On his book Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy
Cover Interview of July 18, 2017
In a nutshell
Many blue-collar, manual labor, and service jobs that were
once low-status have become “cool” in today’s economy. In fact, jobs like
bartender, distiller, barber, and butcher have gone from providing basic services
and making mundane products to being cultural tastemakers and influencers. It
is elite versions of these jobs, namely cocktail bartenders, craft distillers,
upscale men’s barbers, and whole-animal butchers, in hip businesses that are shaping
consumer choices in cities across the country.
The most fascinating part of this shift is who has been
doing the shifting, or who has been pursuing these jobs. It’s mostly young
people with other options for work, like college graduates and people with good
jobs in other fields. They want to work in these jobs, and pursue them
as careers. And they do so at a time when the economy is largely knowledge- and
technology-based, and when jobs in high-end service and creative industries are
among the most valued and desired.
At its most general, my book addresses the question: why do
people choose the jobs that they do? Specifically, why do people who have the
choice to do so refrain from pursuing good jobs in today’s economy and instead
take up typically low-status trades?
I found a few key explanations. Primarily, they pursue the
elite versions of these jobs because they allow them to use their heads, hands,
and social skills. Like much knowledge-based work, these jobs require workers
to use cultural information to be creative. Unlike it, however, they get to do
so by using their bodies to perform craft-based tasks and provide tangible
products and services. Finally, they also get to share this knowledge with
consumers. Thus, these attributes give these jobs greater status than they
normally have. They become knowledge workers who get to learn a craft and
directly serve the public.
Readers of Masters of Craft will learn about the
unique history and characteristics of each of these four jobs, workplaces, and
industries, and the common features of these workers. Underlying the text is
the tension between the positive revival and added social benefits of these
jobs, and the negative exclusivity that surrounds them: the people who would
most benefit from these jobs—people from working-class and low-income backgrounds—do
not get them.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
In a nutshell
Many blue-collar, manual labor, and service jobs that were once low-status have become “cool” in today’s economy. In fact, jobs like bartender, distiller, barber, and butcher have gone from providing basic services and making mundane products to being cultural tastemakers and influencers. It is elite versions of these jobs, namely cocktail bartenders, craft distillers, upscale men’s barbers, and whole-animal butchers, in hip businesses that are shaping consumer choices in cities across the country.
The most fascinating part of this shift is who has been doing the shifting, or who has been pursuing these jobs. It’s mostly young people with other options for work, like college graduates and people with good jobs in other fields. They want to work in these jobs, and pursue them as careers. And they do so at a time when the economy is largely knowledge- and technology-based, and when jobs in high-end service and creative industries are among the most valued and desired.
At its most general, my book addresses the question: why do people choose the jobs that they do? Specifically, why do people who have the choice to do so refrain from pursuing good jobs in today’s economy and instead take up typically low-status trades?
I found a few key explanations. Primarily, they pursue the elite versions of these jobs because they allow them to use their heads, hands, and social skills. Like much knowledge-based work, these jobs require workers to use cultural information to be creative. Unlike it, however, they get to do so by using their bodies to perform craft-based tasks and provide tangible products and services. Finally, they also get to share this knowledge with consumers. Thus, these attributes give these jobs greater status than they normally have. They become knowledge workers who get to learn a craft and directly serve the public.
Readers of Masters of Craft will learn about the unique history and characteristics of each of these four jobs, workplaces, and industries, and the common features of these workers. Underlying the text is the tension between the positive revival and added social benefits of these jobs, and the negative exclusivity that surrounds them: the people who would most benefit from these jobs—people from working-class and low-income backgrounds—do not get them.