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production

Definition of Production

(noun) The act or process of making something into a good or service.

Examples of Production

  • An automotive plant building cars.
  • A baker baking bread.

Production Pronunciation

Pronunciation Usage Guide

Syllabification: pro·duc·tion

Audio Pronunciation

– American English
– British English

Phonetic Spelling

  • American English – /pruh-dUHk-shuhn/
  • British English – /pruh-dUHk-shuhn/

International Phonetic Alphabet

  • American English – /prəˈdəkʃ(ə)n/
  • British English – /prəˈdʌkʃn/

Usage Notes

  • Plural: productions
  • A (noun) product is created by a (noun) producer who (verb) produces through production, such a factory using a (noun) production line to make a widget.

Related Quotation

  • “Capitalist production requires exchange relations, commodities, and money, but its differentia specified is the purchase and sale of labour power. For this purpose, three basic conditions must become generalized throughout society. First, workers are separated from the means with which production is carried on, and can gain access to them only by selling their labour power to others. Second, workers are freed of legal constraints, such as serfdom or slavery, that prevent them from disposing of their own labour power. Third, the purpose of the employment of the worker becomes the expansion of a unit of capital belonging to the employer, who is thus functioning as a capitalist. The labour process therefore begins with a contract or agreement governing the conditions of the sale of labour power by the worker and its purchase by the employer. It is important to take note of the historical character of this phenomenon. While the purchase and sale of labour power has existed from antiquity, a substantial class of wage-workers did not begin to form in Europe until the fourteenth century, and did not become numerically significant until the rise of industrial capitalism (that is the production of commodities on a capitalist basis, as against mercantile capitalism, which merely exchanged the surplus products of prior forms of production) in the eighteenth century” (Braverman 1974:52).

Additional Information

Related Terms

Reference

Braverman, Harry. 1974. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Works Consulted

Brym, Robert J., and John Lie. 2007. Sociology: Your Compass for a New World. 3rd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

Kimmel, Michael S., and Amy Aronson. 2012. Sociology Now. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Macmillan. (N.d.) Macmillan Dictionary. (https://www.macmillandictionary.com/).

Merriam-Webster. (N.d.) Merriam-Webster Dictionary. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/).

Oxford University Press. (N.d.) Oxford Dictionaries. (https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/).

Stewart, Paul, and Johan Zaaiman, eds. 2015. Sociology: A Concise South African Introduction. Cape Town: Juta.

Thompson, William E., and Joseph V. Hickey. 2012. Society in Focus: An Introduction to Sociology. 7th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Wikipedia contributors. (N.d.) Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation. (https://en.wikipedia.org/).

Cite the Definition of Production

ASA – American Sociological Association (5th edition)

Bell, Kenton, ed. 2014. “production.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Retrieved April 24, 2024 (https://sociologydictionary.org/production/).

APA – American Psychological Association (6th edition)

production. (2014). In K. Bell (Ed.), Open education sociology dictionary. Retrieved from https://sociologydictionary.org/production/

Chicago/Turabian: Author-Date – Chicago Manual of Style (16th edition)

Bell, Kenton, ed. 2014. “production.” In Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Accessed April 24, 2024. https://sociologydictionary.org/production/.

MLA – Modern Language Association (7th edition)

“production.” Open Education Sociology Dictionary. Ed. Kenton Bell. 2014. Web. 24 Apr. 2024. <https://sociologydictionary.org/production/>.