6. Jana:
I saw a connection to our conversations in reading
Richard Sennett’s work and dwelling in the embodied
and tacit knowledge of the craftsman, or now,
worksman (I’m really curious as to this shift in
terminology and what it meant for identity and
making). ...
I find this interesting because I question if Pye’s
explanation of a craftsman as a worksman + technique
or apparatus works in the opposite – is a craftsman a
worksman? Does his vision differ from Sennett? Does
Sennett’s craftsman embody design as seen as
somewhat removed from Pye’s worksman? I also feel
more of an emphasis on tools or apparatus emerging in
Pye…What significance might these have on
workmanship?
Wednesday, October 16, 13
11. Karrieann:
I find this interesting because I question if Pye’s explanation of a
craftsman as a worksman + technique or apparatus works in the
opposite – is a craftsman a worksman? Does his vision differ from
Sennett? Does Sennett’s craftsman embody design as seen as
somewhat removed from Pye’s worksman? I also feel more of an
emphasis on tools or apparatus emerging in Pye…What
significance might these have on workmanship? ... Another instance
that made me think of him was: “The workman worked for himself
and not for any capitalistic employer and was accordingly master of
his work and his time” (12). Although Pye was referring to the
Middle Ages, this notion of working at a self-determined pace, or
time, seems to be relevant for our discussions of craft. How much
control of time does a “workman” have, really? There is always
some kind of deadline that one needs to meet in order to get
paid. Getting paid immediately suggests working within a capitalist
system, right?
Wednesday, October 16, 13
12. “risk has no exclusive
prerogative of quality.” (23)
Wednesday, October 16, 13
13. “The source of power
is completely irrelevant
to the risk.” (25)
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17. Lindsey:
I am still struggling to grasp how he defines technology: the
scientific study of technique. I wonder how technology is being
defined here—is it a verb? I say this because in chapter 3 “Is
anything done by hand?” Pye unpacks what it means when we talk
about workmanship done by hand and the role tools play in this
concept as well as in actual workmanship. What is interesting to
consider here is that while tools are made to be used in
workmanship, there is the workmanship of making tools. Tools
obviously do not grow on trees, but rather, they have to be made.
However, I digress from my original issue. Tools are a type of
technology much like writing is a technology or a computer is a
piece of technology. Here technology is a noun, a subject, a thing.
Technology, as I’ve always understood it, is an application of tools,
of methods, and/or of technique; I don’t think of technology as the
study of technique (which he defines as the knowledge that
informs the activity of workmanship). I recognize that might (and I
suspect) I am getting way to technical here, but Pye’s definitional
relationship between technique and technology confused me.
Wednesday, October 16, 13
29. Lindsey:
Later on in the chapter Pye discusses the importance of durability
of work because it is “imperative for each generation deliberately
to make some of its equipment so that it lasts and survives its
makers” (43). I have to agree with Pye here because isn’t this the
reason antique shops and fairs exist? Additionally, doesn’t the
passing down of furniture, family heirlooms, and wedding dresses
fall into this tradition? For example, the kitchen table in my
parents’ house is the kitchen table my mother use to sit at and eat
her breakfast every morning. Her parents gave it to her when she
and my father got married. In their bedroom is a cedar chest—
originally my grandmothers—that holds both my mother’s and my
grandmother’s wedding dress. The chest—more so than the
dresses, which are memorabilia—was made to last and was bought
with the intention of not only withstanding time, but withstanding
the generations of my family.
Wednesday, October 16, 13
30. What is the rhetorical
relationship between
craft, object, and memory?
Wednesday, October 16, 13
33. Jason:
Pye foregrounds the actual product of workmanship of the
process, but these thoughts on pleasure are important.
Workmanship that is intrinsically valuable should also be
intrinsically pleasurable. He notes that pleasure is dependent on
comfort –comfort through making a “reasonable wage” and
through working at a comfortable pace. In the second quote, I’m
drawn to the idea of pleasure being obtained by losing oneself. This
resonates with me as I think of every job I’ve ever worked or any
task I’ve enjoyed. One of the worst jobs I’ve worked was also one
of the most enjoyable. It was working on a factory line using a
reciprocating grinder to remove burs from aluminum parts. It was
one of the worst because it was brutal work on your hands and
wrists, it paid poorly, and you were stuck breathing aluminum dust
all day in an unair conditioned factory. But, after a while on the
job, I was capable of completely losing myself in the job and could
go through thousands of parts while completely losing
consciousness of how much time I was working. I loved this aspect
of the job.
Wednesday, October 16, 13
