The Value of Physical Work in a Digital World: A Discussion of Matt Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft
Matthew CrawfordSenior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies and Culture
Kirk DoranUniversity of Notre Dame
5:30 Cocktail and Hors d’Oeuvres | 6:30 Opening Remarks | 6:45 Dialogue and Q&A | 7:30 End
Discounted student tickets are available. Please contact Marial Corona at mcorona@lumenchristi.org for more information on this or any other matter.
Published in 2009, Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft became an unexpected best-seller. Written by a University of Chicago PhD and motorcycle mechanic, Shop Class explored the value of craftsmanship and manual work in a world increasingly dominated by technology and abstract thinking.
Drawing on his own experiences as a philosopher and motorcycle mechanic, Crawford argued that hands-on labor offers a sense of purpose, fulfillment, and autonomy often lacking in the world around us. The book delves into the intellectual and philosophical richness of craftsmanship, challenging the conventional wisdom that separates thinking from doing, and seeks to reintegrate man with the created world.
In this downtown conversation, Crawford will rehearse the major themes of his bestseller. He will then enter into conversation with experts in Catholic social thought, to discuss the ways in which his insights about purposeful work and craft resonate with the Church’s insights about the dignity of labor and the value of the created world.
Crawford will be joined by Kirk Doran, a University of Notre Dame economist and expert in labor economics and Catholic Social Thought.
Matthew Crawford studied physics at UC Santa Barbara and then turned to political philosophy, earning a PhD from the University of Chicago. He has published articles on ancient Greek philosophy, neuroscience, and the philosophy of science. He is the author of Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road (2020); The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction (2015); and Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work (2009), a New York Times best seller that has been translated into seven languages.
Kirk Doran is the Henkels Family Collegiate Chair and Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. Doran received his B.A. in Physics from Harvard University in 2002, his S.M. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University in 2002, and his Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University in 2008, where his dissertation won Princeton's labor economics dissertation award. Doran's research focuses on issues in labor economics, innovation economics, and international migration, with a particular focus on human capital complementarities. His work has examined the implications of large migrations of top scientists on the productivity and knowledge generation of their peers. Recent work has focused on the role of externalities, collaboration, and geographic distance in knowledge production, the impact of top prizes on the intellectual content of their recipient's work, and the impact of highly skilled immigrants on firms which randomly receive them. Professor Doran's research has been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Labor Economics, the Journal of Human Resources, Economica, Economics Letters, and Innovation Policy and the Economy, and has been funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Upjohn Institute, and the Kauffman Foundation.
