Labor, class, and skill

Tom Martin

Chapter 3 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Economic Anthropology, 2025, pp 295-299 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: There are two distinct conceptions of “skill” at play in Anglo-American discourse. The first, apparent in the phrases “craft skill” and “hand skills”, points to the fulfillment of cognitive potential and the expression of non-propositional intelligence. This worker is skilled, reflecting an achievement in human understanding. The second sense of the word is evident in the phrases “upskilling”, “skills gap”, and “skill shortage”, in which “skill” is conceived in terms of professional outcomes rather than the understanding that underpins them. Workers described with this sense of the term perform skilled work; their actions are valuable in the economy regardless of the degree of understanding upon which they rely. In this entry, I present two autoethnographic vignettes from my work as an educator to illustrate the claim that the conceptualization of skill available to a person depends largely on their social class position.

Keywords: Skill; Craft; Class; Fulfillment; Labor; Autoethnography (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035312566
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