Big_Beard
Shop Class as Soulcraft – An Inquiry into the value of work by Matthew Crawford
If any of you have questioned your sanity when it comes to performing your own maintenance on your vehicle, the book - ‘Shop Class’ may help affirm your actions and provide a mechanism to defend such in the face opposition from others.
Quite simply the book is about: the value of performing work, manual labour, learning how things work, learning how things break, knowing and having the ability (agency) to set things right.
I’ve actually not yet finished the book – while it is in some senses an easy read, I find myself taking my time with it, as it is also very deep and causes me to reflect often on my own life and on the state of our society.
Since I have not yet finished it I will hold off on any grand conclusions and simply state that I think this is a worth while read – it challenges the dominant cultural practices of paying others to fix our problems, disposing of things which don’t work, belittling ‘blue collar’ work and manual labour.
From the publisher:
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.