Matthew Crawford

Matthew Crawford is an American writer and philosopher, with a doctorate in political philosophy from the University of Chicago, who has been a fellow at the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture and has also worked as a motorcycle mechanic. In Shop Class as Soulcraft he argues that skilled manual work involves real knowledge and judgement, and that its decline in favour of abstract 'knowledge work' impoverishes both work and character.

Key ideas

• Manual trades involve genuine cognitive skill: diagnosis, judgement and attention to things that resist our will.
• The separation of thinking from doing in modern work degrades both, leaving many jobs neither intellectual nor practical.
• Competence in dealing with a real material world gives a form of agency and self-respect.
• Attention is a resource shaped by environments, and much of modern life is designed to capture it.

Major works

• Shop Class as Soulcraft (2009; UK title The Case for Working with Your Hands)
• The World Beyond Your Head (2015)
• Why We Drive (2020)

In the conversation

• Debate Aristotle was wrong to think that manual work unfits a person for citizenship Hugo Marchetti · 4 replies
• Discussion Automated cranes at the port, and Ellul’s idea that efficiency decides for us Hugo Marchetti · 5 replies
• Debate Skilled manual work demands more thinking than most office work Hicham Ouazzani · 6 replies

In the Journal

• Journal What makes a job meaningful? Notes from a job centre Johanna Reinhardt · 0 replies