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Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work
by Matthew B. Crawford
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Staff Pick
One of the most engaging, thought-provoking books I've read in a long time. Matthew Crawford has delivered an accessible, carefully reasoned examination of work and America's evolving ideas about it, addressing a host of important subjects — for example, how we prepare young men and women for the workforce, in terms of both education and the values we assign to labor. Whether you work with a computer (that'd be me) or power tools, Shop Class as Soulcraft will get you asking important questions about what you put into your job and, maybe more importantly, what your job gives back.
Recommended by Kyle, Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews A philosopher/mechanic destroys the pretensions of the high-prestige workplace and makes an irresistible case for working with one's hands
Shop Class as Soulcraft brings alive an experience that was once quite common, but now seems to be receding from society — the experience of making and fixing things with our hands. Those of us who sit in an office often feel a lack of connection to the material world, a sense of loss, and find it difficult to say exactly what we do all day. For anyone who felt hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, Shop Class as Soulcraft seeks to restore the honor of the manual trades as a life worth choosing.
On both economic and psychological grounds, Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a knowledge worker, based on a misguided separation of thinking from doing, the work of the hand from that of the mind. Crawford shows us how such a partition, which began a century ago with the assembly line, degrades work for those on both sides of the divide.
But Crawford offers good news as well: the manual trades are very different from the assembly line, and from dumbed-down white collar work as well. They require careful thinking and are punctuated by moments of genuine pleasure. Based on his own experience as an electrician and mechanic, Crawford makes a case for the intrinsic satisfactions and cognitive challenges of manual work. The work of builders and mechanics is secure; it cannot be outsourced, and it cannot be made obsolete. Such work ties us to the local communities in which we live, and instills the pride that comes from doing work that is genuinely useful. A wholly original debut, Shop Class as Soulcraft offers a passionate call for self-reliance and a moving reflection on how we can live concretely in an ever more abstract world. Review: "Philosopher and motorcycle repair-shop owner Crawford extols the value of making and fixing things in this masterful paean to what he calls 'manual competence,' the ability to work with one's hands. According to the author, our alienation from how our possessions are made and how they work takes many forms: the decline of shop class, the design of goods whose workings cannot be accessed by users (such as recent Mercedes models built without oil dipsticks) and the general disdain with which we regard the trades in our emerging 'information economy.' Unlike today's 'knowledge worker,' whose work is often so abstract that standards of excellence cannot exist in many fields (consider corporate executives awarded bonuses as their companies sink into bankruptcy), the person who works with his or her hands submits to standards inherent in the work itself: the lights either turn on or they don't, the toilet flushes or it doesn't, the motorcycle roars or sputters. With wit and humor, the author deftly mixes the details of his own experience as a tradesman and then proprietor of a motorcycle repair shop with more philosophical considerations. (June)" Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.) Review: Although I am a thoroughgoing information-age worker — freelance writer, blogger — some of my most satisfying work in recent years has had nothing to do with my profession. I'm thinking, for example, of the weeks I spent replacing some decrepit iron pipes in the basement. Who knew plumbing could be such an intellectual puzzle (misroute the vents, flood the house with noxious gas) or that looking ... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) at plastic pipes that I had cut, fitted and glued myself could fill me with such pride? What makes work meaningful? What kind of labor, whether for oneself or another, helps to make us complete (or saps our life)? These are the sorts of questions that first-time author Matthew B. Crawford, who runs a motorcycle repair shop in Richmond and also has a Ph.D. in political philosophy, explores in "Shop Class as Soulcraft." And they are the issues examined from a quite different vantage point by Alain de Botton, in "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work." For those who don't know de Botton's books, the author of the best-selling "Architecture of Happiness" is a writer of long, elegant sentences and Anglo wit. Forever flirting with preciousness, he is rescued from it 87 percent of the time by his intelligence. He is not a reporter (though he reports) so much as a marvelous muser. Yet Crawford's is the better, if lumpier, text. It's the one that may upend your preconceptions about labor and, just maybe, cause you to rethink your career (or how you spend your weekends). De Botton, for his part, says that his goal is to create a textual version of "one of those eighteenth-century cityscapes which show us people at work from the quayside to the temple," but it's even more idiosyncratic than that. The book begins with him gazing at a brontosaurian ship lumbering up the Thames, laden with consumer goods. Why, he asks, do so many of us dismiss or ignore the endeavors and networks that provide the goods that feed our material appetites? De Botton sets out to remedy our ignorance with a series of set pieces. He flies to the Maldives and watches fishermen hook and bloodily bludgeon salmon in the Indian Ocean. Then he gets on a plane with the fish. Some 60 hours after the salmon emerged from the "aphotic brine," one of them is on the dinner table of a family in Bristol, England. Moving on, de Botton tours the headquarters of a cookie factory, marveling at the people who spend their days deciding which name ("Moments"? "Le Petit Ecolier"?), font and image will most effectively seduce harried moms at supermarkets. Baking cookies is, in itself, noble work. But can it still be so, de Botton asks, after the activity "has been continuously stretched and subdivided across five thousand lives and half a dozen manufacturing sites"? (He rarely pursues such thoughts beyond the initial apercu.) He also tracks the typical day of a London accountant and, for some reason, follows around a guy who is obsessed with electrical towers. At this point, our intrepid flaneur seems to have lost the thread. Crawford's book, on the other hand, is rooted in a gobsmackingly unique resume. Along the way to a degree in physics at UC Santa Barbara, he earned money as an electrician and picked up the skills of a gearhead (bikes, VW's), before proceeding to fall in love with Greek philosophy. He earned his doctorate at the University of Chicago. Then, during a dispiriting job search, he fell back on his first passion: tearing down and rebuilding a 1975 Honda two-wheeler in the basement of his apartment building. After an unsatisfying stint at a think tank in Washington, D.C., he founded Shockoe Moto, in Richmond, where he now enjoys a rich work life. Educators and policymakers have made some basic philosophical and economic errors in their thinking about the labor market, Crawford argues. Shop classes, once a staple of the curriculum, have been shuttered as school boards bloviate about preparing kids for a "global future." One assumption is that blue-collar work is dying. That's undeniable in certain sectors (think Chrysler assembly lines), but some top economists now argue that skilled tradesman may actually be shielded from globalization. Someone in South Asia can read your CAT scan; she can't fix your Subaru. Moreover, Crawford says, if more elites understood the intellectual richness of mechanical work, they would feel no guilt about encouraging young people to pursue it, either in lieu of college or as a supplement. The philosopher Alexandre Kojeve has written: "The man who works recognizes his own product in the World that has actually been transformed by his work: he recognizes himself in it." That might describe a motorcycle mechanic. But a middle manager? Crawford, who appears to be temperamentally conservative (he rejects the Zen approach to motorcycle repair, he reports, in favor of one that features prolific cursing), says it's time to revisit Marx's concept of the alienation of labor. Assembly lines once robbed workers of their sense of ownership of their work. But now even white-collar workers increasingly toil in environments that offer few chances to show objective skill (done with that TPS report yet?). The trades offer an escape route from alienating ways of living. I've focused on his arguments, but Crawford also offers narrative descriptions of some of his obsessive repair projects — including cameos by a parade of interesting dudes — which make concrete his themes. The book's not perfect. Crawford's tone can be aggressively male: There are few or no women in the shops he describes, crude sexual banter is portrayed as intrinsic to a mechanic's life, and he bitterly refers to "harpies" during his discussion of his academic sojourn. But at its best, the book is both impassioned and profound. What about us weekend handymen? In response to economists who recommend that white-collar workers avoid painting their houses or fixing their cars — the math says you should pay someone else — Crawford offers this retort: "To fix one's own car is not merely to use up time, it is to have a different experience of time, of one's car, and of oneself." OK, maybe the guy has some Zen in him after all. Christopher Shea writes the Brainiac blog and column for the Boston Globe. Reviewed by Christopher Shea, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)Review: "This is a deep exploration of craftsmanship by someone with real, hands-on knowledge. The book is also quirky, surprising, and sometimes quite moving." Richard Sennett, author of The Craftsman Review: "We are on the verge of a national renewal. It will have more depth and grace if we read Crawford's book carefully and take it to heart. He is a sharp theorist, a practicing mechanic, and a captivating writer." Albert Borgmann, author of Real American Ethics Review: "It's not an insult to say that Shop Class is the best self-help book that I've ever read....It's kind of like Heidegger and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." Slate Review: "Inspired social criticism and deep personal exploration. Crawford's work... should be required reading for all educational leaders. Highly recommended; Crawford's appreciation for various trades may intrigue readers with white collar jobs who wonder at the end of each day what they really accomplished." Library Journal Review: "A masterpiece filled with surprises." Steve Weinberg, Dallas Morning News Review: "A beautiful little book about human excellence and the way it is undervalued in contemporary America." Francis Fukuyama, New York Times Book Review Synopsis: In this wise and often funny book, a philosopher/mechanic systematically destroys the pretensions of the high-prestige workplace and makes an irresistible case for working with one's hands.
About the Author Matthew B. Crawford is a philosopher and mechanic. He has a Ph.D. in political philosophy from the University of Chicago and served as postdoctoral fellow on its Committee on Social Thought. Currently a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, he owns and operates Shockoe Moto, an independent motorcycle repair shop in Richmond, Virginia.
Product Details
- ISBN:
- 9781594202230
- Subtitle:
- An Inquiry Into the Value of Work
- Author:
- Crawford, Matthew B.
- Publisher:
- Penguin Press
- Subject:
- Aesthetics
- Subject:
- Labor
- Subject:
- Work
- Subject:
- General
- Subject:
- Labor & Industrial Relations - General
- Subject:
- Industrial arts
- Publication Date:
- May 2009
- Binding:
- Hardcover
- Language:
- English
- Illustrations:
- Y
- Pages:
- 246
- Dimensions:
- 8.30x5.60x1.00 in. .85 lbs.
- Age Level:
- 17-17
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