If boring labor is a threat to one’s humanity, it stands to reason that interesting labor can be a form of redemption. The Victorian sage John Ruskin helped invent the modern cult of the craftsman: he was both an idealist and an aesthete, and he argued that miserable workers produced miserable work, and vice versa. In “The Craftsman,” Sennett portrays Ruskin as a quirky and quixotic radical, sensitive to the intricate demands of great craftsmanship, and hopeful that the glories of Venetian architecture might help inspire workers to resist the ravages of “mechanical domination.” Yet the call to craft is in some ways a conservative call: it asks workers to seek fulfillment through personal diligence, not politics.
Fast bikes, slow food, and the workplace wars: Kelefa Sanneh for The New Yorker.
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From jeffmacintyre.com: Fast bikes, slow food, and the workplace wars http://bit.ly/8mZC5
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