Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2006. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Division of labor and division of knowledge are so important andcommon in society today that it is almost impossible to imagine asociety where everyone knows the same things and perform the sametasks. This would be a society where everyone grows, or gathers, andprepares their own food, makes their own tools, builds their ownhouse, and so on. Cultural evolution is the field of research that studies the creationand diffusion of ideas and societies. It is very uncommon for thesestudies to take into account the effects of specialization. Thisthesis will show that specialization is of great importance tocultural evolution. The thesis is divided into three parts: one introduction and two papers. The introduction covers the mathematical models used byeconomists to study the relation between the market and division oflabor. The first paper is an interdisciplinary survey of the researchon division of labor and specialization, including both theoretic andempirical studies. The second paper is a mathematical model of howspecialization of knowledge (i.e. higher education) leads to socialstratification. The model is tested against statistical data fromseveral countries and found to be a good predictor of the differencesin income between people of high and low education.

This dissertation modifies the model of Yang and Ng (1995) to investigate the condition of the emergence of the firm from a specialized exchange economy. It is assumed in this dissertation that there are fixed costs involved in the operation of a firm. After taking into account of this factor, I re-examine its effects on the division of labor and the structure of firm following Yang and Ng¡¦s framework. The model adopts an inframarginal framework to analyze the subject, in which a firm demonstrates diminishing returns, while both the final labor input and the intermediate labor input demonstrates increasing returns defined upon individuals. However, it is assumed that only the final labor input has the economies of specialization. It is argued in this dissertation that the existence of fixed learning costs may stimulate the economy to undergo structural changes if suitable conditions are met, which are largely related to relative market efficiency between markets.

The main aim in this study is to criticize the prevalent method of approach of the mainstream economics to women&rsquo / s problems. The mainstream approach to women&rsquo / s problems is to emphasize exclusively the significance of education, and participation in work-force, and which defines issues of equality/inequality in terms of economic advantages and externalities. Ensuring gender equality has historically never been the mainspring agenda of governments / and the problems of women have mainly been considered in terms of bringing women into the public sphere. This document examines the situation of women in the Turkish labor market, to see to what extent education helps women exceed their roles of the conventional sexual division of labor in the labor market. The limits of the effect of higher educational degree on the improvement of women&rsquo / s position within the market mechanism are discussed. We found that despite its importance, education on its own is inadequate to secure gender equality in both private and public sphere.

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Compared to men, women devote substantially more attention and effort toward enhancing the health of their spouses. Yet, scholars have been unable to explain why this gender gap persists. Women also do more unpaid work in the home than men, and a significant literature explains the origins of this gender gap. In order to better understand why women do more to enhance the health of their spouse, this dissertation maps well-tested theory on unpaid work in the home on the literature on social integration and health to develop the theoretical construct of health work. Health work is defined as the activities and dialogue concerned with enhancing others’ health habits. After developing this theoretical construct, this dissertation turns to a qualitative examination of health work dynamics in 61 straight, gay, and lesbian couples living in the United States (N = 122). Findings reveal two distinct ways that partners work to shape one another’s health habits. Respondents in all couple types describe specialized health work, whereby one partner does health work over the course of the relationship. In straight couples, women perform the bulk of health work and men were the primary recipients of health work. Individuals rely on gendered discourses of difference to explain these unequal health work dynamics. Cooperative health work, whereby both partners perform health work in mutually reinforcing ways, emerges nearly exclusively in gay and lesbian couples. Individuals rely on discourses of similarity to explain why they perform cooperative health work. Findings reveal that health work processes not only depend on gender, but also on the intersection of gender, sexuality, and the gender composition of a couple. Additionally, this dissertation finds that partners not only do health work to promote one another’s healthy habits, but that partners also attempt to promote one another’s unhealthy habits. The implications for the promotion of both healthy and unhealthy habits are discussed. / text

published_or_final_version / Urban Studies / Master / Master of Social Sciences

Social insect workers can vary in terms of body size, space use, division of labor, and reproductive potential. Here, I begin to 'dissect' a social insect colony, using the bumble bee Bombus impatiens, to determine how this variation affects colony organization. I found that workers are spatially organized inside the nest and they remain at a specific distance from the colony center. Bees that feed larvae tend to remain in the center, whereas foragers are more often found on the periphery when not foraging. Smaller workers are more likely to feed larvae and incubate brood, and larger workers are more likely to fan or guard the nest. Still, workers perform multiple tasks throughout their life. The size of this task repertoire does not depend on body size or age. Furthermore, workers that remain further from the queen while inside the nest and avoid energy-expensive tasks during the ergonomic phase are more likely to reproduce by the end of the colony cycle. Inactive bees are not, however, defensive reserves. Although inactive bees increase their speed inside the nest when the nest was disturbed, they were not more likely to leave the nest (presumably to attack the simulated attacker) or switch to guarding behavior. This suggests that inactive bumble bees that remain farther from the queen may be storing fat reserves to later develop reproductive organs. Finally, I examined how within-group variation affects colony performance. I reduced variation in body size or temperature response thresholds by removing individuals from the colony with extreme phenotypes, and compared colony performance to colonies where random bees were removed. Colonies took longer to cool down the nest after bees were removed, but this effect was most striking when variation in temperature thresholds was reduced. Further, although larger bees are better at carrying items and are more likely to fan, the ability of colonies to perform undertaking behavior or thermoregulation was not affected when size variation was reduced. These studies provide evidence that (1) within-group variation affects colony organization and (2) variation among workers in their inherent tendencies to respond to stimuli positively affects colony performance.

Several socio-structural theoretical approaches attempt to explain the gendered division of household labor, but the dyadic process of dividing labor has gone largely unexplored. Therefore, a grounded theory approach was taken with 20 dual-earner married couples to uncover the process of dividing household labor between spouses. The theory that emerged indicated that couples seek to maximize benefits in their distribution of labor, and do so by dividing tasks according to personal preferences and proficiencies. When a household task goes unclaimed by both spouses’ preferences and proficiencies, containment and outsourcing are the strategies employed to minimize the impact of the unclaimed task. The emergent theory can be used by researchers to illuminate the dyadic process of division of household labor in ways that other theories are not able. The theory can also be used by educators to prepare premarital couples for future division of household labor practices as well as by therapists who can identify problematic patterns within clients’ division of household labor process.

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