ABSTRACT
Historians and history students researching daily life and ordinary people of any place and time can learn a great deal by investigating work, since most people have spent most of their time working to earn a living. Whether as wage laborers in a market economy, as independent farmers, or as enslaved persons in various arrangements, people learned skills and developed their consciousness of self through work as well as through family, religion, and other aspects of life. The sociology of occupations offers a set of concepts and questions for the historian that can illuminate the working lives and identities of practitioners of any occupation, including their relations with colleagues, coworkers, clients, and other members of society. Those relations shaped culture.
