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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.
Philosopher and motorcycle mechanic Crawford presents a fascinating, important analysis of the value of hard work and manufacturing. He reminds readers that in the 1990s vocational education (shop class) started to become a thing of the past as U.S. educators prepared students for the "knowledge revolution." Thus, an entire generation of American "thinkers" cannot, he says, do anything, and this is a threat to manufacturing, the fundamental backbone of economic development. Crawford makes real the experience of working with one's hands to make and fix things and the importance of skilled labor. His philosophical background is evident as he muses on how to live a pragmatic, concrete life in today's ever more abstract world and issues a clarion call for reviving trade and skill development classes in American preparatory schools. The result is inspired social criticism and deep personal exploration. Crawford's work will appeal to fans of Robert Pirsig's classic Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and 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.
—Dale Farris
This kind of debasement-by-design, this punishment of our wonted practicality, pains Matthew B. Crawford. It's of a piece with so much else that seems to speak of decadence and infantilization: the digitization of automobile engines, the complexification of telephones and televisions (don't try giving your spasming plasma screen that sharp rap one used to apply to a stuttering TV display). For Crawford, nothing serves as a better synecdoche for our despair than the disappearance of shop class from most high schools. There are technology high schools (where C. P. Snow's "two cultures" of science and the arts are reduced to Excel and Photoshop, respectively), health professions high schools (medical billing and phlebotomy), even arts and performance high schools (polish your portfolio on YouTube!). But nowhere -- certainly not among the blue states -- is one likely to find adolescent Americans stooped placidly beneath the fluorescent lights working a solder gun, a torque wrench, or a tungsten-blade router with the kind of sustained, beatified, moral attention that mechanical work requires. That's how Crawford sees it; that's how the followers of Ned Ludd once saw it as well. But that's not fair to Crawford, who has got chops in both the shop and the seminar room; he's a University of Chicago?trained political philosopher and a motorcycle mechanic. So before dismissing him as a crank with a crankshaft, it's worth examining what he's getting at in his first book, Shop Class as Soul Craft.
Here's Crawford's argument in brief: we've accorded respect and material rewards to those kinds of work that allegedly levy the greatest cognitive demands -- the professions, certainly, but all kinds of white-collar work of managerial and administrative stamp as well. At the same time such work has grown in value, it has been degraded by double-talk, routine, and infantilization, to the degree that it fails to provide the mental stimulation that sustains happy engagement. Our manual trades, meanwhile, have been automated and robbed of social value, marginalizing young workers who feel their call. We feel our children pursue them only when they lose in the competition for places in the white-collar world. Crawford argues that society loses on both fronts: so-called knowledge work becomes a morass of diminished sinecures, while the honorable trades are tarnished. Regardless of the color of our collars, we increasingly lack chances to do work worth attending to -- or taking pride in. Not only the product of our labor, but the quality of our working lives, suffers in the bargain.
Crawford resists the lure of nostalgia -- he's not tracing a corrupting historical process as much as he is anatomizing a disposition, one to which our technology-dependent culture easily falls prey. It's not simply that with increasing automation we become further alienated from a world of tools and competence our forefathers took for granted. The "knowledge workers" of old were highbrows; they couldn't shoe a horse or raise a barn any better than I can rebuild a carbueretor, but the work they did was rich and challenging. Whether writing social novels or making history paintings or running parliaments, whether teaching classics or investigating natural history or crafting letters to faraway friends, highbrows of old did work that required lively and flexible minds. The so-called lowbrows meanwhile not only used tools, they often made them as well, suiting their technologies to novel problems; and the practice of the skilled trades today as ever requires minds as lively and flexible as those required of the actor, the architect, and the novelist.
Today's cognitive labor, however, is mechanized and simplified, broken down into flowcharts and algorithms. In an early chapter that's a tour de force of popular intellectual history, Crawford traces the latter-day evolution of industrialization, showing how its effects now apply to the cubicle and the classroom as much as the factory floor. The first tradespeople to take jobs on the assembly lines rebelled at the enervating repetitiveness of the new factory work; today, industrial methods of business, teaching, and professional work have turned the office into a Dilbertian dystopia, a brightly lit abyss of alienation and self-loathing. "The new frontier of capitalism," Crawford concludes, "lies in doing to office work what was previously done to factory work: draining it of its cognitive elements." In the midst of this fluorescent wasteland, what's the "spirited man" (or woman) to do? Crawford has an answer: cultivate the need for speed. Learn the ways of metal, oil, and electricity; plumb the mysteries of internal combustion.
For the speedway and the motorcycle repair shop have been Crawford's salvation, as he tells us in loving detail. Emerging from a childhood spent in the effete realm of the vegetarians and mathematicians who were the adults of his childhood, Crawford found solace in shaping energies to the zero-sum requirements of building and maintaining Things With Engines. Exploring the motorhead's dedication, he limns its deeply moral qualities -- sustained attention on focal practices; subtle recognition of pattern and variation that comes with true mastery; easy and intimate familiarity with the idea of excellence. Crawford's descriptions of his manual mentors and their skills as well as his précis of the philosophy of work and value offer lively and suggestive reading.
Shop Class as Soul Craft is as spirited as the way of life it recommends; its author is as quick with a quote from Anaxagoras as he is well versed in the ways of the spanner wrench and the voltmeter. Crawford doesn't explore fully the deficits that the trades carry -- how they need highbrows just as highbrows need them. The liberal arts are so called because they involve books; they're neither above nor below but complementary to the manual arts, the trades. Traditionally, it was understood that society needed both in fruitful engagement with one another. Extolling the shopkeeper and craftsperson's practical mien, useful skills, and satisfying labors, Crawford risks forgetting that the same set of dispositions can breed complacency and small-mindedness when turned to the work of making and maintaining a society.
We do well to follow the way outlined in Richard Sennett's magisterial book The Craftsman (to which Crawford offers grateful acknowledgment). There, Sennett describes ways in which the moral disposition of the skilled trades offers a healthy approach to kinds of world-making work, whether pursued in the study, the cubicle, or the shop. We can lament our enervation -- or we can make the tools we need to render our work and lives moral and meaningful. (Have you checked Google? The instructions required are probably available online.) There are skilled approaches to knowledge work, household work, and teaching work as well as to machine work; the spirited disposition Crawford celebrates should be brought to bear however one pursues a living. Failing a shop-class renascence, it may be our best hope. --Matthew Battles
Matthew Battles is the author of Library: An Unquiet History. He has written about language, technology, and history for such publications as The American Scholar, The Boston Sunday Globe, and Harper's.
helenadendritis
Posted August 16, 2009
If you've been working in an office environment, or ever have, and you could never quite put your finger on why your work, your job, and the work environment, just weren't satisfying (or worse, were downright infuriating), you MUST read this book! His insights into the degradation of "knowledge work" really helped to put my frustrations and dissatisfaction into perspective. There's a lot of comfort in knowing that it really isn't "just me," that there is something fundamentally wrong with American "work."
3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.It has many good ideas but is not well constructed in terms of readability. I had to push myself to finish the book because I felt I had gotten the message early on and continuing to read left little to be gained as it did not entertain me. The message that the value of 'hands-on, physically productive' work is generally not appreciated in our society is valid. Yet, according to the author, in its many forms, it commands a generous income and leaves the producer with a sense of inner satisfaction not found in much of the corporate world where shuffling papers, attending meetings, etc. leaves little real sense of accomplishment/satisfaction. The author's supposition that there will be an increasing need for people who 'fix things' or do the other mundane tasks that keep our cultural substructure going resonates while there is an increasing push by parents that their children attend college to learn to do more 'meaningful' work. College may not be the best choice for everyone.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Crawford writes a compelling and though-provoking book in Shop Class as Soulcraft. It is one of the best things I've read in a long time in terms of turning the way we think on its head. Everyday I wonder about the life we are preparing our children for as I'm the father of three and I think the notion of creating a nation of cubicle prisoners is as bad as anything the industrial age ever presented. And these jobs are not good jobs as our political leadership wants us to believe. They are jobs that condemn to a lifetime of two-percent raises for corporations that make ever higher profits producing nothing but money from money.
Crawford's book is well written, though at times he does show off all that education a bit too much by writing in a way that could be simplified. But it is all part of his voice and he seems to balance it out with some occasional use of profanity, particularly the ever-familiar Anglo-Saxon for copulate. But it fits the style of who he is and the message.
I would like to have seem more than a few pages at the end of the book devoted to the prescriptive. He's got the cred to do so and should have given us more depth and detail on the ideas he has for making things better. An important book and one that more should read than will.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I preform physical blue collar mechanical related labor for a living so I figured I would readily identify with this book. What I did not realize was how deeply steeped in philosophy this book really is. This book takes deeper philosophical journies into basic values and principals of hands-on physical labor to attempt to demonstrate their inherint value over more information based office enviroment type labor.
The arguments are well made and studiously supported with citations. However the deeper philosophical explorations are where the book really loses me. Granted, that is where most philosophy related book lose me. I won't hold it against the author.
I did find that the conclusion were still very opinionated despite the well supported arguments. I was still not convinced that being a motorcycle mechanic was any more gratifing to the soul then an environmental think tank consultant. It still comes down to point of view, even if the author held a first hand knowedge of both points of view.
If you like book like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance then you may well like this. But if that type of book is not your cup of tea this certainly won't be either
1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted June 5, 2012
As an aircraft mech. it made me reevaluate what I do and how I do it. Currently my work place is starting a CI culture and this book has made me take a closer look at that program
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Meshugenah
Posted June 27, 2011
I expected a lot more of this book. I'm one of those well-educated people who also ditched the corporate world and executive positions to do something where my head and hands worked together. However, I found the author's perspective to be arrogant and pedantic, patronizing and, frankly, oftentimes juvenile. As a philosophical treatise this book is sabotaged by the elements of political diatribe. I would not recommend it to anyone.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.There's no way to say this w/o sounding sappy, b/c it is, so here goes. I am a blue collar guy w/a white collar mind & a white collar job. This book voices some of the very things that I have long thought, but could never adequately say, & b/c of this it spoke to me in a way that few things ever have.
Equal parts memoir & expose, this book speaks to the importance of finding what works for you, whatever that may be, no matter what vocational path you are currently traveling. Additionally this book examines & explodes the myths surrounding white collar and blue collar work. So if you are looking for merely a scripted pep-talk for disinterested cube-dwellers, or lost souls looking for a job, you should probably check out the self-help section (or a life coach).
It is not enough to simply declare that "blue collar work is meaningful", b/c in our society we've been told for generations that the only way to really make something of yourself is to th of go to college, obtain a degree (preferably a graduate degree), and get a job "befitting" a college graduate. The only way to meaningfully address the white collar/blue collar divide is to expose & tear down the political, philosophical, social & economic conditions that have propagated these myths for so long. The author does not demean the importance of white collar work & scholarly pursuits, he simply points out that it is not a panacea, & it is not for all people. Furthermore, the author does not lionize blue collar work, he simply points out that it is wrongly stigmatized & deserves a more proper & prominent place in our society.
To adequately address these issues the book can be [necessarily] "dry" & "academic" at times, but overall I felt the book was written in a very engaging style. I even laughed-out-loud a few times. I would say that this book is a must read for all people, though it will not truly "speak" to all people.
eneuborne
Posted March 12, 2010
I Also Recommend:
An important look at the way work choices impact our personal lives.
0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.MechTech
Posted February 22, 2010
Crawford does a great job at storytelling as well as conveying his message. I teach Automotive Technology at the post secondary level and I was able to relate to much of what Crawford describes.
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Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted January 11, 2010
Great book, really identifies a serious problem in our society's youth today because of the lack of working skills. Matt, thank you for addressing something that happens to be a very serious problem in America today. You should be rewarded for your efforts.
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Overview
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....