Workmanship

Workmanship is a human attribute relating to knowledge and skill at performing a task. The type of work may include the creation of handcrafts, art, writing, machinery and other products. Workmanship is also a quality imparted to a product.

Workmanship is considered to have been a valued human attribute even in prehistoric times. In the opinion of the economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen, the sense of workmanship is probably the single most important attribute governing the material well being of a people, with only the parental instinct coming a close second. There have however been periods in history where workmanship was looked down on; for example in Classical Greece and Ancient Rome, where it had become associated with slavery. This was not always the case - back in the archaic period, Greeks had valued workmanship, celebrating it in Homeric hymns. In the western world, a return to a more positive attitude towards work emerged with the rise of Christianity. In Europe, Veblen considers that the social value of workmanship reached its peak with the "Era of handicraft". The era began as workmanship flourished with the relative peace and security of property rights that Europe had achieved by the Late middle ages. The era ended as machine driven processes began to displace the need for workmanship after the Industrial revolution. Workmanship was such a central concept during the handicraft era, that according to Veblen, even key theological questions about God's intentions for humanity were re-framed from "What has God ordained?" to "What has God wrought?". The high value placed on workmanship could sometimes be an oppressive force for certain individuals - for example, one explanation for the origin of the English phrase sent to Coventry is that it was born from the practice where London guild members expelled due to poor workmanship were forced to move to Coventry, which used to be a guild free town. But workmanship was still widely appreciated by the common people themselves. For example, when workers accustomed to practicing high standards of workmanship were first recruited to work on production lines in factories, it would be common for them to walk out, as the new roles were relatively monotonous, giving them little scope to use their skills. After Henry Ford introduced the first Assembly line in 1913, he could need to recruit about ten men to find one willing to stay in the job. Over time, and with Ford offering high rates of pay, the aversion of labor to the new ways of working was reduced.

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