I N T E R V IE W B Y
IL L U S T R A T IO N B Y
Suzanne R am ljak
A m ze Em m ons
Ridhard Sennett
on Making
The eminent sociologist asserts that the slow tempo of craftwork,
of taking the time you need to do something well, is profoundly
stabilizing to individuals.
Richard Sennett, whose book
The C rafts-
man
garnered a great deal of attention on
its publication last year, w ill be the keynote
speaker at the American Craft Council’s
October conference in Minneapolis.
Sennett is a sociologist and social analyst
who teaches at New York University and
the London School of Economics. After an
injury put an end to his hopes of a musical
career, he studied at the University of Chi-
cago and Harvard, earning a Ph.D. in 1969.
In the 70s he founded, with Susan Sontag
andjoseph Brodsky, the New York Insti-
tute for the Humanities at
N Y U .
In the 80s
he served as president of the American
Council on Work, and in the 90s he began
to address the question of how changes
in capitalism are affecting workers.
He spoke by telephone with Suzanne
Ramljak about some of the issues that
underlie his scholarly work.
Suzanne Ramljak:
T o u r m ost recen t book,
The Craftsman,
is th e f ir s t in a trilo g y d ev o ted to w h a t y o u c a ll “tech n iq u es f o r con -
d u ctin g a p a r tic u la r w a y o flife .
”
C a n y o u ela bora te on th e larg er
p ro ject b eh in d these th ree v olu m es?
Richard Sennett:
This is a project about material culture in the
broadest sense.
The Craftsm an
was about making things well; the
second volume,
The W orkshop,
focuses on developing social skills
and cooperation; and the third,
The Foreigner,
w ill be about envi-
ronmental design and crafting cities. The question that ties them
all together is, how do we develop skills in the course of making
things, whether they are physical objects, social relations or environ-
ments? Underlying this study is a theory that I call “situated cogni-
tion,” which is the way human beings develop their capacities
through craftwork. This is at the heart of the entire exploration.
s
r
O n e o f th e k ey issues y o u ’v e id e n tifie d is
“how p a y in g a tten tio n
is orga n ized . ” D o es th is concern tie in w ith situ a te d cog n ition ?
r s
Attention is something that gets organized by others, as well
as by ourselves. When we focus on making a physical object, or on
playing a musical instrument, our concentration level is mainly self-
directed. In a social context, focusing on the concrete and particu-
lar is shaped by our interactions with other people. They situate us.
That is why cooperation and collaboration are so important. Our
social relations can help us pay attention to what we are doing with-
out arousing anxiety or defensiveness, or they can interfere with
our ability to attend to the concrete world. That is what this whole
idea of situated cognition is all about.
s
r
T o u r ow n d efin itio n o f craftsm anship is th e
“desire to do a jo b
w e ll fo r its ow n sake. ” T o u p o sit th is d esire a s a b a sic h u m an im p u lse
to do g ood w ork. S o y o u r theory rests on th e assum ption o fa n in n a te
hu m an d r iv e ?>
046 ainerican craft oct/novoç
www.freedowns.net & www.journal-plaza.net
Photo /Thomas Struth.
