives/other familial
care givers embedded in the body and consciousness of the worker, whose labour-
time is available for hiring out in the market. In other words, the child bearing,
child rearing and, adult caring/servicing related familial unpaid labour still remains
outside the zone of exchange value everywhere, even in the more industrially
developed capitalist economies of the world.
How big is the share of this unpaid domestic labour on the world scale? In spite of
various kinds of efforts aimed at measuring and understanding it (for example:
Strumilin, 1923-25; Szalai, 1966, 1972 and 1975; Goldschmidt-Clermont, 1982
and 1987; Krishnaraj and Deshmukh, 1993; Ironmonger, 1994 and 2004; Razavi,
2007; Budlender, 2007 and 2008; Vogel, 1994 and 2008; Dong and An, 2012) we
have only very rudimentary and fragmentary direct data.
What is further disturbing is the fact that so far the experts and students of Marx‟s
Critique of Political Economy have generally ignored the study of data sets
generated by gender inequality revealing time use studies. Many among them are
themselves Marx-innocent and, remain under the spell of various shades of Marxist
confusions of the last century. In the absence of their interest in this area, the field
is largely Marx-innocent and, remains beholden to some social-democratic,
welfarist, pseudo-liberal or, neo-classical ideologues. Often a part of paid and
unpaid domestic (for instance, child care related) services are lumped together in
the interest of window-dressing of the final national income related statistics.
Investigators, who make promising starts, often cave in after sometime, under the
career pressures generated by the dominant academic ideologies of the peer groups
and, waste their lives in trivial exercises that are only marginally useful for the
critique of political economy. However, even within the circumstances of such
prevailing disorientation, there appear silver linings beyond the clouds. Reports
and results are produced that are comparable to the Blue Books used by Marx in
his critique of the classical political economy of his time. Let us consider one
example.
A study of the Australian child care time for the year 1997 shows that when the
time spent in secondary activities is included, then childcare becomes the largest
industry in both the household and market economies. It absorbs more labour time
than any other paid or unpaid economic activity. The total amount of time
Australians spent in child care in 1997 was equivalent to about two-thirds (63%) of
the entire labour time absorbed in that year by the Australian economy
(Ironmonger, 2004: 105-06). It is very likely that when the child care and other
domestic activities related labour time of the vast majority of less affluent, less
industrialized and, less commoditized economies will be computed, then the
measure of unpaid labour in the world economy as a whole, will go up
considerably.
We may also consider an example. Consider a Heterosexual Patriarchal Household
(H) consisting of only two persons: though both of them have the same skills and
capabilities, only one of them (generally the male member) is gainfully employed
in the labour market (let us call him M) and, the other one (generally the female
member) is totally engaged in unpaid domestic activities (let us call her F). Such
patriarchal families do exist among the labouring people in many countries. Let us
assume that M earns only one unit of a given currency per day. M gets the
opportunity to earn this wage because F does all the unpaid or wageless domestic
work. In any formally fair exchange F should get at least that one unit of that given
currency from the government and/or from M. However, that does not happen. For
a part or whole of the wage of any given day, M gets the best food, care, sexual
services etc. etc. from F. In exchange F loses the chance of earning at least one
unit of a given currency as wage in the labour market. Thus the total wages for the
unpaid or wageless domestic services of F becomes one unit of a given currency
as lost wage, plus the market price of the wageless catering, laundry, caring, sexual
etc. services provided to M, in that given market; that will certainly add up to more
than the daily wage of M. In this example we did not include any children.
However, even in the case of single-child patriarchal families the measurement of
unpaid or wageless domestic labour has to include: the market price of womb
rental, child bearing and child rearing, plus the wages of unpaid domestic services
performed by the child as s/he grows old enough to do some work.
Section II
In the previous section I have tried to draw the attention of our reader to the task of
measuring wageless-labour in the context of critique of political economy as a
science. I propose now, that this task may be tackled through the following
STAGES.
II.1 Short Run [Time Frame: 1-2 years, ending in December 2015]: A survey of the
already published evaluations of gender sensitive time use studies [in part indicated
in the Bibliography of Appendix I], by a team/teams of concerned investigators.
Such team/teams should ideally include: textual scholars of MEGA II, statisticians
expert in Time Use Studies and, social scientists interested in investigating
wageless-labour.
II.2 Medium Run [Time Frame: 5 Years, ending in December 2020] : In light of
the results obtained in stage II.1, larger teams may be formed to investigate the
already existing and emerging country level Time Use studies, archived as
Electronic Texts and Data Files by the major research initiatives in the field [listed
at the end of Appendix I ].
II.3 Long Run [Time Frame: about 10-15+ years or, attainment of the UN
Millennium Development Goals, whichever is earlier]: Time Use Data for all the
regions of all the countries of the world does not exist as of now. Generation of
such data presupposes universal Literacy, Matheracy and Technoracy
[D‟Ambrosio, 1998; Appendix II], up to a level when everyone in the world will
become literate and motivated enough to keep and submit a Personal Time Diary
for at least 1 week [=7 days and nights]. Once obtained, these global data may then
be analysed to draw appropriate conclusions. This is a long term task for all the
people, organisations and, governments of the world. It is possible for this
campaign for Universal Literacy, Matheracy and Technoracy to be initiated by the
BRICS group of countries. Here are my reasons.
For decades now, Brazil is a major centre of the movements for mass literacy as
conceptualized by Paulo Freire, for the Ethnomathematics movement
[D‟Ambrosio, 2006; Knijnik, 2006] and, for the concept of a new Trivium of
Literacy, Matheracy and Technoracy conceptualized by Ubiratan D‟Ambrosio
(1998). Russia is one of the pioneering countries in Time Use Studies since the
time of Stanislav Gustavovich Strumilin‟s time-budget studies of the 1920s; a vast
amount of data has been intermittently, and still continues to be, generated there.
India is a very strong, perhaps the strongest, citadel of patriarchy in the whole
world; it is a veritable laboratory for conducting intensive and extensive studies on
wageless-labour in patriarchal households. As of now, China has the strongest
institutional infrastructure for conducting further studies on the critique of political
economy along the paths opened up by Karl Marx. South Africa is the home of one
of world‟s currently leading specialist - Deborah Jean (known by her nickname of
Debbie) Budlender - in the application of the data generated by Time Use Studies,
on gender inequality related issues.
The currently emerging Infrastructure and Sustainable Development oriented
BRICS Bank may be sounded out, through the BRICS Think Tank Council, with
the aim of seeking support for creating the Literacy, Matheracy and Technoracy
related sustainable human resources base necessary for Stage II.3 of this research
programme.
Strumilin, a pioneer of time-budget studies in Russia, motivated the planning
commission of his country in 1919, to pay more attention to education of the
human resources component, in the interest of infrastructure development
[Prabhakar, 1995, online text: 6]. Development with justice and equality demands
that we take comparable steps for global social evolution and development now.
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Notes
1. See: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch20.htm, para1.
2. Personal mail from Shree Paresh Chattopadhyay dated 18 April 2013.
Appendix
I. A SHORT NOTE ON TIME USE STUDIES
[This note is mainly based on “eIJTUR and Time Use: Past, Present and
Future” and, “Editors‟ Introduction”, eIJTUR, volume 1, 2004: i-vii.]
Time is the measure of various forms of change, motion and activities. Time
Use Studies/Researches have been used throughout the 20th
Century, for
measuring the activities of human individuals in various parts of the world, with
the aim of understanding the social life of people, on the basis of the patterns of
their time use. Time Use Studies produce an empirical data-base, leading to
some theoretical perspectives that help analyze hitherto uninvestigated or less-
investigated social and economic phenomena and, help generate corresponding
policies.
Time Use or Time-Budget Studies arose out of the nineteenth-century practical
and theoretical interests in the working hours, leisure time and, life styles in
Western Europe; see: Engels (1845) in the Bibliography below. From 1913 till
about the second half of the 20th
Century Time Use Studies were mainly
focused on the distribution of time across daily activities and, that of the leisure
time of certain specific social groups, like the industrial workers, farmers and
service sector workers. It may be mentioned in passing, that the first Time
Signal sent around the World was broadcast from the Eiffel Tower of Paris, in
July 1913; that the first time use study came out in the USA also in 1913; and,
that Count Helmuth von Moltke of Germany used Standard Time to put into
effect his war plan in 1914. Thus the emergence of World Standard Time and,
that of Time Use Studies appear to be simultaneous. The first exhaustive large-
scale study of 24-hour time budgets of the workers of Moscow was carried out
by S.G. Strumilin in 1924.
By the middle of the twentieth-century Time Use Studies were taken up in the
more industrialized countries like the U.K., U.S.A., U.S.S.R., France and Japan.
In the 1950s-1960s Time Use Research became more frequent and widespread,
often involving large governmental and non-governmental statistics gathering
organizations. The most important event of the 1960s was the Multinational
Time Use Study conducted in 12 countries [namely, Belgium, Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia, Federal Republic of Germany, France, German Democratic
Republic, Hungary, Peru, Poland, U.S.A., U.S.S.R. and Yugoslavia] , under the
direction Alexander Szalai (1972) of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and
United Nations Institute for Training and Research. A few more countries
undertook such studies in the 1960s-1980s. The new entrants in this period
included: Canada, South Korea and Ivory Coast. During the 1990s the reach of
Time Use Research was extended to Italy, Sweden, Norway, Israel, Austria,
Australia, Dominican Republic, New Zealand, South Africa and India. China‟s
first large-scale Time Use Survey was conducted in 2012.
In India, at first some small-scale Time Use Studies were taken up by individual
scholars and kindred research groups in the period 1970-1996. Then, from July
1998 to June 1999 a pilot survey was conducted by a Technical Committee set
up by the Department of Statistics of the Government of India, in the six states
of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Meghalaya, Tamilnadu, Haryana and Orissa.
Time Use Studies are poised for a tremendous upsurge all over the World. This
coincides with the real time connectivity of global finance, stock exchanges
and, business process related services in the present century.
Our daily, weekly, monthly and yearly time use cycles increase or decrease our
capacities, and hence determine our life-chances, help shape our social and
economic position. What we do with our time determines who we become. A
desired balance of work time and leisure time is a basic desideratum both for
individual and for social well-being.
Time use indicators help map the supply and demand of labor and leisure; have
implications for national accounting practices and, for understanding the
structure, function, and dynamics of social advantages and disadvantages of the
different generations, genders, tribes, castes and classes of our societies. Time
measurements provide a basis for integrating the multifaceted phenomena of
paid and unpaid production and consumption in complex and multiform
societies, into a general framework, that may help understand the processes of
change affecting our cultural and socio-economic ground realities.
Historically, the increasingly more and more fine-tuned measurement of the
time parameters of natural phenomena (like, durations, frequencies, cycles,
rates of change, simultaneity, sequences etc.) has been of great importance for
the development of the natural sciences. The emergence and development of
Time Use Studies have created conditions for similar development of the social
sciences. Under present day conditions of accelerated socio-economic
transformation, time is of prime concern for technology, organization and
management of work, economics, sociology/anthropology, health, schooling,
education, media and, for the analysis and development of public policy in
general.
A BIBLIOGRAPHY
Artemov, Viktor et al (1999), The past was rich, the present is difficult, will
there be a future: from vanguard to rearguard? A retrospective of time budget
surveys carried out in Russia in the 20th-century. Paper presented at the 1999
conference of the IATUR, Colchester, U.K.
Bailey, I. (1915), “A study of management of farm homes”, Journal of family
and economic issues 17(3/4): 409-418.
Bevans, G.E. (1913), How workingmen spend their time. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Bryant, Keith W. et al. (1992), The Dollar Value of Household Work. Cornell
University.
Budlender, Debbie (2007), A Critical Review of Selected Time Use Surveys.
Geneva: UNRISD. Available at:
http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/httpNetITFramePDF?ReadForm&
parentunid=169A34EDDF90D43DC12573240034E24E&parentdoctype=paper
&netitpath=80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages)/169A34EDDF90D43DC125
73240034E24E/$file/Budlender-paper.pdf
__ (2008), The Statistical Evidence on Care and Non-Care Work across Six
Countries. Geneva: UNRISD. Available at;
http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/httpNetITFramePDF?ReadForm&
parentunid=F9FEC4EA774573E7C1257560003A96B2&parentdoctype=paper
&netitpath=80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages)/F9FEC4EA774573E7C1257
560003A96B2/$file/BudlenderREV.pdf
Converse, Philip E. (1968), “Time Budgets”, in: the International Encyclopedia
of the Social Sciences [Ed. David L. Sills], Volume 16: 42-47. London and New
York: Collier-Macmillan etc.
Dong, Xiao-Yuan and Xinli An (2012), Gender Patterns and Value of Unpaid
Work: Findings from China’s First Large-Scale Time Use Survey. Geneva:
UNRISD. Available at:
http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/httpNetITFramePDF?ReadForm&
parentunid=7CE1453DB093FB41C1257A8E004D6A57&parentdoctype=paper
&netitpath=80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages)/7CE1453DB093FB41C1257
A8E004D6A57/$file/Dong%20and%20An.pdf
Engels, Friedrich (1845), The Conditions of the Working Class in England. In:
Marx /Engels, Collected Works, Volume 4: 295-596 [see therein, the references
to the WORKING DAY on pages 435-36,461-66, 481-82, 491-92, 499-500 and,
592-93]. Available at:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/cw/volume04/index.htm
Folbre, Nancy and Michael Bittman (eds.) (2004), Family time: the social
organization of care. New York/London: Routledge.
Guidebook on Integrating Unpaid Work into National Policies (2003). New
York: United Nations. Available at:
http://www.unescap.org/stat/meet/wipuw/unpaid_guide.asp
Hamermesh, Daniel S. and Gerard F. Pfann (2004), How People use their time:
economic approaches. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
INSTRAW (1995), Measurement and Valuation of Unpaid Contribution. Santo
Domingo: INSTRAW.
Juster, Thomas F. and Frank P. Stafford (1985), Time goods and well-
being. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Survey Research Center, Institute
for Social Research.
Merz, Joachim and Manfred Ehling (1999), Time use: research, data, policy.
Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag.
Petrosyan, Grachya Sarkisovich (1965), Внерабочее время трудящихся в
СССР [Out-of-Work Time of the Working People in the USSR]. Moscow:
Ekonomika.
Proceedings of the International Seminar on Time Use Studies (1999).
Ahmedabad, 7-10 December. New Delhi: Central Statistical Organization.
Proceedings of the National Seminar on Applications of Time Use Statistics
(2002). New Delhi, 8-9 October. New Delhi: Central Statistical Organization.
Prudensky, German Aleksandrovich (1964), Время и труд [Time and Work].
Moscow: Mysl.
Razavi, Shahra (2007), The Political and Social Economy of Care in a
Development Context: Conceptual Issues, Research Questions and Policy
Options. Geneva: UNRISD. Available at:
http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/httpNetITFramePDF?ReadForm&
parentunid=2DBE6A93350A7783C12573240036D5A0&parentdoctype=paper
&netitpath=80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages)/2DBE6A93350A7783C125
73240036D5A0/$file/Razavi-paper.pdf
Robinson, John P. (1977), How Americans use Time. New York: Praeger.
Sorokin, Pitirim Aleksandrovich and Clarence Qinn Berger (1939), Time
Budgets of Human Behavior. Cambridge : Harvard University Press.
Strumilin, Stanislav Gustavovich (1964), “К изучению быта трудящихся в
СССР,” [On the Study of Lifestyles of the Working People in the USSR]
Изранные Произведения [Collected Works], T.3, Gl. VII: 165–249. Moscow:
Nauka. [The first large-scale study of exhaustive 24-hour time budgets of the
workers of Moscow was carried out by S.G.Strumilin in 1924.]
Szalai, Alexander (1966), Trends in Contemporary Time Budget Research.
Paris: UNESCO. Available at:
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__ [edited in collaboration with others] (1972), The Use of Time: Daily
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__ (1975), “Women‟s Time: Women in the light of contemporary time-budget
research,” Futures, October: 385-99. Available at:
http://www.timeuse.org/files/cckpub/SzalaiA.Womens_Time.pdf
Zuzanek, Jiri (1980), Work and Leisure in the Soviet Union: A Time-Budget
Analysis. New York: Praeger.
ELECTRONIC TEXTS AND DATA FILES
May be accessed from the major time use research initiatives and journals like the:
Centre for Time Use Research – Information Gateway
http://www-2009.timeuse.org/information/studies/
International Association for Time Use Research
http://www.iatur.org/
Electronic International Journal for Time Use Research [eIJTUR]
http://www.eijtur.org/
United Nations Statistics Division
http://unstats.un.org/unsd/default.htm
EUROSTAT Time Use Project
https://www.h2.scb.se/tus/tus/
UNDP Gender Inequality and Development Related Indexes
http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/gii/
http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/indices/gdi_gem/
U S Bureau of Labor Statistics: American Time Use Survey
http://www.bls.gov/tus/
Das Forschungsinstitut Freie Berufe (FFB) [The Research Institute on
Professions], University of Lüneburg, Germany
http://www.leuphana.de/institute/ffb.html
Институт экономики и организации промышленного производства
Сибирского отдепения Российской академии наук (ИЭОПП СО РАН)
[Institute of Economics and Industrial Engineering, Siberian Branch of the Russian
Academy of Sciences]
http://www.sbras.ru/sbras/db/show_doc.phtml?3+eng+22
Central Statistical Organization, Ministry of Statistics and Programme
Implementation, Government of India
http://statsinfoindia.weebly.com/index.html
II. Literacy, Matheracy and Technoracy for Justice and Equality
1. A desired reconstruction of the critique of political economy as a science of
the 24 hour totality of human work in the family-market continuum needs
time use data on a world scale. The collection of such data may become
possible in the course of attainment of universal or near-universal literacy,
matheracy and technoracy. Women and children constitute more than half of
the population of the world. They perform most of the unpaid work till date.
If all the people of the world do not get the skills and motivations for
recording and providing their own time use data, then the measurement of
gender-based and inter-generational inequalities will remain beyond the
grasp of the sciences. Search for justice and equality are very strong
motivations for learning. These motivations may be harnessed for attaining
universal literacy, matheracy and technoracy.
2. Many new technical devices and approaches, such as the evolving I-Slates
[Palem and others, 2009], Virtual Open Schooling [The Report…, 2013]
may be used to promote the required literacy, matheracy and technoracy on a
world scale.
3. The collected time use data are so far being analyzed with the help of
predictive analytics related soft wares, like the SPSS and/or STATISTICA,
which use some currently dominant understanding of statistics and
probability theory.
4. People of the whole world need to use these products of the presently
globally dominant and sacralized Mediterranean Basin Ethnomathematical
Culture, just as the prairie Amerindians needed to use the guns [D‟Ambrosio
and Rosa 2008: 103-04]. However, desacralization and demystification of
these concrete ethnomathematical disciplines, theories and products may
facilitate faster attainment of universal literacy, matheracy and technoracy.
5. To desacralize and demystify these ethnomathematical disciplines and
products, let us invert the entire presently dominant Mediterranean Basin
approach to elementary mathematics-statistics instruction. The dominant
practice of this instruction first introduces determinate constant numbers
0…9; then determinate unknown quantities; then indeterminate quantities x,
y etc., which assume successive values, for instance, 0…9; then algebraic
functions involving such quantities; then in the Cartesian application of
algebra to geometry the unknown quantities x, y etc., turn into variables and
the known quantities into constants [Marx 1994: 172-177: On the Concept
of Function], and, then, at some later level, a random variable is introduced
as a variable resulting from variations due to chance. Let us reverse this
entire course of instruction: let us at first introduce some concept of
interdependent random variables as primary, with the help of many
examples from the realms of nature, society and thought; then redefine
ordinary variables as special cases of abstractions from these interdependent
random variables; and, finally redefine constants as special cases of
abstractions from these ordinary variables. This approach may make
instruction of statistics-mathematics more compatible with our
understanding of nature, society and thought as complex and non-linear
living systems. It will be more truthful, more convincing and hence, more
easily comprehensible. If, some people feel such a need, then the details of
the proposed approach or, of other alternative desacralizing approaches to
statistics-mathematics instruction may be worked out by them.
References
D‟Ambrosio, U. and Rosa, M. (2008). A dialogue with Ubiratan D‟Ambrosio: A
Brazilian conversation about ethnomathematics. Revista Latinoamericana de
Etnomatematica, 1(2): 88-110. Available at:
http://www.etnomatematica.org/v1-n2-julio2008/DAmbrosio-Rosa.pdf
Marx, Karl. (1994). Mathematical Manuscripts [together with a Special
Supplement: Marx and Mathematics]. Calcutta/Kolkata: Viswakos Parisad.
Available at:
http://cfcul.fc.ul.pt/varios/Karl_Marx_FINAL.pdf
Palem, K. and others (2009).I-Slate, Ethnomathematics and Rural Education.
Available at:
http://www.cs.rice.edu/~lc6/visen/2009islate.pdf
The Report: Technical Workshop for Virtual Open Schooling, 2013. Available at:
http://www.nios.ac.in/media/documents/TWVOSFinal_Report.pdf