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

Those of us who sit in an office often feel a lack of connection to the material world and find it difficult to say exactly what we do all day. For those who felt hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, Shop Class as Soulcraft seeks to restore the honor of the manual trades as a life worth choosing.

Based on his own experience as an electrician and Mechanic, Matthew Crawford makes a case for the kind of work that requires mastery of real things. Surprisingly, such work can be more intellectually demanding than the sort that deals in abstractions. Maintenance and repair work also cultivate certain ethical virtues, fostering habits of individual responsibility. Shop Class as Soulcraft rouses us from the passivity and dependence of consumer culture with a bracing call for self-reliance. It is a moving reflection on how we can live concretely in an ever more abstract world.