Wednesday 16:00-16:30 Laurie Taylor discusses the latest social science research.
06 February 2008
repeat 10 February
CRAFTWORK and SKILL Last week the Prime Minister said that he wanted to make sure that "Britain raises its skills game to world class". Nowadays people have people skills, managers have management skills and leaders have leadership skills. But are these true skills - or are they rather aptitudes we are born with, perhaps something that can be learnt on a weekend course?
Laurie Taylor is joined by sociologist Richard Sennett, author of a new work entitled The Craftsman and Grayson Perry Turner Prize winning artist and craftsman-potter. They discuss the meaning of 'true' skill, of craftsmanship - of the lifelong engagement with a particular skill or craft. Is there still a need for the craftsman’s ethic in our computer-driven, factory-made society where strings to our bows count for so much more than a way with wood?
Additional information:
Professor Richard Sennett
Academic Governor and Professor of Sciology at the LSE; Founder director of the New York Institute for the Humanities and University Professor at New York University
The Craftsman
Publisher: Allen Lane
ISBN-10: 0713998733
ISBN-13: 978-0713998733
Respect: The Formation of Character in an Age of Inequality
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New Ed edition
ISBN-10: 0141007567
ISBN-13: 978-0141007564
Grayson Perry
English artist best known for his ceramics. Grayson Perry won the Turner Prize in 2003 and was an arts correspondent for The Times until October 2007. In 2004 he produced a large-scale etching entitled ‘Map of an Englishman’ which documented the landscape of our inner thoughts.
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