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

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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

3.66 of 5 stars 3.66 · rating details · 2,839 ratings · 664 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...more

Hardcover, 241 pages

Published May 28th 2009 by Penguin Press HC, The (first published 2009)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez

NPR

19th out of 124 books — 90 voters

Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2009

43rd out of 100 books — 123 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,000)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Nov 22, 2010 Ken-ichi rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who work

Shelves: philosophy, learning, work

I’m always wondering why I work (aside from that whole food and shelter thing), so books that try to answer that question draw my attention. While said attention was utterly wasted on Alain de Botton’s The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, it reaped rich rewards from Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft, a thoughtful, synthetic, opinionated exploration of manual labor.

Crawford argues that society undervalues working with your hands, and that physically manipulating the world demands as much intellect...more

18 likes · like · see review

Aug 18, 2009 Mary rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: craftyness, nonfiction, the-good-life, old-paper-friends

With each word of this book, I want to jump up and yell, "Huzzah!"
I found myself frequently laying the book down and staring out the window, contemplating how wonderful it is to work with one's hands, and more importantly, to learn from another human being, to learn things that cannot be manualized or codified.
I am reminded of CS Lewis' essay "Good Work and Good Works" in which he says that the only jobs that are worth doing are the things that people would do for themselves if they didn't hav...more

12 likes · like · see review

Jan 21, 2013 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is not just a manifesto in favor of manual labor (all sorts, not just artisanry or craftsmanship) but also against the stockade of cubicles that corporate America has encased most of us in.

Crawford appears to have something large and angular lodged in his lower intestines--just peek at his multipage rant against automatic faucets in public bathrooms, which he views as a Stalinist plot.

But he does ask a provocative question: Why, as America has become more educated, does it appear we have...more

2 likes · like · see review

Bap Manual labor is fine and there is something cathertic about raking leaves rather than using a leaf blower with its terrible noise, or chopping wood fo...more
Jan 04, 2013 06:29am

Michael He was not really talking about peasant work, but he did include factory work (which has to be the most soul-deadening and brain-killing of all). Most...more
Jan 04, 2013 11:47am

Apr 12, 2012 Stephen Wong rated it 4 of 5 stars

A very important work if you can relate to shop class, which I can, as well as electricity and tinkering with mechanics. But not just that: If you ever read philosophically or went into business or have an MBA or worked with code or someone else's or beheld monstrous infrastructure that will eat you, you're in for an eye de-wooling. Heh!

Why is the book important? On many levels it speaks of excellence, autonomy, humility, knowledge, art, work, ethics, education and the broad spectrum of ideas an...more

1 like · like · see review

Jul 14, 2011 Ben rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

I highly recommend this to anyone who's ever questioned the utility of their college or graduate degree. While I am proud and happy that I have a B.A., I can't say that I think it is what will get me too far in life, and is pretty definitely not indicative of what I really enjoy in life. I've been working in carpentry/landscaping/maintenance more or less since graduating college in May 2009, and I've never felt more challenged and fulfilled than when I do a good job framing a building or siding...more

3 likes · like · see review

Jun 06, 2010 J rated it 4 of 5 stars

I grew up in a working class family. Throughout my childhood, Dad always had me working at his side completing various project and side-jobs. He saw the beauty in his children being to work with their hands and believed it was the best hedge against starving to death. He had a strong work ethic and loved to tinker around his shop. He also drew great satisfaction in seeing a job come to completion and admired ingenuity over wealth. There was a certain beauty attached to something that came out of...more

6 likes · like · see review

Apr 10, 2013 Alex rated it 4 of 5 stars

Considering my serious lack of interest in motorcycles, I wasn't sure whether I'd find this book engaging, but I think there's a lot here for a non-motorcycle lover like myself.

Here are a couple of points that I thought were provocative:
-Our education system is not currently built to support our economy; it's built to support the economy of the assembly line, which used to require that only a select few became highly educated, while others simply learned enough to work on the assembly line.
-Skil...more Considering my serious lack of interest in motorcycles, I wasn't sure whether I'd find this book engaging, but I think there's a lot here for a non-motorcycle lover like myself.

Here are a couple of points that I thought were provocative:
-Our education system is not currently built to support our economy; it's built to support the economy of the assembly line, which used to require that only a select few became highly educated, while others simply learned enough to work on the assembly line.
-Skilled tradespeople don't just solve problems, they also find problems, which requires situational judgment that "intelligent technology" can't necessarily possess.

My work involves creating systems and processes to enhance people's work. When I say enhance, I mean freeing employees up to do the work that computers aren't built to do - the creative work, the work that requires judgement. It's easy, though, when designing these systems and processes, to make them so that they don't "free" the employees, but instead restrict them, requiring them to follow a set a rules that the system or process requires in order for work to be done. Humans then become subservient to the systems or processes, when in reality, it should be the other way around. Processes should be designed to enable employees to exercise their creativity, the humanness that we hired them for. By allowing processes to rule people, I think we fall in line with a statement Crawford makes, "We view human beings as inferior versions of computers." We need to start thinking in the opposite direction.

Crawford fits in a few more general life lessons at the end that are loosely tied to the rest of the work, but important nonetheless. My favorite comes when he is describing how agency (owning one's work) can be confused with autonomy (living by one's own rules): "The idea of autonomy denies that we are born into a world that existed prior to us. It posits an essential aloneness; an autonomous being is free in the sense that a being severed from all others is free. To regard oneself this way is to betray the natural debts we owe to the world, and commit the moral error of ingratitude. For in fact we are basically dependent beings: one upon another, and each on a world that is not of our making."(less)

like · see review

Jan 06, 2013 Nicole rated it 4 of 5 stars

I loved this book. I don't agree with every point Crawford made, and he went on too much for my taste about the specifics of motorbikes, but he points out the value in craft and hands-on skills and what we lose psychologically, not just in terms of the skills themselves, when we forget about them. And he doesn't dumb it down.

Crawford is a little harder on education than I'm inclined to be (especially considering how much of it he has), but then I have to admit that education is more affordable h...more

like · see review

Aug 03, 2012 Tripp Hudgins rated it 5 of 5 stars

My copy of this book is now dogeared and tattered. I didn't write in it and I cannot tell you why. I guess I didn't want my words cluttering his. I know the book was a popular success spending some time on the New York Times Bestseller List. Typically I eschew anything on that list (It's a psychic echo of my Gen-X 1990's. I apologize for it regularly.). Not this time.

There are many reasons I've enjoyed this book. I'll be candid. That I am from Richmond, VA, lived in Chicago, IL, and presently re...more My copy of this book is now dogeared and tattered. I didn't write in it and I cannot tell you why. I guess I didn't want my words cluttering his. I know the book was a popular success spending some time on the New York Times Bestseller List. Typically I eschew anything on that list (It's a psychic echo of my Gen-X 1990's. I apologize for it regularly.). Not this time.

There are many reasons I've enjoyed this book. I'll be candid. That I am from Richmond, VA, lived in Chicago, IL, and presently reside in Berkeley, CA made reading this book a special experience. Crawford lives in Richmond, lived in Chicago and was raised in Berkeley. I knew every corner and streetscape. I knew where he wrote about. I knew those places and I guess that's the point. Knowing.

Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew B. Crawford is a book (originally an essay) about work. Sure. "An inquiry into the value of work" says the subtitle. Yep. It is. It's more profoundly about how we know what we know and the ethics of the same. Ethics are Crawford's soulcraft. Who we are, how we come to know our world, and how we value such knowing is a measure of soulfulness (the ethics of metacognition, he calls it).

He critiques the American educational system as well as our incessant need to turn every kind of work into an assembly line. Whether it is Ford or Apple, innovation comes from craftwork but industry demands cogs and wheels and knowledgework turns human minds into cogs. No one needs to be a craftsperson any longer. We don't value it. One merely needs to know one's place in the assembly line. Our schools train us to value this "non-thinking." Our schools systems, the administrators and politicians who run them have eliminated shop class right along side art and music. We don't value these kinds of thinking. They are slow and cumbersome. And yet, to paraphrase Crawford, they are perhaps the deepest expressions of our souls.

So, here's another confession of sorts. This is the book I want to write about liturgy. This. This is it. Liturgy is a soulcraft. It's a way of thinking, of problem solving. Individual craftwork in the midst of a community of craftworkers taking as long as it takes to work their way through to the stated goal. It's slow and cumbersome. It takes time to learn and master. It takes time to practice. One reason we struggle with liturgy is because we have not been taught to value it. In fact, we have been taught to value it's opposite which in turn compells us to fashion liturgies that are more like concerts or spiritual assembly lines. Plug us in and crank us out. "Just add water." What kind of Baptismal ecclesiology is that? What are the ethics motivating how we think about liturgy? What are our actual values? Alacrity? Entertainment? Salvation? We need to ask ourselves these questions.

Crawford is more interested in problem solving than I might be, but I understand where he's coming from and it's not too strange to think of liturgy as a problem of sorts. It may not be troublesome, but there are pieces that go together and no matter how concretized our liturgy may be (See: a Catholic missal or the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer), our communities, their abilities, and the spaces in which they worship demand a certain improvisation, a certain problem solving and thinking.

I could write a book about the book and I guess that's the highest compliment I could pay.

Soulcraft. Yes. This.(less)

1 like · like · see review

Aug 02, 2012 John rated it 4 of 5 stars

I picked this book up after watching a presentation by the author on PBS... the night before I took the LSAT. There is a peculiar irony there in that as an engineer, working to become a lawyer, I see and appreciate Crawford's point of view.

Crawford's message is that working in the real world, transforming material things, has a profound and positive influence on one's ability to be happy. Manual work has real and measurable outcomes. It is not a refuge of last resort for those with no other skil...more

like · see review

Jul 05, 2012 Margaret rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: essay

I've struggeld w/ the star # rating for this book and am going to go with what I really think, and even then I admit I'm maybe bumping this up a bit. This is such a painfully egg-headed and cerebral book that, geez, I feel like a dunce for downgrading it, but there you go. It was just SO painfully egg-heady, cerebral, and plain I'm-so-fricking-holier-than-thou that I feel like the joy was just sucked right out of the book. Geez, Mr. Crawford, I give up! You ARE a better person than just about an...more

like · see review

May 27, 2012 Dan rated it 4 of 5 stars

A wonderful book on the value of manual labor and the demoralization (literally) of office work, Shop Class is an intelligent meditation on what makes work meaningful today. His thoughts on technical competence, perception and autonomy are certainly not new, but they were new to me, and I am better for it.

Having said that, Crawford's unreflexive sexism and willful blindness to prejudice are wearying. One of his criticisms of office work is that it prioritizes flexibility and the group in pursuit...more

3 likes · like · see review

May 05, 2012 Rachel rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: art

I had been looking forward to reading this for some time. I am an artist, a craftsperson who works with her hands. I form functional objects out of clay using artisan methods and traditional tools. My husband fixes machines, like motorcycles and cars and airplanes (and whatever else comes his way). I obviously share the author's value for physical work, craftsmanship and process.

I never finished Zen and the Art of Motorcycle maintenance, and at times this book, too, gets too much into motorcycle...more

3 likes · like · see review

Mar 26, 2012 Adam Shields rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Short review: This is an interesting look at the value of physical labor. Not as ditch digger, but the jobs that are manual but bring fulfillment in a particular way that "knowledge worker" jobs might not. Crawford has a PhD, was the head of a Washington Thinktank, but left it all to start his own motorcycle repair shop. He has also been a bunch of other things, from electrician to journal abstractor. The parts where he talked about his own relationship to work were the best. I appreciated the p...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 25, 2012 Zach rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'd summarize this book as "Manual work is intellectually stimulating." The writing is a bit thick (the author has a PhD and writes like he has to prove it,) but the book has a thorough philosophy on the nature of manual labor and mastering one's craft.

Personally, I thought it was interesting that his old job consisted of summarizing articles from academic journals. At one point, I would have described that as kind of a dream job: I would get to learn, write, and distill information from a very...more I'd summarize this book as "Manual work is intellectually stimulating." The writing is a bit thick (the author has a PhD and writes like he has to prove it,) but the book has a thorough philosophy on the nature of manual labor and mastering one's craft.

Personally, I thought it was interesting that his old job consisted of summarizing articles from academic journals. At one point, I would have described that as kind of a dream job: I would get to learn, write, and distill information from a very high level. But his work was ultimately an assembly line job in which he was judged by the arbitrary criteria of number of articles summarized.

In my own experience, corporate office work is routinized to a fault. A procedure must be in place to do anything, certain metrics must be measured to deem a process "acceptable." Some of that is necessary; I sure as hell wouldn't go to a machine shop to buy an artisan pacemaker. Those procedures protect the customer (you know you're getting a pacemaker like all the others) and the worker (you followed instructions and the pacemaker failed, therefore it isn't your personal fault that this patient is dead.)

But, that leaves little room for real innovation, which is what the book gets at. Corporate work makes the assumption that every aspect of a job can be documented (measure the tolerance of the valve on a vacuum pump motor and replace when at X inches) whereas the reality is that learned nuance is necessary makes a job inherently valuable (I replaced the vacuum pump because it sounded "off.") I get the feeling that apprenticeship and increased clout of vocational schools would go a long way to teaching "real" skills and reinstating a pride in manual work. Will the intellectual class become disillusioned with office work and yearn for mechanical skills? Who knows.

The book raised a lot of questions about the nature of my work and hobbies. What am I doing professionally that's irreplaceable? Is there a real, physical aspect of my work, or is it all mental abstraction? What hobbies do I have that have a real, personal touch? Are those skills useful in a community? Could I pass those on to my kids?(less)

2 likes · like · see review

Oct 19, 2011 Tom rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: commentary, non-fiction, philosophy

Shop class as soul craft: an inquiry into the value of work

This book will inevitably, and judging by the title invites comparison to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Racing: An Inquiry into Values. It has been years since I read Pirsig’s book

Crawfords’ book is full of good insights and an excellent critique of abstract knowledge. Immersed in the ins and outs of motorcycle repair and occasionally electrical installations (both trades in which he either was or is currently engaged), provides Crawford...more

like · see review

Oct 04, 2011 Mark rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: philosophy

Part spiritual exploration, part philosophical manifesto, this book explores some of the implications of our modern, specialized, corporatized, situation regarding careers. The author laments the mono-cultural assumption that everyone must attend university and then find their way as a "knowledge" worker exercising "creativity" in the new knowledge based economy. Crawford laments the passing of "crafts" and those who practiced them. He asserts that most employment in the modern economy is mindle...more Part spiritual exploration, part philosophical manifesto, this book explores some of the implications of our modern, specialized, corporatized, situation regarding careers. The author laments the mono-cultural assumption that everyone must attend university and then find their way as a "knowledge" worker exercising "creativity" in the new knowledge based economy. Crawford laments the passing of "crafts" and those who practiced them. He asserts that most employment in the modern economy is mindless and does not offer the spiritual connection to work that trades and crafts once did. One compelling example was motorcycle and auto mechanics. Modern machines aren't designed to be repaired but to be diagnosed electronically with the appropriate sub-system to be replaced identified to the technician. The common motorcycle or car owner no longer has a relationship with the repair of the vehicle like used to be the case. Also, he contends that modern owner's manuals and repair manuals are obviously written not by experienced mechanics but, by technical writers who probably don't know the first thing about the actual repair of the systems they're writing about.

Crawford asserts that there is value in working with our hands, especially when that work engages our minds and problem solving faculties fully. Beware the society In which most of us are engaged in the abstract most of the time. Our very moral development seems to be hampered when we lose our tactile relationships with our tools, homes, vehicles, and other material aspects of or lives.

This book challenged my thinking on the knowledge based economy and the near universally accepted idea that we all should seek to work within it. So long as we live in the physical world in buildings that need to be built, repaired, and maintained and move about in vehicles that require similar physical interaction and eat food that.... You get the point... We will require trades and craftspeople who work with their hands in ways that challenge their creativity and problem solving skills. We need to recognize the real value to human well being this type of personal work adds. We should also work towards bringing such aspects to many of our mundane modern economy jobs that have been automated, decision- matrixed, compartmentalized, engineered for efficiency, and otherwise rendered brainless, mindless, and frustrating to our intrinsic need to engage our own creativity, knowledge, and skill in accomplishing.

Please excuse me, I think I'll go change the oil in my car now!(less)

like · see review

Sep 28, 2011 Jamie Laing rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is fantastic. As a former carpenter, who at the risk of sounding self-congratulatory thought myself a craftsman, I found his writing to open up a deep sense of kinship. This is a man who cares deeply about his work and his society. As someone who now works extensively with technology and computers, I found his mild technophobia a little misplaced but highly likeable. I see no difference between working with physical objects and working with bits and bytes, but that's my personal feelin...more

3 likes · like · see review

Jul 31, 2011 Michael rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: other-non-fiction

While the content of the book justified, in my mind, a five star rating, the unnecessarily difficult to decipher writing brought this book down a notch. Crawford has an advanced degree from the University of Chicago, but by flaunting his mastery of the English language, he makes his book seem elitist and inaccessible. That being said, Crawford's book about the importance of learning by doing and working with one's hands was a breath of fresh air. In era of increasing emphasis on abstract work wi...more

like · see review

May 16, 2011 Mac rated it 4 of 5 stars

It just so happened that I was reading this book as Mike Rowe, who is somehow now the flag-carrier for manual labor, testified before congress regarding “vocational education” programs in high schools. In my high school, there were students and teachers (mostly the latter) who referred to this part of the building, which had its own wing, as “the prole hallway,” and as the kind of guy who as an adult spends a lot of time on a web site called “Goodreads,” I wasn’t exactly encouraged to go over th...more It just so happened that I was reading this book as Mike Rowe, who is somehow now the flag-carrier for manual labor, testified before congress regarding “vocational education” programs in high schools. In my high school, there were students and teachers (mostly the latter) who referred to this part of the building, which had its own wing, as “the prole hallway,” and as the kind of guy who as an adult spends a lot of time on a web site called “Goodreads,” I wasn’t exactly encouraged to go over there. I took a typing and early MS-Office class as my vocational education requirement, and I use those skills even now.

I wish, however, that people like Rowe and Matthew B. Crawford had a little more say in the educational system, but as Crawford points out early in this book, that kind of education costs a lot of money, and as technology has advanced, this kind of learning isn’t the kind people want to emphasize in young people – every politician who talks about education wants students to learn “Math and Science” at every turn, and to be ever-ready to use those computer skills in the suburban office that he/she will one day work in.

Crawford’s diagnosis of this scenario is rather spot on, and his rebuttal – that not only is “blue-collar” work potentially more rewarding financially than office drudgery, but also spiritually – is something I’ve been learning for myself, and a lesson I only wish I could have learned 20 years ago. It was particularly depressing to read this as I participated in the drudgery of office work that Crawford describes, but it was still an enjoyable read.

This book is not perfect, certainly. For one, it ignores the idea that the moment one turns a passion into a way to make a living, it ceases to be a passion. I know of many hobbyist mechanics who, once they go into business fixing cars or motorcycles, begin to hate the sight of what they once truly enjoyed. Crawford himself, by trade an electrician, find the philosophical pleasures he writes about in rebuilding vintage motorcycles, not wiring houses. He touches on this in the book, very slightly, with examples of rich office-working types who go on extreme vacations to “recharge,” but doesn’t mention any need for the craftsman to ever recharge in the same way. While the rebuilding of an engine or the building of a new piece of furniture may be rewarding in a very primal and fundamental way, for the person who makes her living by it, it’s still a job, and a hard one at that. You cut yourself, you hurt yourself, you stand in uncomfortable poses for hours at a time and your muscles tense up – it’s not always fun. Rewarding work can become drudgery, too, and Crawford idealizes the skilled trades a little too much as he defends them.

There is also a slightly reactionary tone to some of the conclusions that Crawford reaches as he writes, one that isn’t necessarily following from his arguments. The danger in writing a book like this comes from a few directions, but one of them is certainly to write a trite, flag-waving, hippie-bashing, woman-hating diatribe about the good ol’ days when men were men and everyone knew their place – for the most part, Crawford avoids this, but that kind of blue-collar jingoism can creep up into moments when he begins to approach generalizations about large swaths of people (I should say I know nothing of Crawford’s biography other than what he tells in the book, and have no idea of his beliefs on any political, social, or economic matters). The book is best at describing a one-on-one interaction of human and non-human, in which the human changes the non-human into something of the human’s design. Addressing the manual and intellectual energy at work in that interaction seems to me to be enough; the sociology of the construction site and value of ownership that are briefly touched upon aren’t necessarily relevant, nor are they well enough explored to support their being here.

The biggest problem with this book, however, is that on some level I already knew everything in it. Crawford’s background in philosophy makes the book’s arguments very sound, and the ideas at work here are very complex, but it’s difficult to capture in words the kind of feelings he’s talking about. A significant portion of this book is trying to explain, in philosophical terms, the pleasure of being able to say “I made that,” and it may be that this is a pleasure that needs to be felt rather than described.

So I’m not sure that Crawford is going to change anyone’s mind, necessarily. For better or worse, students will be pressured to go to college, and Mercedes will continue to build cars where the owner cannot check the oil. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat may see themselves driven further and further apart, with the added problem that as once-durable goods become more and more disposable, the tradesmen Crawford writes about aren’t relied upon to fix anything. It would be nice if schools would put back the prole hallways and start taking their vocational education programs more seriously, if only to create more well-rounded, capable individuals, but as budgets are cut and curricula are standardized, that seems less and less likely.

Unfortunately, Crawford may simply be preaching to the converted. Hopefully there is a person out there who picks up this book and decides to learn a little more about her car’s engine, or signs up for a woodworking class, but it’s more likely that anyone who reads this will already be somewhat industrially inclined. In that case it will be more of a reinforcement of previously unarticulated feelings, but it will also be a handy retort to anyone who looks at a grease-covered workbench full of carburetor parts and asks “why would anyone want to deal with that?”

“Read this,” the bench-owner can say.
(less)

1 like · like · see review

Apr 01, 2011 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

Great book. I sought this book because the reviews spoke to my current situation, frustration in my corporate job. His main premise is that we can find meaning – more meaning – in a manual trade job than in the modern cubicle farm, even though college graduates have convinced themselves that that same corporate job is the ticket to happiness and success. Along the way he makes comments about various subjects on philosophy, the modern world and motorcycles. I’m so glad he touched on Karl Marx’s t...more

like · see review

Feb 26, 2011 Brian rated it 2 of 5 stars

What a disappointment this book was .....

I cannot imagine that anyone who ever took a shop class in high school could possibly have enjoyed this book. It was so full of over-analytical philosophizing by a Ph.D. in Philosophy who decided to quit the "think tank" rat race of academia to run a shop doing motor cycling repair. I applaud him for knowing what he really wanted to do and then actually doing it. And even though he lists his reasons for writing the book in the next to the last chapter (so...more

4 likes · like · see review

Feb 09, 2011 Jonathan Thompson rated it 3 of 5 stars

I really felt the ideas that Matthew Crawford ruminated on in this book touched on a growing wave of sentiment amongst the younger, college-educated, cubicle-dwelling, working class of this country. I found myself agreeing with much of it and saddened by some of the inescapable realities of modern capitalism. At the same time, the author comes off as being a bit self righteous about skilled labor and particularly the trades that he continuously references such as carpentry and motorcycle/auto re...more

1 like · like · see review

Nov 23, 2010 Matt rated it 3 of 5 stars

A philosopher-mechanic explores the value of work by peppering in quotes of famous philosophers and the joys of being a mechanic, as opposed to being stuck in an office on the brink of an existential crisis. I liked it as a whole, as it was effective in making me question my relationship to the various types of work I've had. I tend to agree with him that the office-based work life can feel disconnected from reality at times, and therefore unfulfilling, but he risks over-generalizing. I also had...more A philosopher-mechanic explores the value of work by peppering in quotes of famous philosophers and the joys of being a mechanic, as opposed to being stuck in an office on the brink of an existential crisis. I liked it as a whole, as it was effective in making me question my relationship to the various types of work I've had. I tend to agree with him that the office-based work life can feel disconnected from reality at times, and therefore unfulfilling, but he risks over-generalizing. I also had a hard time getting into the excerpts on the life of a mechanic and the joys of riding a motorcycle, but that's probably just because I have no experience with either.

There's numerous times however where the author appears to be cherry-picking examples without full consideration. For example, he cites research that the more children are praised, the more risk averse they become in order to maintain that image of themselves that has been granted. Fair enough, but he doesn't bother to mention the benefits of positive reinforcement. It's pretty clear that praise should be moderated with suggestions for improvement, but he fails to make this point.

While I try to avoid being too politically correct, his overly masculine style was hard to swallow at times. For example, he would largely refer to 'man' throughout, which on its own can be alright if consistent, but will occasionally throw in 'and women' in parentheses. Then again, I don't run in mechanic circles, so maybe I've become too overly sensitive to this stuff due to many years of office-based work.

Some excerpts...

"We often hear of the need for an 'upskilling' of the workforce, to keep up with technological change. I find the more pertinent issue to be: What sort of personality does one need to have, as a 21st century mechanic, to tolerate the layers of electronic bullshit that get piled on top of machines?" (p.7)

"The meta-work of trafficking in the surplus skimmed from other people's work suddenly appears as what it is, and it becomes possible once again to think the thought, 'Let me make myself useful.'" (p.8)

"The egalitarian worry that has always attended tracking students into 'college prep' and 'vocational ed' is overlaid with another: the fear that acquiring a specific skill set means that one's life is determined. In college, by contrast, many students don't learn anything of particular application; college is the ticket to an open future. Craftsmanship entails learning to do one thing really well, while the ideal of the new economy is to be able to learn new things, celebrating potential rather than achievement." (p.19)

"Any discipline that deals with an authoritative, independent reality requires honesty and humility. I believe this is especially so of the stochastic arts that fix things, such as doctoring and wrenching, in which we are not the makes of the things we tend." (p.100)

"Going into business is good therapy for the feeling that there is something arbitrary and idiosyncratic in the your grasp of the world, and therefore that your actions within it are unjustified." (p.124)

"There is a pride of accomplishment in the performance of whole tasks that can be held in the mind all at once, and contemplated as whole once finished. In most work that transpires in large organizations, one's work is meaningless taken by itself. The individual feels that, alone, he is without any effect. His education prepares him for this; it is an education for working in a large organization, and he has difficulty imagining how he might earn a living otherwise. This predisposes him to be deferential to the authority exercised in the organization (however tinged with irony this deference may be), since the organization is that which gives meaning to his work." (p.156)

"The lover of excellence is prone to being drawn out of himself, erotically almost, in a way that the universalist egalitarian is not. The latter's empathy, projected from afar and without discrimination, is more principled than attentive." (p.202)(less)

1 like · like · see review

Jul 15, 2010 Chris Griger rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really liked the idea behind this book (or at least what I thought the idea would be from the book cover) - which defended jobs that require real, measurable work over the "information" or "knowledge" work that is so common today. My initial impression was that this could even be targeted towards the high-school student deciding what career to pursue - and after reading a number of technical books, I was looking forward to some lighter reading for a vacation.
However, this book started and ende...more

3 likes · like · see review

Jul 05, 2010 Suzanne rated it 3 of 5 stars

This started out as an essay in a literary magazine and probably should have stayed that way. He seemed to add a lot of extraneous bits to fill the pages. Aside from that, it was certainly well-written. The author received both his master's and PhD from the University of Chicago.

I didn't know there would be so much about motorocycles or I probably wouldn't have chosen it for my bookgroup's July book. I thought he got a little strident in his arguments. Rather than making the point that the manu...more

like · see review

Jun 24, 2010 Tony rated it 5 of 5 stars

The author leaves his Ph.D. thinking job in a think tank to start a motorcycle repair shop. He notes that when Henry Ford was hiring for his assembly lines, he would have to hire 900 me"n for a hundred positions because the work was so demeaning. Dealer mechanics will fix your bike by following a rule book (like the help desk for your computer problems). A small shop can fix your bike based on experience-based tacit knowledge. The small shop enhances an ethical personal relationship with the own...more

like · see review

Jun 19, 2010 Paul Aslanian rated it 4 of 5 stars

Mark Anema, lent me this book after one of our Saturday morning Chataquas. For you old guys that book reminded me of a very popular book--Small is Beautiful--written about 1970 which became a cult book. Soulcraft, is written by a guy with an incredibly unusual background. He lived with his mother and sister in communes from the age of 8 through 15 never going to school. When he was 14 he became an apprentice electrician which he completed. He became a car nut hanging around "speed shops" souping...more Mark Anema, lent me this book after one of our Saturday morning Chataquas. For you old guys that book reminded me of a very popular book--Small is Beautiful--written about 1970 which became a cult book. Soulcraft, is written by a guy with an incredibly unusual background. He lived with his mother and sister in communes from the age of 8 through 15 never going to school. When he was 14 he became an apprentice electrician which he completed. He became a car nut hanging around "speed shops" souping up his VW bug. His dad was a phyasist who operated in the clouds and only played with ideas. Somehow he managed to get into UC Santa Barbara from which he graduated in Physics but he was exposed to Philosophy in his senior year which he says "clarified everything for me"

For the next few years he wired houses and enrolled in classes to learn Greek--which he calls the language of Philosophy. Eventually, he earns an MA in Philosophy from the University of Chicago (UofC). Then he decides to enter the white collar world as an abstracter for a scientific journal--abstracting 28 articles a day--that was the flat rate. He lasted a year and hated just about everything about that life. So, like so many, he decided to get PhD in Political Philosophy again from Chicago. He then degree in hand goes to work for a public policy think tank in DC where he soon figured out that the Board had a conclusion in mind and wanted him to gin up the evidence to support the conclusion they desired. He stayed at the think tank 6 months then quit and opened a mototcycle repair and restoration shop in Richmond VA. (while working on his PhD and the year after while still on the tit at Chicago, he rebuilt his Honda 360. He found this work so much more fulfilling than the academic world that he continued to play with bikes.)

So with that background he writes this book that traces the work in the factory since the assembly line to today and what it has done to the nature of manual work and then does the same in the white collar world which since the computer has done much the same to this work. The worker of either collar being quite removed from the final product and the work being less individual and more "team". He builds a case that when the work is done by the team, again one is not individually seeing a product. His often used comparator is work in the trades, essentially construction trades where each worker is doing something which can be judged and good or bad work with a rather objective measure--for the carpenter, the wall is straight, plumb, and the cap is level--yes or no. His claim that is a better work world than the fuzzy one of so many today.

Both Soulcraft and Small is Beautiful do/did a nice job of critically evaluating the modern office/factory floor. S is B is more preaching about how things should change. A small group assembles the entire car. How about paying $85K for a Honda? Soulcraft, provides the critical analysis, but does not sell a solution to make each and all of us a master craftsman. I liked the book better than I thought I might when I was halfway through it. I think quite of few of you would enjoy the book.

We leave on our canoe trip two months from today. I would love for us to glom onto a book for camp fire discussions. I nominate Soulcraft as that book, but think it over, perhaps you have a better recommendation. Let's make a decision by July 1. Let me know.

Best,
PJA

PS I never know if these things get to you guys. If so, please let me know.(less)

1 like · like · see review

Jun 07, 2010 Karen rated it 3 of 5 stars

The only reasons that I didn't give this book a higher rating are because the organization seemed pretty sporadic to me and because he seemed to be directing his words toward people who are already involved in the trades, which strikes me as preaching to the choir.

However, I believe that what he says is very important and I would suggest this book to any school administration that is considering eliminating electives in favor of improving their students' standardized test scores. If this recess...more

like · see review

May 29, 2010 Scott rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: philosophy majors, thinkers

Shelves: own

I wanted more motorcycle mechanic and less philosopher - but instead I think I got about 80% philosopher to 20% mechanic. This is directly opposite of the image I had conjured up while viewing that gorgeous book cover at the airport bookshop.

I agree with everything he writes about the downward trend of the American workplace, overemphasis on "credentials" in education, the downside of 100% college attendance, "teamwork" instead of real management, etc, etc...but what I wanted was more proof of...more

1 like · like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 99 100 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one »

Recommend it | Stats | Recent status updates

combine
Other Editions (22)

More editions...

Genres

Non Fiction

159 users

Philosophy

107 users

Education

20 users

Business

14 users

Sociology

12 users

Psychology

12 users

Economics

11 users

Book Club

10 users

History

9 users

Autobiography > Memoir

8 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Matthew B. Crawford

Matthew B. Crawford is currently a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. He also runs a (very) small business in Richmond, Virginia.

More about Matthew B. Crawford...

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Shop Class as Sou...

No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »

Quotes from Shop Class as Soulcraf...

“The satisfactions of manifesting oneself concretely in the world through manual competence have been known to make a man quiet and easy. They seem to relieve him of the felt need to offer chattering interpretations of himself to vindicate his worth. He can simply point: the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on. Boasting is what a boy does, because he has no real effect in the world. But the tradesman must reckon with the infallible judgment of reality, where one’s failures or shortcomings cannot be interpreted away. His well-founded pride is far from the gratuitous “self-esteem” that educators would impart to students, as though by magic.” — 7 people liked it

“I used to try to hypnotize myself into a Zen-like state of resignation at the outset. It doesn't work, not for this grasshopper. I have my own process, as they say. I call it the motherfucker process.” — 2 people liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work
avg rating	preview: Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work Goodreads rating: 3.66 (2839 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6261332-shop-class-as-soulcraft?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347694651l/6261332.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6261332-shop-class-as-soulcraft?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford[/url]

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

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website