A Resurgence in the Prestige of Manual Labor

In the twentieth century, manual labor such as woodworking was heavily denigrated in favor of knowledge work. But, as young people grow tired of their cubicle-bound jobs, a reaction against this type of thought is growing in the twenty-first century. Matthew Crawford’s book Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work is part of a countercultural trend against knowledge labor and points to the fact that manual labor is still needed as much as knowledge workers.

Author Matthew Crawford holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in social and political thought. After getting his doctorate, he went to work at a think tank in Washington, D.C. He writes that he was constantly tired while working there and had no real idea why they were paying him. He quit after a few months and became a mechanic. Doing that was a revelation to him because as a mechanic, he found that he was doing work with concrete results and that he was good at fixing things.

According to the online article Wearing a blue collar like a heart on his sleeve by Steven Marche, there is a growing reactionary trend against the recent supremacy of knowledge work in favor of getting back to basics. He writes that in major cities across Europe and North America, young people are embracing the work that their great-grandparents suffered under, such as woodworking and farming. The trend seems to stem from a desire to see concrete results of work rather than abstract data on a computer screen.

Crawford simply makes the point that manual labor is still needed in modern day society. He takes a practical rather than spiritual or metaphysical point of view, in contrast to a book like Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Crawford found that he enjoys manual labor more than the life of the mind, so he chooses to work as a mechanic rather than the director of a think tank. By doing so, he makes the point that manual labor is no less valuable than knowledge work. I believe this is true and that many young people today should realize that there is no shame in skipping college in favor of learning a useful manual trade such as woodworking or mechanics.

The current trend of reaction against the cubicle life in favor of working with one’s hands is explored in Crawford’s new book. Perhaps the movement will grow and more people will begin with easy woodworking and progress into advanced woodworking as a profession.

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