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[…] who we are rises directly from what our bodies can do. Social consequences are built into the structure and the functioning of the human body, as in the workings of the human hand. […] Craftsmanship shows the continuum between the organic and the social put in action. (Richard Sennett, The Craftsman, p. 290)

Richard Sennett: The Craftsman, Penguin Books 2008

What is the similarity between food preparation, childrearing, the Linux operative system, the Israeli West Bank barrier, carpentry, politics and visual art? They are all instances of craft, claims the sociologist and philosopher Richard Sennett, in his book The Craftsman (2008). All these activities can be seen and understood via a concept of action that sees ‘a good piece of work’ as the ultimate aim– regardless of culture or the stage one is at in life.

The tremendous differences between areas such as those mentioned above do not in any way weaken Sennett’s book: Quite the contrary, they give his views extra force: he does not moor his thinking to any particular category of object or practice, but puts his thinking into circulation in and between many of life’s areas. His starting point is not the physical forming of material per se, for craftsmanship, he asserts, can just as easily apply to immaterial things. This flexible, non-discriminatory approach prevents his concept of craftsmanship from becoming self-reflexive and fixated, and opens up for further use – the reader’s use. Thus Sennett’s book becomes an expression of outstanding conceptual craftsmanship – and a useful toolkit for further thinking.

Tellingly enough, the introductory trope for his project centres on the relation between the head and the hand. Abstract thinking, Sennett says, is not radically different from manual labour. Quite the contrary, there is a tactile element in each and every philosophy, just as there is a philosophy mixed into each and every type of concrete, materially-based work. For example, when one learns to play the violin, it is not a purely technical exercise or form of learning that defines what one does, but a deliberate participation in an understanding of the violin’s function in the context of cultural history, not least of its place within the discourse called ‘music’. ‘Music’ one could argue, is also a kind of instrument, just as much as the violin is. But it has a more complex area of use than the specific musical instrument. Nevertheless, one could not use ‘music’ as an instrument if the violin and the manufacturing of it were not already in place. Such systems of abstract and concrete relations exist at all levels in society and human life. It is, says Sennett, simply a matter of keeping up with how they are bound together in a two-fold figure consisting of the abstract and the concrete, the hand and the head.

The advantage of Sennet’s view – of viewing oneself and the world as a network of flexible instrument-systems –redoubles one’s focus on the future, on what is possible, on what lies ahead – and weakens the sense of hopelessness over lost possibilities. This perspective sounds like a holistic philosophy of life, and one is indeed entitled to call it that, but it is probably more correct to call it a practically-oriented philosophy of difference. This is not ontology or metaphysics or any kind of totalizing thought system. Neither is it formalism. It is not so much a claim about the nature of the world or individual aspects of it, as it is a sketch for how the welter of different situations that arise in the course of living are handled by an individual. More specifically, Sennett’s philosophy outlines the status of actions when they are seen in relation to their immediate environment, or, using more structural terminology, it sketches how concrete practices unfold as forward-looking exchanges between concrete and the abstract phenomena.

Sennett’s book therefore offers a number of approaches to the question of what craftsmanship is or should be. Having said this, two aspects seem most salient. The first is Sennett’s focus on average, unoriginal things; this focus has to do with the collective – society – and the culture of sharing and participation. The second aspect has to do with exceptional or outstandingly talented individuals. Sennett does not deny their existence – they are the ones who innovate in a field. His concern, then, is with how a body of knowledge is either hidden from others – in a concept about uniqueness or genius – or shared through teaching.

There are cases where a body of knowledge is encrypted, rendered unavailable, seemingly hidden under an exceptionally talented individual’s signature. Sennett calls this the ‘Stradivarius syndrome’, and it is of little use for the spread of knowledge and insight. Only by showing the components of production – how the parts are produced and put together – can a student can see what the knowledge actually consists of. Yet there is more: by making deliberate mistakes and showing the student the effects of the mistakes, then doing the procedure correctly, the student can see the deft gestures that lead to the desired result.

Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737), the world-famous luthier, had tacit knowledge in his fingers. It was silent and implicit to the extent that he was unable to ‘reset’ it to a stage before his talent was perfected. He failed to systematically stage a form of uncertainty which would have enabled him to pass along his production techniques to the next generation. Even though Antonio’s two sons, Omobono and Francesco, lived off of their father’s famous name and produced their own instruments for some years after his death, the actual virtuoso knowledge of violin-making was, alas, unknown to anyone but Antonio. The business, of course, eventually went bust. If one is unable to dramatize one’s knowledge in teaching situations – something Stradivarious did not manage – the knowledge will be limited to the ‘genius’. It will be impenetrable, unknown – a myth. This is what happened with Stradivarius, thus the name ‘the Stradivarius syndrome’.

The interesting point here is not the deconstruction of originality as such, although this too is instructive, but how the myth of unprecedented knowledge is actually asocial, isolating and hostile to progress. Towards the end of the book, Sennett gives another example that expands the syndrome’s explanatory power: at a sushi bar in New York, he meets a group of Japanese who are extremely critical towards American manufacturing. The Japanese model, they claim, is far closer to perfection and traditional craftsmanship. But, says Sennett, this better-than-thou attitude seldom helps improve local crafting traditions. Instead, it consolidates an already-delimited group’s exclusivity.

Holding onto myths about originality not only locks up existing knowledge that could have benefited the wider society; it also maintains mechanisms of social exclusion. By saying this, Sennett links the concept of craftsmanship to larger social and cultural models that can be very complex. I will not dwell on the relationship between the Japanese and their local society, but the point – and we can obviously learn from it – is how concrete practices, individual tools and the production of these tools are all part of larger social formations that are extensions or developments of more local craft practices. Another example – moving in the opposite geographical direction – is Apple’s reluctance to release open-source applications for Iphones and Mac machines if those apps differ markedly from Linux – an operative system based on collaboration, on crowdsourcing. Apple writes the exceptional, veiled and exclusive myth of genius into its software code; Linux keeps the code open, accessible, democratic.

Another aspect in The Craftsman which I find particularly interesting is the line Sennett draws between narrativity and teaching. A philosophy of learning is implicitly present here, one which many would find useful, and it is also an extended and specific framework for reflection that links literature and other narrative art forms with concrete use. Sennett’s example – clever in itself – is recipes; how a chef teaches others to prepare a particular dish. The critical issue is the chef’s self-staging. There are many opportunities for staging, and Sennett gives detailed descriptions of several of them. But one fundamental staging strategy is the narrative and its various steps – how these can clarify and explain food preparation as a craft-based event. Sennett writes:
Gastronomy is a narrative, with a beginning (raw ingredients), a middle (their combination and cooking), and an end (eating). To get the ‘secret’ of preparing unfamiliar food, the reader has to move through the narrative rather than focus on just the middle term.

Sennett’s recipe example is brilliant because, with one trope, he synthesizes the type of everyday experience he is so concerned to point out the cognitive value of. The recipe becomes a medium for building a bridge between the ‘creative’ forms of production (visual art, arts and crafts, literature, architecture, etc.) and those things normally conceived as more prosaic and anonymous (carpentry, shoe making, computer programming, cooking, etc.). Every type of practice that involves learning something new – and this pertains to most things in life – has an aspect of ‘creative’ craftsmanship. This aspect involves more than learning about the technical ritual’s larger context; it also involves the fundamentally imaginative ability to see beyond habitual practices, that is, the things one already knows how to do.

Sennett’s perspective, in other words, is pragmatic: that which is true and meaningful cannot be localized in a transcendent sphere or in a value system beyond human control. Meaning and truth come into being and are best explored from the ‘inside’, that is, through the actions we in fact perform, in everyday live. As such, Sennett champions an ideal of democratic transparency: exceptionality is not anything inexplicably different from the average person, or the everyday network of practices. It is instead a system that, in reality, should be shared within the framework of a community.

One of the most important things we can learn from Sennett is that almost all of us have the same fundamental opportunities – but that we should concentrate on setting up conditions for communal play and learning, rather than for systems based on mechanisms for exclusion and non-transparent regimes of expertise. The world – and everything in it – should be available to everyone. If this happens, we will, in all clarity, see the world as the workshop it is.

Richard Sennett: The Craftsman, Penguin Books 2008 (detail from cover)

Richard Sennett: The Craftsman, Penguin Books 2008

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