How common is it for the cultures of the world to observe the seven day week? How about weekends without formal work?
[list][list][list][list][list][list]click here
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i’m sorry, dec, that i don’t hzve an answer for you. but man…
a damn good question!
jb
Only in the west or IMO since in HK banks and most shops opened on Saturday and Suday
Seven day weeks are definitely the norm these days. But it wasn’t always this way. As noted in the link offered by kniz, other cultures had ‘weeks’ of varying lengths. The book, Waiting for the Weekend by Witold Rybczyski goes into a fair amount of detail concerning the evolution of what we now refer to as a week.
If a week is somehow conceived of a division of time shorter than a month (lunar cycle) but longer than a day, then weeks have been around for thousands of years. If a week is thought of as a division of time which separates work from non-work (as in weekday vs. weekend) it has a much shorter existence. In the aforementioned book, Rybczynski details several different cultures and their notions of the week.
Ancient Egyptians: 10 days
Mesopotamian cultures: 14 days
Athenians: 10 days
Ancient Chinese: 60 days (Although 60 days is obviously longer than a lunar phase, this designation as a ‘week’ was based on individually named days which recur throughout a period a la Monday, Tuesday, etc.)
Mayans: 13 days
It is doubtful that any of the weeks above incorporated anything such as a weekend (or time removed from work) as we now know it.
The Jews living in exile in Babylonia during the 6th century B.C. seem to be the first culture to adopt a seven-day week wherein at least one of those days was set aside as non-work, the sabbath. Although, there is some evidence to suggest that the Jews adopted their sabbath from the Babylonian shabattu–which was also a day set aside for religious observance. Nonetheless, this was the beginning of the seven day week with a sub-division of a weekend.
Rybczynski speculates that it was an appealing mix of superstition (magic number seven, days ruled by different Gods/planets) and practical utility that resulted in widespread adoption of a seven-day week in the last few centuries B.C.
To illustrate how entrenched the seven-day week had become, consider the resistence to switching to a ten-day week during the French Revolution. The Revolutionaries, in attempting to remove all religious overtones to daily existence, proposed a ten-day week divorced from the then established Christianized week with Sunday as the Lord’s Day. To quote Ryczynski, “The French revolutionaries underestimated the potency of the week. This was largely because they misjudged the extent of the religious sentiments of most of the population, for whom the seven-day week and Christianity were inseparable. But they also failed to understand that the week was a deeply held social convention.”
Stalin too tried to abolish the seven-day week in 1929. He proposed a change from six work days/one rest day to four work days/one rest day: Changing the week from seven days to five days. Stalin’s system did not standarize the working and resting days. Rather this system was proposed to allow factories to stay open all the time, since only a fraction of the workforce would be off on any one day. Despite the result of more rest days per year (from 52 to 72) under the new system, it failed because not everyone got the same days off each week. Thus a day of rest for one member of the family may have been a typical work day for everyone else.
The last major cultural holdout on a seven-day week seems to have been China, which didn’t officially adopt the “western week” until their 1911 Revolution.
At least as interesting a phenomenon as the evolution of the seven-day week is the evolution of the weekend. But that’s a story for another day. And I’m off to enjoy some of my extended five-day weekend right now!
Do the four main phases of the moon have nothing to do with it? I would have bet money that was the root of it. Good thing I didn’t, I guess. 
Re the French revolutionaries trying to start a ten-day week:
How many “weekend” days did their ten-day week include? If only one, then that may be why it failed – even the most uneducated peasant can tell the difference between having one day off every seven versus one day off every ten.
The seven day week, at least as practiced by the Jews, comes directly from the bible. Without believing in a divine being or the divinity of the bible, there is plenty of factual historical evidence that the observance of a day of rest (a sabbath) every seven days predates the Babylonian Exile by almost one thousand years. For example, the Talmud, written during the Babylonian Exile, talks about real people and real dates hundreds of years earlier, and about specific details of Sabbath observance in that earlier time.
Thanks to everyone!
My dad worked for a factory in China, where the work week lasted from Saturday to Thursday. Friday was referred to by the other foreigners as “company Sunday,” and Thursday night was the night to go out on the town. In other parts of the city, the day off was different (at least for large industrial facilities). This was done to make most efficient use of electrical production.
In about 1991, the change was made to a western-style standard work week. Not sure if this was possible due to increased electrical production, or decreased industrial demand. My guess is the latter, as bloated state-run enterprises began to cut fat and slowly privatize.
I often work a seven-day week. This is because in the Middle East, the weekend is Thursday and Friday. Our normal office days (being mainly expats) are Sunday to Thursday (Fri & Sat off).
However because we have to broadcast Mon-Fri to fit in with the West, I have to work Fridays.
And because Saturday is “Monday” for many local companies here, I often have to attend things on Saturdays.
So there we go - seven days of solid work!
(Actually it’s not that bad, I get to take time in lieu or take Sundays off when I want to).
Those cultures on the lunar calendar have varying lengths of time as their week.
I’m not sure when China adopted the 7 day week. But things like the festivals and Chinese New Year are still calculated off of the lunar calendar. In fact, most calendars have both the lunar and gregorian calendars on them. Auspicious days are rigorously checked against both calendars for things like a wedding.
There are still minority areas of China that i personally visited where the “week” is 4-12 days long. Or at least, that was when the market day is held. The Miao, Dong, Zhuang, Buyi and others in SW China today still have this “local” time and the government’s 7 day week.
In the past 20-30 years, in Taiwan, HK and China, there has been a trend toward 5 day work weeks. Even today in Taiwan or Hong Kong, some people work 2 saturdays a month, or a single saturday. Previously, it was a half day saturday. China used to work 6 days a week, with the saturday either half or a full day. Now, China is firmly in the 5 day mon-fri work week. There may be some exceptions like dqa alluded to.
How common are 7 day weeks you ask?
[stupid joke]
They happen to me 52 times every year… That’s pretty damn common if you ask me!
[/stupid joke]
<snicker snicker>