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

Matthew B. Crawford

This is a small book that contains a lot.  It’s hard to describe.  The title implies that it’s about eduction or the value of work and the cover implies that it’s a romantic tale of blue color virtue.  It is instead a very serious philosophical inquiry into what makes work satisfying.

To Crawford a key characteristic of satisfying work is that it is directed at a measurable goal: the motorcycle that is properly tuned or the electrical conduit properly bent.  He suggests that it is the lack of such goals that make corporate workplaces so unsatisfying and contrasts the job site “crew” to the corporate “team”.  In the first, success based on competence leads to mutual respect; in the second, survival depends on how one constructs a workplace personality and navigates a territory with an ambiguous map.

Crawford’s antidote to the depersonalization of work and the corporate severing of work from the community and, even, the product, is to find work that site-specific.   The person who has to be with his work, whether he be a teacher or a plumber, has an advantage in a world where (as Crawford points out) “workers of the world unite” has become not a revolutionary battle cry but a description of globalization’s race to the bottom.  Not only will the site-specific worker survive economically, but he may well have a more satisfying work life because his contribution to a specific community is more apparent.

You could argue that it’s all well and good for Crawford to advocate finding work in a niche, but, after all, most of us can’t do that.  Still, it is better to understand the world one lives in and this book is a contribution to that project.  If it were required reading for high school seniors it might help many of them find careers that fit their dispositions instead of ending up in jobs that they are ill-suited for.