Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work (Hard... Cover Art

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work (Hardcover)

By: Matthew B. Crawford (Author)

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Review

"[A]t its best, the book is both impassioned and profound....Crawford...offers narrative descriptions of some of his obsessive repair projects -- including cameos by a parade of interesting dudes -- which make concrete his themes."

"SHOP CLASS AS SOUL CRAFT....[is] a philosophical manifesto for a dawning age: an ode to old-fashioned hard work, and an argument that localism can help cure our spiritual and economic woes."

"SHOP CLASS AS SOULCRAFT is a beautiful little book about human excellence and the way it is undervalued in contemporary America."

"...SHOP CLASS is the best self-help book that I've ever read....While doing the work of a mechanic provides intellectual challenges and the intrinsic satisfactions of completing problems from start to finish, Crawford knows that working in the trades is seen as déclassé and too limiting for a college graduate. And then he goes on to show how stupid that viewpoint is."

"With wit and humor, the author deftly mixes the details of his own experience as a tradesman and...proprietor of a motorcycle repair shop with more philosophical considerations." (starred review)

Publisher's note

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 oneas hands
"Shop Class as Soulcraft" brings alive an experience that was once quite ordinary, but now seems to be receding over the cultural horizonathe experience of making and fixing things. Working with your hands, as Mathew B. Crawford describes it, connects us to the world around us. Those of us who sit in an office often have intuitions of something gone amiss, a sense of unreality accompanied by feelings of impotence. What, after all, "do" we do all day? In this wholly original debut, Crawford offers a brief for self-reliance and a sustained reflection on this problem: how to live concretely in an ever more abstract world. "Shop Class as Soulcraft" seeks to restore the honor of the manual trades as a life worth choosing for anyone who felt hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents. On both economic and psychological grounds, Crawford questions the educational imperative of turning everyone into a aknowledge worker.a This imperative, he explains, is based on a misguided separation of thinking from doing, the work of the hand from that of the mind. Crawford shows in precise detail how such a partition, which began a century ago with the assembly line, degrades work for those on both sides of the divide.
But he offers good news as well: The manual trades are very different from factory work. They require a lot of thinking and may even give rise to moments of genuine pleasure. Based on his own experience as an electrician and mechanic, Crawfordmakes a case for the intrinsic satisfactions and cognitive challengesa the soulcraftaof manual work. The work of builders and mechanics cannot be outsourced. They tie us to the local communities in which we live and instill the pride that comes from doing work that is genuinely useful.
Speaking squarely to a culture that continues to grapple for a way to reconcile work and life and to find fulfilling work of all stripes, "Shop Class as Soulcraft" offers inspired social criticism and deep personal exploration. It will change your understanding of the value of work and the work of bringing value and meaning to your life, whatever you do now or hope to do one day.

Annotation

Matthew B. Crawford, an electrician and motorcycle mechanic, pitches the pleasures of blue-collar repair work as a means for mending many of the ills of modern society. Crawford describes how manual repair connects people to their possessions and yields genuine satisfaction through verifiable results, as opposed to the vague effects and significance of "knowledge work," as exemplified by a bureaucrat in a cubicle. Crawford also provides an intriguing analysis of how people became alienated from the products they build and own, beginning with the implementation of the factory assembly line.

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