Social variables, examining the types of production and consumption units involved, with given structuring by age and sex, and flexibility in different contexts. Cognitive-symbolic variables, including the mechanisms and classifications used in the production and consumption of goods. The task remains to incorporate such perspectives on domestic organization into the social and economic models generally used by policy and programme planners. Incorporating anthropological perspectives is equally important whether the objective is to ascertain current nutritional, health, and socio-economic conditions, to identify aetiological factors in the social fabric, or to determine how such conditions contributing to inadequate social welfare might be modified. Current socio-economic changes taking place in both rural and urban environments indicate a pressing need to understand how men, women, and children allocate their productive time and arrange social obligations to ensure subsistence and decide on purchases beyond it.
Anthropologists are sensitive to such concerns.
As anthropologists record the contexts in which changes occur, by choice or default, they also try to understand the shifting trade-offs between exertion and social value, and to anticipate how such changes will affect the acceptance and success of development interventions. Changing Modes of Production and the Sexual Division of Labor among the Yoruba. Basson, P. 1981. Calloway, D. 1979. University of California.