Ce que sait la main: La culture de l'artisanat

by Richard Sennett, Pierre-Emmanuel Dauzat (Traducteur)

En proposant une définition de l'artisanat beaucoup plus large que celle de "travail manuel spécialisé", Richard Sennett soutient que le programmateur informatique, l'artiste, et même le simple parent ou le citoyen font oeuvre d'artisans. Ainsi pensé, l'artisanat désigne la tendance foncière de tout homme à soigner son travail et implique une lente acquisition de talents où l'essentiel est de se concentrer sur sa tâche plutôt que sur soi-même. Dans ce livre stimulant, Richard Sennett aborde l'expertise sous toutes ses déclinaisons. Nous voyageons ainsi à travers le temps et l'espace, des tailleurs de pierre de la Rome antique aux orfèvres de la Renaissance, des presses du Paris des Lumières aux fabriques du Londres industriel ; nous observons les expériences de l'informaticien, de l'infirmière, du médecin, du musicien ou du cuisinier. Face à la dégradation actuelle des formes de travail, l'auteur met en valeur le savoir-faire de l'artisan, coeur, source et moteur d'une société où primeraient l'intérêt général et la coopération. Et tandis que l'histoire a dressé à tort des frontières entre la tête et la main, la pratique et la théorie, l'artisan et l'artiste, et que notre société souffre de cet héritage, Richard Sennett prouve que "Faire, c'est penser" .

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy, Sociology, Design, Art, Architecture, Crafts

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Richard Sennett has explored how individuals and groups make social and cultural sense of material facts -- about the cities in which they live and about the labour they do. He focuses on how people can become competent interpreters of their own experience, despite the obstacles society may put in their way. His research entails ethnography, history, and social theory. As a social analyst, Mr. Sennett continues the pragmatist tradition begun by William James and John Dewey.

His first book, The Uses of Disorder, [1970] looked at how personal identity takes form in the modern city. He then studied how working-class identities are shaped in modern society, in The Hidden Injuries of Class, written with Jonathan Cobb. [1972] A study of the public realm of cities, The Fall of Public Man, appeared in 1977; at the end of this decade of writing, Mr. Sennett sought to account the philosophic implications of this work in Authority [1980].

At this point he took a break from sociology, composing three novels: The Frog who Dared to Croak [1982], An Evening of Brahms [1984] and Palais Royal [1987]. He then returned to urban studies with two books, The Conscience of the Eye, [1990], a work focusing on urban design, and Flesh and Stone [1992], a general historical study of how bodily experience has been shaped by the evolution of cities.

In the mid 1990s, as the work-world of modern capitalism began to alter quickly and radically, Mr. Sennett began a project charting its personal consequences for workers, a project which has carried him up to the present day. The first of these studies, The Corrosion of Character, [1998] is an ethnographic account of how middle-level employees make sense of the “new economy.” The second in the series, Respect in a World of Inequality, [2002} charts the effects of new ways of working on the welfare state; a third, The Culture of the New Capitalism, [2006] provides an over-view of change. Most recently, Mr. Sennett has explored more positive aspects of labor in The Craftsman [2008], and in Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation [2012].

Reviews

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wasn’t going to review this book – not because it isn’t very interesting and well worth reading, but in some ways it like a really smart version of Drive by Dan Pink. That is, humans like autonomy and developing mastery and yet most of modern work denies people access to exactly that. The other bits that are included here and aren’t in Pink’s version have to do with why (that is, Marx and the alienation of labour being the key to understanding capitalism) and the problems of teaching things to apprentices when much knowledge is tacit and therefore hard for us to even know that we know – and if we struggle to know we know it, how do we teach it? To which the answer is – by the way – teach it and you’ll soon see which parts of your knowledge are tacit.

There is a good little video on Dan Pink’s Drive you can watch here. It has cartoons - how could it be better? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAP...

Anyway, then at the end of the book he talks about American Pragmatism (Instrumentalism as the leftish American tradition of Dewey and James). And I’ve always had an uneasy relationship with this school of thought. Don’t get me wrong – Dewey says some really interesting things about education and he demands to be read and he provides one of the best defences for education being about more than the acquisition of ‘skills’ that I think it is probably possible to give. Still, there is something there is that doesn’t love pragmatism and reading this book I spent a lot of time worrying about what that was.

If you haven’t guessed yet, this isn’t going to be much of a review of this book – but rather my thinking through issues this book has raised for me. I really recommend you read this – the stuff about architecture is worth the price of the book alone – but there are larger fish and they all need frying.

Marx says that the major contradiction of our age is between the social nature of production and the private means of accumulation. Marx didn’t spend an awful lot of time talking about what work would look like in his ideal society – there is a vague thing were he talks about fishing in the morning and writing philosophy in the evening, but as a system for organising production it doesn’t sound nearly as complete as his criticism of capitalism was. In this book Sennett says Marx was fond of the craftsman’s workshops – people learning to do and losing themselves in the doing. As I said before, capitalism is opposed to this as capitalism is obsessed with time and consistency of output – craftsmen (I want to use a gender neutral term here and it is annoying me more than I can tell you that I’m not – but it is the word the author uses and I’m going to stick with it for that reason) craftsmen on the other hand produce things that take into account the material form of the material they are made from. As the creators of products they are not after ‘perfection’ in the sense of an unblemished ideal, but rather they want to leave something of themselves (and of the imperfections of the material itself) still in the finished product.

So, capitalism closes down contingency, craftsmanship opens it up.

Sennett’s focus here, in seeing the craftsman as a kind of solution to the problems of today, is interesting in much the same way that Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is interesting. That is, it starts with the social (craftsmen can only be craftsmen in the sense that they are responding to social needs – something Sennett makes clear when he says that even Stradivari’s apprentices felt forced to leave his workshop because of ‘cutbacks’ due to not enough sales of violins). A craftsman responds to social needs, it is just that they do this in a highly individual way – self-actualising, Maslow would say. Maslow’s hierarch runs from the social, you need to have clothing, food, sex and so on before you can hope to have the higher human capabilities – and these higher capabilities are all deeply individual – self-actualisation doesn’t include the word ‘self’ for no reason. And here in lies my problem, for me at least.

There is a part of me that believes that there is not a time when I feel I can truly be ‘myself’ outside of the social. The point of life is not to climb to the top of a pyramid of self-actualisation – climb to the top of the mountain like that painting that is on every other of Nietzsche’s books, the one with the 19th century gentleman with his back to us looking out from the peak of the mountain he has just climbed. The point of life isn’t nearly so lonely. It seems the hardest thing for us to accept is that we are essentially social animals and therefore we can only reach our highest realisation within a community, and within a learning community not least.

Now, I say that, but as someone who is rather introverted (even if I don't find that term terribly useful) and somewhat shy in real life, don’t think for a minute I don’t see the paradox here. Someone who spends quite so much time with books as I do doesn’t do so out of an excess of gregariousness. But my debt to society – to community – is large in all senses and it is a debt I never understate or underestimate. My life is made possible in all ways by society – and not just in being clothed and feed (two things I couldn’t do alone, and neither could any of us), but in all senses. I never self-actualise – I always actualise in relation to others, either with their help or in my own struggle against their views. Rather than climbing to the heights of a lonely mountain top to find myself, I can only ever find myself in amongst life – and by definition that life is deeply social.

The problem is I’ve no idea what to make of all this in terms of the themes of this book. This book is basically arguing that the answer to many of the problems of the world is a return to craftsmanship - and a form of craftsmanship that appears highly 'individualistic' to me. And look, I really do get it – this idea also matches so many other things I believe – the idea of being lost in the flow of an activity, of repetition as a pathway to fully understanding, of learning something by heart for the pleasure of having something you love in your heart, of being present in the moment, and this, and so much more. Does any or all of this require a recognition of the ‘I’ being dependent on the ‘thou’? I'm not sure it does - and that bothers me.

One thing is certain. Capitalism, by its very nature, homogenises humanity while at the same time stressing the individual as the only reality (remember Thatcher saying there is no such thing as society?). But, as Bauman says, the individual under capitalism is ‘de jure’ rather than ‘de facto’ – that is, a legal right to be an individual undermined by the facts on the ground of people’s actual lives. The individual under capitalism is certainly not the worker - that is, those who have zero control over how they work or what they work on. They are cogs in a machine, not individuals.

But then, how do you retain the social nature of work but not the notion of the worker being an impersonal ‘cog in a machine’? I can’t pretend to know the answer to these questions, by the way. There is a discussion here about people working together to make Wikipedia and Linux - and perhaps there is that - but I'm not sure this is quite the same thing as the system of apprenticeship Sennett seems to be endorsing. I did warn you this wouldn’t be so much a review as a thinking through of things. These are things that are increasingly annoying me. Questions that have gotten under my skin – but unfortunately they are not questions I have ready answers for. Sorry about that.

[Patrick · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book, but became increasingly exasperated with it the further I read. I did finish it, but only so that my criticism would be complete.

Anyone with much knowledge of the sciences will be irritated by Sennett's tenuous grasp of basic scientific principles. Any engineer will be exasperated with his conflicting positions between the craft of creating and perfecting machinery, the design and use of tools as part of craft, and the romantic distaste for replacing handwork with a tool that produces more precise and regular results. The idea that machines are in some way antithetical to craft is absurd. Machines mostly replace workers doing dull, repetitive, and often dangerous work. This may be a source of short-term upset among workers - especially those disinclined to learn new skills. However it is often the "craftsman" striving for practical excellence (a.k.a. engineering) who usually conceives of better tools. When new, these tools are a threat to established patterns of labor. A decade to a generation later, these same tools redefine craft and skilled labor.

Moreover, any craftsperson will be dismayed with Sennett's disregard for actual craft, in the course of his analysis of the social and political structures of "craftsmen." The author seems to little understand the joy of crafts that are truly physical (woodworking, pottery, blacksmithing, plumbing). His closest experience is writing, but a mental craft is far different from a physical one. Coders may share philosophy, social structure, etc., with handworkers, but they differ in fundamental and significant ways. Coding does not teach you about how the physical world works. Woodworking does. I speak from experience as a woodworker, blacksmith, and coder.

What craftspeople in code and wood share is an attitude that values work well done, that values producing rather than only consuming, and that values process over (or at least in equal measure to) result. I do not sense that Sennett really grasps the importance of this.

Working with your hands teaches you to think in 3-space, to see a result in your mind, and to plan a way to that goal. There is less romance than practical good here. Every child should be taught some physical craft, and perhaps some mental craft as well, to realize the benefits from each activity. Sennett apparently missed this.

Sennett claims as his central theses:

The political: "good craftsmanship implies socialism," despite the fact that almost none of his examples or arguments lead us to this conclusion. It is just his personal conviction/faith.

And the sociological: "...the craft of making physical things provides insight into the techniques of experience that can shape our dealings with others." The inverse could be argued just as easily (and perhaps more convincingly). OTOH, many craftsmen (e.g., famously, surgeons, and many coders) are social maladepts. Another "thesis" that Sennett can at best claim to have explored, but not to have coherently argued or even supported.

Unless you find these ideas particularly compelling, and enjoy extended non-sequiturs and sociopolitical meandering, do not bother with this book.

[☘Misericordia☘ ⚡ϟ⚡⛈⚡☁ ❇️❤❣ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Q:
Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake. (c)
Q:
motivation matters more than talent, and for a particular reason. The craftsman's desire for quality poses a motivational danger: the obsession with getting things perfectly right may deform the work itself. We are more likely to fail as craftsmen, I argue, due to our inability to organize obsession than because of our lack of ability. (c)

Labour, mastership, craft - how are these interconnected? Our society - is it really conductive to achieving the heights of self-actualization, of the art of whatever it is that we are trying to achieve? How do we interpret our results? What prevents us from becoming the best there is? Is competition enabling or preventing us from improving our results and bettering ourselves? The best selves there are - are these really connected with being masters in some or other areas or is at a delusion? Let's take talent, intellect and our drive as one side of the equation, the capitalism as the other one: what do we get as a result? Is capitalism actually improving our being able to achieve more or not? Is society?
That's quite a plethora of interesting questions and this book is a work aimed at trying our intellect at them.

[Jeffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

First of all, it is exceedingly unfair to write a short, impressionistic review for a book that is meant to be the first of a three volume critique and analysis on material culture intended by Richard Sennett.

But being one of the rare books out there--and I can remember only Donald Schon's 'The Reflective Practitioner' as the last word out there outlining an epistemology of practice--Sennett's new book still warrants a few exciting words despite the caveat as stated. And like Schon's 'The Reflective Practitioner' with a lasting appeal precisely because it straddles multiple domains of practice such as design, management and education to name three, Sennett's work should also share this boon of longevity if synthetic works of such records are any form of indication.

Truly, Sennett's total project is an ambitious one; and 'The Craftsman' here represents a powerful but nevertheless, a perplexing beginning to his critique of material culture. Why? While Sennett's powerful introductory delineation of a specific type of humanity in practice (i.e. the craftsman) is as comprehensive as it gets, but it may also strike many readers as a diffused analysis: an account that straddles one too many lessons to get the point across; an account that constantly runs the risk of losing its focus.

For example, Sennett begins heroically through the narrative of meeting Arendt (which I thought is Sennett's ultimate strength as a writer, thinker and philosopher of the concrete) which then tacitly promises to continue from the premise in Arendt's Human Condition on the dangers of design and technology. But the book then took a turn into an account of skill development, which only serve to further constrained the narrative into a more developed account on the various aspects and contentions of skills. But in the last chapter Sennett returns to his initial premise on the ethics of design via craftmanship, thus showing that the ride between introduction and conclusion has been a less than focused one. But to the extent that this entire book can be seen as the grand introduction to an upcoming epic of critical commentary, then this criticism founded more on coherent argumentation and less on a journey of musing should also realistically be a less trenchant one.

I found the book to be as uplifting as it was in parts, frustrating. On one end, the uplifting portions speak to absolve all who engage in some form of practical craftsmanship from the Arendtian charge of being engaged in mindless labor. On the other end, they inspire nearly all human activities and actions charged with the same Arendtian powers of natality to take on the virtues of craftsmanship. It is as if Sennett is interested to level the great disparity set between the mind and the hands instituted by the long line of thinkers from Plato to Arendt in the midst of the great nihilism of Tradesmanship today. If there is any covert political message that can rescue the current crisis of 'getting by' or 'value relativism', then Sennett here may possess the promise of a good chance.

But the frustrating segments are quite something else. Fundamentally, the frustrating bit is Sennett's reluctance to outline and provide the premise where the intrinsic, non-teleological and practical virtues but also merits of craftsmanship are found to be relevant. A reader who is familiar with Sennett's previous work may have some clues to this reluctant and tacit premise--a society weaned on mindless commercialism, mindless pace and crass improvisations to the ultimate detriment of the society as a whole--that the values argued in this book seem relatively powerful and appropriate today. Thus if this was a piece of political philosophy masquerading as an epistemological account of craftsmanship in practice--which I read as it is--then it is also an unwilling one.

Another frustrating bit comes from the uneven juxtaposition of Sennett's substantiations on his claims. Overall, Sennett furnished excellent examples to make his claims both clear and strong. But there are lesser notes in his symphony as well. For example, Sennett decisively claimed that it is easier to retrain a plumber than a salesman to become a computer programmer given the plumber's material focus and craft habits. While it is less clear that Sennett is exhorting a society where plumbers are given the same consideration as philosophers, it is however quite clear that Sennett believes that the ideal type salesman are certainly less than a plumber as far as retraining as re-skilling goes. As a reader who has a fair share of experience with plumbers and salesmen (and saleswomen) in a society that values philosophy over plumbing but which also worships commercialism, I find this claim somewhat specious.

In the end, it is Sennett's quilting that earned the extra *star* in this book review. Sennett's comprehensive synthetic quilting of bits from computer programming, to violin making, to architectural practice stitched with snippets of his own insightful social commentary of how bad planning practices make unlivable cities, and the devaluation of human beings in new capitalism all make this book a rewarding tract for unbridled musings across historical time and intellectual space.

For readers who want to know more about the theme of craftsmanship--a certainly underappreciated theme neglected by those who think and ironically despised by those who do--then this book is a real gem. But for a reader who seeks a deliberate piece of political philosophy improvised as an epistemological account of practice in a leveled world of commercialism, then this book, at least for now, still falls short of this wish.

[Esteban · Rating 1 out of 5]

Un historiador mencionaba que hasta la aparición de The Principles of Scientific Management de Taylor nadie había considerado al trabajo en sí mismo como algo digno de estudio. Una provocación, sí, pero no tan gratuita. Casi todas las aproximaciones políticas y sociológicas del trabajo en realidad estudian la forma en que se lo organiza institucionalmente, no al gesto técnico en sí. El artesano de Sennett viene a demostrar que uno puede excluir esas consideraciones y seguir manteniéndose a una distancia máxima de cualquier aspecto físico del trabajo. Su intención es reunir bajo una misma figura arquetípica tareas tan distintas como las de un carpintero, una madre, un programador y un arquitecto. Las oposiciones que pueden producir alguna incomodidad, como la de animal laborans – homo faber, de su maestra Hannah Arendt, son minimizadas y encubiertas. La diferencia entre trabajo físico y trabajo intelectual prácticamente no le merece ningún comentario. Cuando Sennett acude a casos históricos, generalmente apela a experiencias de trabajadores que, además de estar en los déciles superiores, operan líneas de producción, quedando por fuera de cualquier definición admisible de artesanado. No es casualidad que el taylorismo ni siquiera sea mencionado. El objetivo de este ensayo es borronear distinciones y tranquilizar al lector. Hacia el final Sennett revindica un socialismo cuyo carácter político radicaría de alguna forma en una ética de trabajo comprometida con la calidad. Para entonces cualquier vestigio de lógica o de contrastación empírica ya había quedado sepultado vivo algunos cientos de páginas atrás.

[Andrew]

The Craftsman is not, as Richard Sennett might think, a very good book of sociology, but it is a very good book in general for thinking about things and for thinking about how things are made and how and why we make them. He seems like a good-hearted guy, with a sort of William Morris socialist outlook, someone who likes sincerity and who likes carpenters and writers and chefs and architectural draftsmen and Linux programmers and wants us all to work together to make nice things. In terms of practice, I'm not so sure... as William Morris found out, the only people who can afford crafted work in the era of mass production are the wealthy... but Sennett does provide food for thought, and he writes well.

[Janie · Rating 5 out of 5]

So happy to find a book that articulates the layered significance of the craftsman throughout history, and the many ways an individual crafts work in his daily life. Intelligently written and more far-reaching than I'd imagined, encompassing economics, cultural history, and corporate politics into its search for what it means to be a craftsman in contemporary society. Sennet is sociologist, and it shows. His writing doesn't always flow like it might if he were more a writer who simply did research on his subject, it is worth the effort to get through the sometimes choppy writing.

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 1 out of 5]

The sort of book in which John Milton is referred to as "the poet John Milton".

[Paula Rello · Rating 5 out of 5]

not to be dramatic pero este libro me ha ayudado a ordenar un montón de ideas inconexas que tenía en mi cabeza. Era exactamente lo que necesitaba leer ahora y me ha inspirado un montón <333 Habla de la artesanía extendiendo esta idea a todo tipo de prácticas (Entendiendo artesanía como el proceso lento y cuidado en el que prevalece la adquisición de conocimientos al resultado final) y lo contrapone al trabajo rápido y "productivo" al que estamos acostumbrados hoy en día. Toca muchísimos temas y diferentes disciplinas súper interesantes así que no sé leedlo !!!

[Alex Moseley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sennett made interesting observations on the life and work of the craftsman, but in the end, I was deeply disappointed. Ultimately, he never really descends from his academic perch to stand at the craftsman's workbench. Rather than acknowledging the deeper significance within the life of the craftsman, Sennett seems to be using the experience of the craftsman as a means to his own end, which has nothing to do with craft or craftsmanship.

In Part III he seems to slip into the conceit that the life and work of the craftsman is impractical for contemporary life, at least from the point of view of the large institution, the "well-crafted organization." This bias toward large institutions, whether informed by his own academic career or some generational attitude, becomes the Achilles heel of his argument, for Sennett considers the craftsman only as an historical artifact with echoes in his modern world, rather than as a living, breathing human being, living with integrity in the present economy.

[B. Jean · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this was like walking through a field after snowmelt. Some steps will be perfectly clear, but eventually you'll put a foot down wrong and end up with soggy socks and mud in your shoes.

Philosophy is not my thing, I thought this would be a little more concrete, but instead it was abstract, messy, and hard to picture. Some bits and examples were perfectly clear, and that was usually when he referred to actual historical figures and didn't wax poetic.

I found it bizarre when he referred to the Japanese company model as a good one. It takes about two seconds of research to realize that overwork and suicide is rampant in Japanese society. In my five years, one of the teachers I knew died due to suspected overwork. Last year alone there were three adult suicides in the school district. So I don't know what this author thinks he knows, but Japanese workers aren't particularly happy.

I wish this had discussed craft in a more solid manner instead of muddying around in tangents. Not a fan.

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a masterpiece work on the philosophy of craft education. Sennett goes beyond current knowledge on creativity, art, play, education value and tacit knowledge. This book is a manifesto, full of knowledge, pragmatic knowledge here theorised for the first time.

You can find a longer review on my blog (in portuguese): https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.pt/...

[archibald (audrey) zebedee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sennett examines craftsmanship through a wide variety of lenses: historically and in the present, through many different fields (software engineering, music, carpentry, etc.). He also touches on effects of capitalism, sexism, etc. A bit jumpy, and he goes on a lot of tangents to the point where it felt like he was just chronicling his thoughts as they came. I didn't mind this though, as they were all valuable points.
Some metaphors felt a bit contrived (as babies, we first learn to grab things, then how to let go - this is akin to us metaphorically learning how to let go), but most content was interesting to read. He talks a decent amount about capitalism and how it discourages craftmanship and quality work.
Would recommend for a chill read with interesting counterpoints to Arendt's philosophy.

[Mette Tolar · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this. It took ages and I think I understood bits and pieces of his intelligence, but still a great discovery for future study

[Brent Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is packed with interesting and provocative ideas for me as an instructional designer. Its focus is on the manual crafts, but I'm thinking about the issue of craft more generally and how it competes with general processes and technologies that threaten to overwhelm education. Is education something to be mass-designed and delivered via automatic tools and program - or a craft to be custom-designed and delivered by a pro? The answer is in between somewhere, and I'm exploring how both technology and craft and co-exist productively.

Sennett gives a Marxian interpretation to craft and its history - which again is valuable to me, since I am new to cultural studies, but can see its value to my interests. His writing style can be dense and challenging, but every word is there for a reason - it's part of his "craft" mentality!

This is the book I have and digested, but need to talk over with other people to get the full value.

[Ismael Sainz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ensayo filosófico que explora a fondo el concepto del trabajo artesanal, entendido en sentido amplio y holístico. Para Sennet el artesano no es sólo aquel que trabaja con sus manos, sino todos aquellos que se dedican a hacer bien su trabajo por el simple hecho de hacerlo bien. Sus actividades son prácticas, pero no son solamente un medio para un fin que los trasciende.
Analizando cómo se adquiere y transmite el conocimiento, cómo son los espacios donde se desarrolla el trabajo artesanal, la influencia de las herramientas o la motivación, así como muchos otros elementos del trabajo, ofrece una perspectiva que me ha resultado muy reveladora. Es un libro que he subrayado hasta la saciedad.

[Sandeep Bedadala · Rating 2 out of 5]

Picked up this book after seeing it on multiple lists in Designers and Books

Richard Sennett is that prodigious researcher but an awful teacher. My two stars are for introducing me to some wonderful men and women from the past and their unique approach to craft. There were some chapters that were truly insightful and inspiring and made me not give up but the persistent digressions failed my momentum.

As another reviewer commented, I tried very hard to like this book but it does not reward that patience.

[Whitney · Rating 3 out of 5]

interesting exploration of craft (including related to architecture) but SERIOUSLY flawed. Remarkably poor editing - typos, misspellings, you name it. No bibliography and poor footnotes. Isn't there an irony in a book about craft being so poorly crafted.

[Yavuz · Rating 2 out of 5]

I pushed myself to read 100 pages or so, and then gave up. There is little structure to the book and this makes reading a cumbersome effort. Sennett has his moments, but it just didn't work for me.

Maybe others find it more appealing but I have to move on to something else.

[Stefan Szczelkun · Rating 4 out of 5]

Richard Sennett is one of those eminent intellectuals that is humane and intriguing. His writing is discursive and sometimes verges on rambling, but will pull itself back into some kind of shape just as you are about to give up. He gets away with this because his powers of description and analysis are at times acute to the point of being sublime.

This book is an example of class as 'the elephant in the room'. 326 pages on craftmanship and no mention of class as such! As a good establishment figure he starts by going back to the classics quoting Aristotle from his Metaphysics: "We consider that the architects in every profession are more estimable and know more and are wiser than the artisans, because they know the reasons of the things that are done." (from H. Tredennick, 1933). p.23. He sees the value put on the craftsman going through a series of historical stages: "drudge, slave, worthy Christian, avatar of Enlightenment, doomed relic of preindustrial past..." p.293

Denis Diderot's Encyclopedie (1751 - 1772) held the craftsman in high esteem p.88. We learn that this Enlightenment precursor of Wikipedia, subtitled 'a dictionary of the arts and crafts' had a radical political agenda embedded in the process of its production. This was expressed as the way in which work and skill and the use of tools and machines was depicted with a radical empathy towards the workers. The research process was incredibly hands-on with Diderot not only visiting workshops but trying his hand at acquiring manual skills.

Sennet says; "A, perhaps the, fundemental human limit: language is not an adequate "mirror tool" for the physical movements of the human body." p.95. Diderot used illustrations to depict decisive moments that could not easily be described in words. This is fundamental to the gap in knowledge and understanding between the classes - between the literary class and the rest who are embedded within oral culture. Even now with most people doing office jobs that are mediated with words, the recognition of way of knowing and communicating based in a corporeal oralacy persists.

"Language struggles with depicting physical action, and nowhere is this struggle more evident than in language that tells us what to do." p.179

"Our Enlightenment ancestors believed that Nature furnished humanity at large with the intelligence to do good work; they saw the human being as a capable animal; demands for greater equality depended on this conviction. Modern society tends to emphasize differences in ability; the 'skills economy' constantly seeks to separate smart from stupid people. Our Enlightenment forebears had it right, at least as it concerns craftsmanship. We share in common and in roughly equal measure the raw abilities that allow us to become good craftsmen; it is the motivation and aspiration for quality that takes people along different paths in their lives. Social conditions shape these motivations. " p.241

Possibly his optimism gets to be plain idealistic when, for instance, it is applied to the holy cow of John Ruskin who he sees as exhorting "artisans to reassert their claim on societies respect". Ignoring the context of his Romantic to rightwing agenda. Later he conflates Dewey, Ruskin and Morris who are apparently all saying that:
"Good craftsmanship implies socialism."p.288. Really he could make a better, less romantic case for saying that, but he doesn't, he can only show a weak empathy with this historical echo. A strength of the book may be that his sense of craft encompases a wider sense of production than that of Morris.

He has much to say about 'the Intelligent Hand' p.149 The key ability is that of
prehension... which consists of anticipation, contact, description, refection. (referring to Raymond Tallis) In my study Sense-Think-Act manual dexterity was a basic category. But my desire for a simple ontology may have missed some of the eye/brain/muscle loops that go to make dexterity.
"The full scenario of practice sessions that improve skills is thus: prepare, dwell in mistakes, recover form. In this narrative, fit-for-purpose is achieved rather than preconcieved." p.161
"Development of an intelligent hand does show something like a linear progression. The hand needs to be sensitised at the fingertip, enabling it to reason about touch. Once this is achieved problems of coordination can be addressed. Integration of hand, wrist and forearm then teaches lessons of minimum force. Once these are learned, the hand can work with the eye to look ahead physically, to anticipate and so to sustain concentration." p.238

He recognises that the most subtle mental abilities like intuition, are part of craft ability.
"How intuitive leaps happen.... They occur in 4 stages." p.209
1. a sense that what isn't could come into being. reformating...
2. establish adjacency. bring stuff together.
3. comparison by 'dredging up tacit knowledge'. suprises appear.
4. recognition of a practical result - with aura/ wonder. brought back down to earth.

So here he implies that the intellectual might also be a 'craft' worker. If she can be freed from the historical class baggage of the literati, the intellectual might be able to return to the working class. The radical difficulties of this argument in which the hand is no longer the sensual appendage of discovery are not explored. What is then 'stuff'? and how is intuition 'brought down to earth'? He suggests some answers earlier when he talks of being 'aroused' by materials - in three ways: altering, marking and identifying them with ourselves (p.144). Also a kind of intellectual that argues from the empirical.

The idea is easier to develop if an investigative tool is involved: "Three tools, the telescope, the microscope and the scalpel - challenged the medieval view of humanities place in the world" p.195

"Closer to modern times.... the amateur's foraging curiosity seeming of less value than specialised knowledge. Yet the expert has few strong rituals to bind him or her to the larger community or indeed to colleagues." p.246

We have to remember that Sennett's prime manual craft is that of a musician. His early potential in this direction having been cruelly ended by an injury.

He even applies his ideas of craft to social organisation.
"The well-crafted organisation will focus on whole human beings in time, it will encourage mentoring, and it will demand standards framed in language that any person in the organisation might understand." p.249. "The capacities of our bodies to shape physical things are the same capacities we draw on in social relations." p290
Is this could be taken as a blueprint for a workers control, worker management. But left hanging as it is by Sennett it can be ammunition for the libertarian management froth.

Defining craft ability
He compares the design obsession of Ludwig Wittgenstein as architect with his more pragmatic contemporary Adolf Loos... p.262
From this he deduces some guidelines:
* "The good craftsman knows the importance of the sketch- that is, not knowing quite what you are about when you begin."
* See that "positive value on contingency and constraint" problems can be reformulated as opportunities.
* Recognise that there may be a 'measure of incompleteness' in the object.
* Avoid perfectionism!
* Know when to stop.
He makes the relation of craftwork being close to play. Improvising to establish consistent, tested collaboratively agreed rules...
"play is .... a school for learning to increase complexity." p.272

"Three basic abilities are the foundation of craftsmanship." p. 277
1. 'make a matter concrete' - focus with eye of fingertip
2. explore its qualities.
3. 'expand its sense' 'open up a problem' being always open to do things differently. Adapting from other domains of skill...

Avoiding class
He does back flips to avoid talking about class... in spite of this he says things that are useful in understanding class oppression:
"The innate abilities on which craftsmanship is based are not exceptional; they are shared in common by the large majority of human beings in roughly equal measure." p.277. "...the basic capabilities to specify, question, and open up. These are widely diffused amongst human beings rather than restricted to an elite." p.291
He provides a good summary and critique of IQ intelligence testing as completely contrary to the skills required by his very expanded concept of craft work. One of the main characters in the development of IQ testing was the leading eugenicist, Lewis Terman who developed the original model of Binet and Simon c1915 "wanted to identify the exceptionally stupid and to sterilise them". p.281. Of course IQ was successful in becoming the dominant concept of what intelligence was.

Sennett reckons the best critic of IQ is Howard Gardner, who added touch, movement, hearing and the ability to communicate with others, and to be self-reflective, to give an expanded concept of intelligence. Intelligence is seen as more embodied, more complex and diverse that the unitary figure represented by the IQ score.

"Rather than mental resource, the craftsman is more likely to be threatened by emotional mismanagement of the drive to do good work; society can collude in that mismanagement or seek to rectify it. These are the reasons why I've argued ... that motivation is a more important issue than talent in consummating craftsmanship." p. 285

Here he seems to slide away from a more radical conclusion. What about his own 'The Hidden Injuries of Class' (1993)? It is those hurts that often give rise to the emotional mismanagement of our selves. This cannot be reduced to motivation although that is central.

My conclusion:
He is a reformer rather than a revolutionary... he seems not to have the courage of his convictions - and as a governor at LSE perhaps he is now too embedded in the academic establishment to put his head above the parapet. "In a modern economy, dislocation is a permanent fact." p.268 His idea that everyone can govern themselves and so become good 'citizens' p.269 sounds a bit closer to David Cameron than anarcho syndicalism.

On the other hand: he most radical moment is his proposal that:
"Nearly everyone can become a good craftsman." p.268
"Modern society sorts people along a strict gradient of ability. The better you are at something, the fewer of you there are." "Craftsmanship doesn't fit into this framework.... the rhythmn of routine in craftsmanship draws on childhood experiences of play, and almost all children can play well. The dialogue with materials in craftsmanship is unlikely to be charted by intelligence tests; again, most people are able to reason well about their physical sensations." p.268

He appeals for the dignity of manual work even if he has to do it with classic allusions.
"The mis-shapen figure of Hephaestus is meant to suggest that material domestic civilisation will never satisfy the desire for glory; that is his defect." p292. Sennett's last word is that he is "the most dignified person we can become." p296

Postscript 9-11-12
"Looking back to their origins in the late 18th century as a summary of the key elements of a rounded education, the Three Rs referred to “reading, wroughting and arithmetic” – ie, literacy, numeracy and making things. “Writing” came in as a replacement under the Victorians as a reflection of the primacy of the written word, and there has been a continuing tendency to ghettoise the arts as either a vocational activity or a hobby."
C.Frayling 8 Nov 2012 letter in London Evening Standard

Bibliography

Gardner, Howard. 'Frames of Mind: the theory of multiple intelligences' Basic Books NY 1983
Sudnow, David. 'Ways of the Hand' MIT 2001
Tallis, Raymond. 'The Hand: a philosophical enquiry in human being' Edinburgh UP 2003

NB I read a Penguin version of 'The Craftsman' that was given away free with the Times newspaper c the end of 2009.

[weaverannie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bij het lezen van veel boeken heb je het gevoel, dat je bepaalde zinnen moet opschrijven in een citatenboekje. Je bent het hartgrondig eens of oneens met het geschrevene, maar in elk geval wil je het onthouden.
Bij dit boek kan je aan de gang blijven. En in de meeste gevallen was ik het eens met de schrijver.
Hij breekt een lans voor de vakman, die in de moderne tijd steeds minder gewaardeerd wordt. Vaak kijken mensen zelfs neer op handwerk. Sennett geeft aan, wat nodig is voor goed vakmanschap. Daarvoor gaat hij terug in de geschiedenis, te beginnen met de oude Grieken en Romeinen, tot aan de huidige tijd. Het aantal namen en voorbeelden duizelen de lezer soms, maar toch gaf het geheel een goed inzicht in deze geschiedenis.
Wat me aansprak was de genoemde noodzaak iets goed te leren. Handwerk doe je niet zo maar 'even'. Vaardigheden moeten geleerd en langzaam ingeslepen worden. Hoe groter die vaardigheden worden, hoe beter het afgeleverde werk wordt. Tegenwoordig denkt men, dat alles snel moet gaan en kennis kan ook tot ons komen via de computer. Een misvatting.
Het voert te ver om alles uit dit boek te vermelden, maar ik vond het lezen ervan heel inspirerend.

[gacer · Rating 3 out of 5]

“hem doğal kaynaklar hem iklim değişikliği bakımından büyük ölçüde biz insanların imal ettiği maddi bir krizle yüz yüze geliyoruz. pandora mitolojisi şimdi artık kendi yıkımımızın dünyevi bir sembolü haline gelmiştir. işte bu maddi krizle baş etmek için hem imal ettiğimiz şeyleri hem bunları kullanış şeklimizi değiştirmeye mecburuz. binaların yapımında ve ulaşımda farklı tarzları öğrenmeye ve bizleri tutumlu olmaya alıştıran ritüelleri tasarlamaya ihtiyaç duyacağız. çevrenin iyi zanaatkârları olmaya da ihtiyaç duyacağız.“

[Sibel Aglamaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zanaatkarın hikayesi emek ve istek dolu. Sennett bunu çok güzel vurguluyor.

Kitap boyunca, kuyumcuların gezginliği, atölyelerdeki usta-çırak sinerjisi, loncaların sosyal önemi ya da yazılımcıların emek örgütlenmesi gibi pek çok konuyu öğreniyoruz. Sonra zanaatkarın makineleşme ile başlayan toplumsal dönüşümlerle birlikte, 'mekanik bir işçi/robot' ya da 'bireysellik odaklı bir sanatçıya' evrilmesinin hikayesini dinliyoruz.

Belki de kitabın en ilginç yerlerinden birisi, duyuların, özellikle dokunmanın, insan psikolojisi, dili ve haliyle zanaat içindeki etkisini gösterdiği bölümler. Misal bir konuyu kavramanın, bir şeyi avucumuzda tutabilmekle ilişkini görüyor ve bir zanaatkar ya da bir insan için 'dokunarak anlamanın' ve ellerin önemi üzerine düşünmeye başlıyoruz.

Kitap, zanaatkarın içimizdeki ve geçmişimizdeki yerini o kadar güzel gösteriyor ki, bu yeni peyda olan narsist sanatçıyı biraz güdük ve eksik bulmaya başlıyoruz. Haliyle günümüzün 'ölmüş kabul edilen ya da dışlanan zanaatkar'ını 'sanatçı kimliği' içinde tekrar diriltmenin yollarını arıyoruz.

Sennett'in satırları biterken, ister sanat ister zanaat ister yemek ister aşk için olsun fark etmez; mükemmeli değil hatayı, mekanikliği değil merağı, kibri değil paylaşmayı önceliklemek kalıyor aklımızda.

[Pierre-Olivier · Rating 2 out of 5]

Arreté au milieu de la 2 ieme partie. Cet oeuvre se veut un ode à l’artisanat et sa culture à travers les âges. Y sont présenter ses forme épistémologiques , philosophique et sont système de valeur. Intéressant mais sans plus, m’a laisser sur ma faim et écrit d’une façons ou l’intérêt se perd.

[Natalie]

A philosophical inquiry in the nature of skill-building, which is too simplistic of a summary to do justice to the numerous fascinating facets of this book. I continue to dwell on its ideas long after I’ve finished it, particularly on the implications for how work is approached in a society that objectifies human efforts and work ethic. A perspective-shifting text that I’ll undoubtedly consult again.

[Elias · Rating 2 out of 5]

¡Hola a tod@s! Por aquí hay uno aprovechando estas fechas para retomar alguna lectura inacabada. Por fin he acabado “El artesano” de Richard Sennett.
Libro interesante que realza una figura prácticamente en extinción como es la del artesano. Richard Sennett nos recuerda la importancia de la implicación y compromiso en aras del trabajo bien hecho. El libro hace un recorrido a través de la historia de cómo ha evolucionado el concepto de artesano. Nos muestra la progresiva deshumanización que ha invadido el trabajo de hoy en día y cómo las máquinas se han convertido en el método para lograr controlar a las masas necesarias para poner en marcha las industrias, alejando a los trabajadores de su saber hacer y adoctrinándolos en la cultura del salario.
Hace ya más de un año que inicié “El artesano” y lo he ido retomando en diversas ocasiones sin llegar a engancharme del todo. Con unas 370 páginas se ha convertido en una lectura interesante pero un poco larga, alternando pasajes muy didácticos con otros excesivamente recargados y en mi opinión superfluos.
¡Que el nuevo año os depare grandes viajes literarios!

[Bonsai · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought the book under the mistaken impression that it was a historical examination of craftsmen, guilds and there place in society.

The first pages made it clear I was very mistaken. So I put it to back of my shelf for many years.

Especially the first chapters are a chore. Not only do I personally not really care about the various modern day philosophers but the edition I had was obviously not one that had a thorough copy reading. There's the well known phenomenon of ghost sentences. You write a text, you correct parts, then you change your mind again but in the process parts of the old sentence aren't deleted or corrected and it's actually possible to guess what the original wording was. In a quick email or once in a book that's one thing but this book has whole chapters made up of one after the other. And in a book that speaks of the drive of perfection the craftsmen has and specifically includes writers in this group that's more than sloppy.

I did find some interesting thoughts in the book but they could be condensed to the length of an article or two in a magazine.

[Chris Esposo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that uniquely takes from the arts, the history of technology, the history of labor, engineering philosophy, and even a bit of career self-help, "The Craftsman" is relevant today, post the era of industrialization and mechanized mass-production, but still not yet in the era of the AI-dominated automation. It follows the history of the craftsman, from right before the craft guilds-system of the medieval world in Europe, to the start of industrialization in England and France, and onward to our modern era.

Craftsmanship is the skill of making things well. Most importantly, a craftsman wants to do things well for the sake of doing it well. The notion of profit or other material gain, is of tangential import to the craftsman. It is an idea that is foreign to much of modern management theory, where things are measured by profit-informed metrics, or profit itself, as the main metric of target. This book elucidates the history of this idea, and the class of people who followed it throughout time, and who still do believe in it now. In fact, once one has come to appreciate this difference between engaging in a "craft" and work, they will see the dichotomy everywhere in history and life. For instance, I am currently reading a book on John Boyd, the noted thinker in modern military air warfare tactics, and I was able to identify a craft/work struggle in the difference between the fighter-pilot's mentality and the bomber's mentality. As that book's author points out, the fighter pilot viewed their skill as a craft, something to hone in on, something to master, and to break the envelop in. Whereas, many bomber pilots (or air commanders as they were known as in Boyd's time) often viewed their job more as husbanding along a delivery. Many schisms and groupings of various internal work cultures can probably be contextualized in some respects as a variant of these dichotomies.

The book is definitely not just a history of this notion though, it's a philosophical investigation of the meaning of craft, and the nature of skills, and how it was, and currently is built. Especially insightful towards the end of the book was the discussion of how repetition factors into skill/craft building, and that this is something that makes trade-skills different from "skills" used in a more colloquial manner, often linked in the west with innate/inherent talents (say skills in mathematics), but who's acquisition may not actually be entirely (or even mostly) innate in reality.

As one of the case-studies early on, the text introduces the reader to the notion of the craftsman programmer, specifically those who work on Linux, which is probably the closest thing to a "true" craft that exist in our modern era that still pays well. Other well-paid crafts include cooking. Though not covered in the book, in the past 4 - 5 years there has been something of a burgeoning renaissance in the west of "craft" manufacturing. Everything to simple wood-cuts, to "craftsman" toys, like action figures, things that were relegated to the domain of mass-production 30 - 40 years ago. This re-emergence is not to hard to understand as a response to an era of blind accumulation of capital as an ends-of-itself. Those who have achieved some modicum of success in this goal have often found their lives post achievement of monetary comfort/well-being/safety somewhat empty. Here, the notion of a craft, of an everlasting journey to mastery, is both attractive, and rewarding, in ways that are often not appreciated by mass-production culture.

While reading this book, two books came to mind, "The Memory Code" by Lynne Kelly, which I read a few years ago, and more recently, "The Technology Trap". Kelly makes the connection of pre-literate societies engaging in ritual dance, and the improvement of memory. In effect, that body movement enabled information-encoding to occur much smoother because of the organization of our minds, and it's connection to our nervous system. This connection with kinesthetics is also made in "The Craftsman", where the author makes several points during his discussion of repetition, as well as the section on the craftsman link to his tools towards the end of the book, that acquiring a skill, is definitely linked to motion, as well as wielding a tool. Whereas innovation, is a kind of drive derived from the "misuse" or re-appropriate current tools to new applications, and being unable to "square the peg" so-to-speak. This can be thought of both literally and metaphysically, as tools can be both mental or material (like a theorem or function say).

Likewise, Carl Benedikt Frey, the author of "The Technology Trap" spend much of the first 1/3 of his book outlining the relationship between the craft-skills and pre-industrial labor's relationship with machinery, which also has a chapter dedicated to it in "The Craftsman". That chapter, and the section on it in Frey's text complement each other well, and I'd probably assign them both in a course on the changing nature of work, or labor history taken from a multi-disciplinary approach.
Though I understood the book on this first reading, there's certainly things that have already escaped me, which I will want to retain. I think this book merits at least two readings, with ideal knowledge retention slightly more difficult to achieve given the lack of a singular narrative, and it being a bridge across many different interrelated, but distinct ideas across so many different domains.

It's eclectic selection of topics and it's relevance to our era makes it an easy recommend.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman Explains Our Current Expertise Crisis

Why do expert predictions keep failing while practical adaptations keep succeeding?

I've been tracking this pattern across domains: AI researchers confident about artificial general intelligence while workers quietly discover ChatGPT helps structure client presentations; fusion physicists announcing breakthroughs while the technology remains perpetually "almost ready"; policy experts debating digital transformation frameworks while small businesses just start using whatever tools solve Tuesday's problems.

The disconnect isn't accidental. It reveals something fundamental about how knowledge actually develops versus how we think it should. And Richard Sennett's The Craftsman, published in 2009, provides the clearest framework I've found for understanding why this split keeps widening, and why it matters more than we realise.

The Head-Hand Split

Sennett's central insight is deceptively simple: we've created a false opposition between thinking and making, between abstract knowledge and embodied skill. What he calls the "intelligent hand" represents a different kind of understanding: knowledge that emerges through sustained engagement with resistant materials, tools, and problems.

The craftsman develops expertise not by accumulating theoretical frameworks but through thousands of hours of responsive adjustment to how materials actually behave. A skilled carpenter doesn't just know wood grain patterns abstractly; they feel how different woods respond to pressure, understand through touch when a joint is properly seated, develop intuitive timing for when glue has reached the right tackiness.

This embodied knowledge can't be fully abstracted without loss. Try explaining to someone how to ride a bicycle using only words, or capture a master chef's understanding of when bread dough has been kneaded enough. The knowledge exists in the interaction between person, tool, and material: not in any individual component.

But here's what makes Sennett's analysis particularly relevant now: he shows how institutional pressures systematically exclude this embodied knowledge when it threatens clean narratives or challenges abstract authority.

The Pattern in Practice

Consider the AI researcher I described elsewhere who became confused when confronted with evidence that intelligence emerges through networks rather than individual capability. When presented with detailed examples and research citations, their final response was: "Are you using AI to write this? Is this a bit?"

This isn't intellectual failure; it's what happens when someone tries to navigate new reality using old conceptual tools. The researcher was operating from a framework where intelligence is a measurable property that entities possess. The commenter was working from an understanding of intelligence as distributed, emergent, relational. Both perspectives explain some phenomena well, but only one was grounded in practical experience with how these systems actually function.

Sennett would recognise this immediately. It's the same pattern he identifies when examining how the "eye of the master" emerged during industrialisation. As skilled labor became abstracted and systematised, supervisory oversight developed to monitor and control what could no longer be directly understood. But the eye of the master only works when there's consensus about what should be seen and how to interpret those observations.

The AI governance debates reveal the same dynamic. While researchers debate abstract capabilities and policymakers design regulation around hypothetical risks, there's already a practical revolution happening. The 15-year-old using image generators for movie storyboards, the teacher discovering ChatGPT helps with lesson planning, the paralegal finding AI drafts better contracts than junior associates—they're developing craft knowledge about how these systems actually work.

But this practical knowledge gets systematically excluded from official discussions. It's too messy, too context-dependent, too difficult to abstract into policy frameworks.

This pattern has deep historical roots. In Leviathan and the Air-Pump, Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer show how Robert Boyle's experimental demonstrations at the 1660s Royal Society created what became the template for modern expertise: witnessed consensus among gentlemen observers, with the craftsmen who built and operated the instruments systematically erased from the performance.

Boyle's air-pump experiments didn't just demonstrate natural phenomena—they created a new way of producing authoritative knowledge through theatrical consensus. The pump made visible effects that lay beyond ordinary perception, but this required elaborate staging. Gentlemanly witnesses agreed on what they had seen, their consensus became truth, and royal patronage made the performance politically safe by making it appear politically neutral.

Most crucially, the performance required systematic forgetting. The instrument-makers possessed irreplaceable knowledge about materials, failure modes, and how to make the apparatus actually work. But their embodied expertise couldn't be gentlemanly, so it was erased from the public demonstration. The air-pump's authority depended on appearing to speak for nature directly, not through the mediation of craftsmen's hands.

Sennett shows how this exclusion of craft knowledge has persisted and intensified. The people developing actual fluency with AI tools find their understanding dismissed by the very experts most confident about the technology's trajectory, just as Boyle's instrument-makers were written out of experimental philosophy. The performance of expertise requires clean narratives that embodied knowledge threatens to complicate.

The High Modernist Trap

This connects to a deeper pattern that James C. Scott analysed in Seeing Like a State: how abstract, simplified models systematically exclude the contextual knowledge that makes complex systems actually work. Scott shows how high modernist schemes—scientific forestry, planned cities, collectivised agriculture—fail because they replace local, practical wisdom (what he calls "metis") with legible but fragile abstractions.

Sennett's craftsman possesses exactly what Scott means by metis: contextual knowledge that emerges through sustained engagement with how things actually behave. The carpenter's understanding of wood grain, the blacksmith's feel for metal temperature, the baker's timing for fermentation—this knowledge can't be fully abstracted into formal rules without crucial information being lost.

The renewable energy transition reveals this pattern operating at infrastructure scale. Traditional electrical grids embodied a kind of collective metis: synchronous generators that "saw" system state directly through rotating mass, grid operators who understood failure modes through decades of experience, informal networks of engineers who knew which equipment was actually reliable despite what the specifications claimed.

The smart grid project attempts to replace this illegible but robust system with something cleaner and more controllable: standardised digital interfaces, algorithmic optimisation, centralised monitoring. This transition from direct to indirect perception creates exactly the coordination failures Scott predicted.

When Spain's grid collapsed in April 2025, the cascade of competing explanations—utilities blamed operators, operators blamed generators, official probes blamed everyone—revealed what happens when simplified, legible systems fail. Multiple competing authorities emerged because no single model could capture what the illegible traditional system had been doing automatically.

The grid engineers who warned about renewable integration challenges—loss of inertia, frequency stability problems, voltage control issues—possessed irreplaceable metis about how these systems actually behave. But their knowledge was systematically excluded from policy discussions because it threatened clean institutional narratives about the energy transition. Like Scott's traditional farmers whose sophisticated understanding of local ecosystems was dismissed by agricultural modernisers, the engineers' embodied expertise was seen as politically inconvenient rather than technically essential.

Thomas Hobbes opposed Boyle's experimental method not on technical grounds but because he foresaw its political consequences. If truth becomes a matter of staged performance rather than sovereign decree, what happens when multiple stages compete for the same audience? Hobbes predicted the war of all against all would relocate to the witness stand.

His diagnosis was remarkably astute. Today we have exactly what he feared: peer review competing with preprints competing with energy Twitter competing with government agencies, each staging truth for different audiences with equal confidence but incompatible frameworks. Google, ChatGPT, grid operators, and standards bodies all perform expertise using Boyle's theatrical template, but the consensus-forming performance has escaped institutional control and proliferated everywhere.

But Hobbes missed the recursive trap. He feared competing authorities but didn't foresee that attempts to restore unified authority would only accelerate fragmentation. We demand more expertise precisely because we trust it less—and each demand for better expertise makes expertise more political. When expertise becomes contested, the response is always to call for more technical solutions, which inevitably makes science more political.

The result is what Gil Eyal calls the "pushmi-pullyu" of modern expertise: simultaneous reliance and skepticism, escalating together. Every attempt to fix the legitimacy crisis through better institutional performance only deepens the crisis by creating new stages for contestation.

Beyond the Performance

If consensus is impossible and authority is permanently contested, how do we maintain contact with reality? Sennett suggests we need what might be called "hybrid perception"—arrangements that combine embodied knowledge with computational augmentation without privileging either exclusively.

Consider how modern aviation actually works. Commercial pilots combine instrument readings with embodied feel for aircraft behaviour—understanding how a plane "wants" to fly that can't be captured in flight management computers. Air traffic controllers mix radar data with experiential knowledge of weather patterns and traffic flows. Neither purely human judgment nor purely automated systems can handle the complexity safely. The effectiveness emerges from dynamic interaction between direct embodied knowledge and indirect computational analysis.

This suggests a different approach to expertise: systems that work despite permanent disagreement about what they mean or who's in charge. The goal isn't eliminating interpretive disputes but designing coordination that functions anyway.

Emergency responders already do this. Firefighters and paramedics combine years of embodied experience with real-time digital information. They don't wait for expert consensus about optimal strategies—they respond to immediate conditions using hybrid perception that integrates direct sensory contact with digital augmentation.

The Craftsman's Relevance

Sennett's framework helps explain why the practical adaptations succeed while the expert predictions fail. The consultant who discovers AI helps structure client presentations isn't implementing a theory about artificial intelligence—they're developing craft knowledge through sustained engagement with the tool's actual capabilities and limitations. They learn through repetition, adjustment, failure, and refinement—exactly the process Sennett describes.

Meanwhile, the experts debating AI safety frameworks operate in pure abstraction, divorced from the daily practice of making these systems work reliably. Their knowledge, however sophisticated, lacks the grounding that comes from sustained engagement with resistant materials.

This isn't anti-intellectual. Sennett shows how the best craftspeople combine embodied skill with reflective analysis. The master carpenter understands both the feel of properly seasoned wood and the principles of structural engineering. But the integration happens through practice, not through choosing one mode of knowing over another.

The Craftsman matters now because we're living through a moment when abstract expertise keeps failing while practical knowledge keeps succeeding, but we lack conceptual tools to understand why. Sennett provides those tools—not as nostalgic romance for pre-industrial craft production, but as analysis of how knowledge actually develops in complex systems.

The book reveals that our expertise crisis isn't really about information or credibility. It's about the systematic exclusion of embodied knowledge from institutional decision-making. Until we create arrangements that honour both abstract analysis and craft wisdom, we'll keep getting expert predictions that miss reality while practical adaptations quietly build the future.

The revolution isn't replacement of old expertise with new expertise. It's learning to coordinate effectively despite permanent disagreement about what we're building or why it matters. Sennett shows us how: through patient attention to what actually works, sustained engagement with resistant materials, and respect for the intelligent hand.

4/5. Essential reading for anyone trying to understand why expertise keeps fragmenting while practical knowledge keeps succeeding.

[Maite Mateos · Rating 4 out of 5]

El sociólogo y pensador norteamericano de la corriente pragmática, alumno de Hanna Arendt, Richard Sennett reflexiona sobre el significado de la artesanía en este ensayo publicado en el 2008, primer volumen de una trilogía que dedica a lo que ha llamado “cultura material”.
Porque, ¿qué entendemos exactamente por artesanía?, se pregunta.
Y es que en el fondo es una pregunta que va más allá de lo puramente técnico, económico y material, puesto que argumenta Sennett, la artesanía es una manera de entender la vida, una manera de entender el mundo, dado que para él un artesano es alguien que se dedica a hacer bien su trabajo por el simple hecho de hacerlo bien. Y lo ejemplifica a través de toda una serie de profesiones, desde el técnico de taller o laboratorio, el artista (Sennett tiene también una carrera como músico chelista), hasta el directivo o el diseñador de sistemas informáticos.
Sennett nos guía a través de la historia, pasando por el pensamiento capitalista y marxista, reflexionando sobre las jerarquías, para enfrentarnos a la visión de lo humano, de los actos humanos como una conducta activa respecto a la naturaleza. Tomamos la materia prima que la naturaleza nos ofrece y la transformamos. Actuamos, trabajamos y modificamos la naturaleza, la realidad, pero podemos escoger entre hacerlo desde el respeto o desde el egoísmo total. Y es que actuar y trabajar también modifica lo humano, condiciona al individuo, lo sitúa en un cosmos social, donde hay que pasar por un proceso de aprendizaje, de desarrollo de habilidades y técnicas en base a repeticiones continuadas, en base a un diálogo continuado con los demás, que implica también adquirir habilidades sociales…
Sin embargo, durante el Renacimiento se inició una separación entre el arte y el oficio que dio lugar a una separación entre el maestro y el aprendiz, una incomunicación entre el conocimiento implícito y explícito, un cambio acelerado hacia una mentalidad cada vez más individualista. Durante la ilustración y el romanticismo surgieron nuevos dilemas a través de la relación entre la máquina y el directivo-trabajador-artesano, olvidando que la artesanía es una actitud que nada tiene que ver con las herramientas, las máquinas o las técnicas que se utilizan a la hora de ponerse manos a la obra.
El concepto de artesanía de Sennett pone en el centro al trabajador, al artesano y no al objeto modificado, puesto que primar un objeto modificado sobre el trabajador mismo implica una cosificación del trabajo y una deshumanización del trabajador que ha marcado la economía y el pensamiento a lo largo de la historia.
El problema, insiste Sennett, no son las máquinas, ni la tecnificación que persigue la innovación y la sofisticación. El problema se centra en esa nefasta mentalidad que busca obtener resultados rápidos y económicos por encima de la calidad. Despreciar la destreza, la calidad, las habilidades de un oficio, es lo que nos está conduciendo al colapso como sociedad, a la frustración, a la impostura, pues el auténtico productor-trabajador-artesano es el que se implica a fondo en su trabajo, el que persigue la calidad. El amor al trabajo bien hecho constituye la base de la ética artesana, que puede estar presente en cualquier actividad laboral humana, en el directivo y propietario de una factoría y en el operario de menor categoría.
Habla Sennett también del tema del perfeccionismo vicioso y patológico, diferenciándolo de la obsesión saludable por el trabajo bien hecho, dado que perseguir la calidad no debe confundirse con la manía de un perfeccionismo inexistente e ilusorio.
En definitiva, el concepto de artesanía de Sennett se caracteriza por la idea de que el trabajo ha de estar impelido por la calidad, calidad en las técnicas, la calidad en los materiales, acompañado por la imaginación, la curiosidad y el respeto a todo y a todos los que nos rodean. Es un pensamiento que convierte al directivo-trabajador-artesano en un ciudadano honrado, fiable y ejemplar, pues defiende Sennet que el buen trabajo es lo que modela la buena ciudadanía.

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