Abstract
In Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy, Richard Ocejo offers an in-depth analysis of the resurgence of once working class and low status occupations.
Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy by Richard E. Ocejo Princeton University Press 368 pages
If you’ve walked through a gentrifying retail area, you’ve seen them. Their storefronts look familiar, but different—anachronistic simulacra of an industrial past. In Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy, Richard Ocejo offers an in-depth analysis of the resurgence of once working class and low status occupations. The book serves as a tour guide through the postindustrial feeding grounds of today’s cultural omnivores. It is in these neighborhoods where today’s high-end bartenders, distillers, barbers, and butchers often do business.
At first, the desires of these workers (mostly white men) seems counterintuitive. A surprising number of them come from middle class backgrounds. If their great-grandparents were alive today, what would they think of all of this? Wasn’t the labor of past generations meant to give current ones a chance at upward mobility? Why forego an office chair to work in a butcher shop or a warehouse distillery? To answer these questions, we need to see the world from the perspective of those making this choice.
In the barbershop, we learn that the haircut is not the only thing being sold. The long waits and the steady banter are just as much a part of the deal. For this experience, clients pay extra. In exchange, is the customer always right? Not always. In one memorable scene, when a barber tells his customer to stop using shampoo, the client balks. The barber continues to make his case. Exasperated, he later cannot believe the client wouldn’t take his advice given that it brings him no financial gain, “I’m trying to not make you give me money!” (p.223).
The bartenders also refuse to sacrifice their standards. They want to make money, but only so long as they can do it their way. For example, even though vodka is the most popular spirit sold in bars across the country, it has no flavor to balance against. This aspect of the liquor keeps mixologists from showcasing their talents, so they discourage customers from ordering it. However, this approach hits their bottom line, “you simply make a lot less money when you do things right” (p.39).
The world of craft is fascinated with the past. Craft connoisseurs see themselves as the torchbearers of supposedly lost skills. While modern meatpackers quickly slice carcasses suspended from hooks (letting gravity assist the process), “whole animal butchers” work on a table. This method is slower, but enables a tactile understanding of the process and its traditions. As one butcher recounts, “that was my time capsule… my Jules Verne time machine” (P.114).
The masters of craft aim to be precise, but not too perfect. Instead of seeking absolute uniformity, small batch distillers embrace minuscule variations. No two wax corks look the same because they are hand-dipped. Whiskey barrels are filled by people, not machines. They advertise these potential weaknesses— small scale, inefficient—as strengths. Because of these tiny variations, each bottle becomes one-of-a-kind.
Beginning in Part II of the book, Ocejo stretches beyond the idiosyncrasies of these four jobs and their limited scope (geographically and demographically) to engage with the wider world of work. In this section, he answers two important questions in particular. Firstly, how do workers transform the meaning of once blue-collar work in order to cater to middle-class sensibilities? Secondly, what drives them to do so? One classic test of whether a job is white-collar or blue-collar is whether workers shower before or after their shift. In Masters of Craft, the workers must do both. Clients expect backstage access; they demand to know the why and the how. This requires blue-collar production and middle-class taste-making. These workers don’t just follow clients’ wishes, they teach them how to expect more. During these interactions, customers come to see intricacies of their labor in a new light.
But perhaps the most interesting contribution in the book explains why relatively privileged young adults from middle-class backgrounds are drawn to these “old” jobs. The narratives outlining their motivations are too similar to ignore. It wasn’t only about the money. It was about something else. As one bartender puts it, “I may make less, but feel more fulfilled” (p.148). These workers want to build and deliver things they can touch and see. For them, “office jobs” do not offer these opportunities.
This is an intriguing phenomenon. How did office life become unattractive to those with enough credentials to live it? The answer is threefold. First, their middle-class status affords them the economic privilege to be selective about where they work. Second, the rise of cultural omnivorousness has created a customer base willing to pay premium prices for opportunities to bolster its cultural capital. And third, deindustrialization has sealed off many of the traditional job opportunities for young adults to make, build, and transform things in meaningful and rewarding ways.
The economic landscape has changed drastically since the days of their great-grandparents. Manufacturing once consisted of a third of all jobs in the United States. Now it hovers between 5 and 10 percent. This realignment was supposed to make work in this sector easier, more comfortable, and more prosperous. But good paying, secure, and fulfilling jobs in this field are now few and far between. For the manufacturing jobs that remain, automation and corporatization have de-skilled productions methods and disincentivized workers’ autonomy over them.
Of course, sociologists know that the story of the golden age of jobs in America is more myth than reality. The working class, people of color, and women experienced our industrial heyday very differently. However, the artisanal workers in Masters of Craft are not replicating a real past, only a glossy reproduction. Their high-end niche services and products mimic the “old work” of past generations, but in the cleaner, safer, and more affluent confines of middle-class consumption.
For myself, the most compelling support of Ocejo’s argument is that I have seen the same general pattern play out in my own research on “market farmers.” If you’ve ever visited a downtown farmers market, you’ve interacted with this type of farmer. Their operations are small-scale and organic. Their business model relies on direct-to-consumer retail sales and “community supported agriculture” (CSA) programs. The most successful farms also sell wholesale to nearby restaurants that feature locally sourced and seasonal ingredients. This was the business model I observed while conducting ethnographic research at Greenbrier Farms in Dacusville, South Carolina. It was there, while planting vegetables and herding steers that I heard the same stories as those told by the workers in Masters of Craft.
Their (masters of craft) middle-class status affords them the economic privilege to be selective about where they work
The co-owners of Greenbrier Farms did not grow up dreaming to be farmers. They had college degrees. After the Great Recession of the late 2000s they became disenchanted with their office careers. In their early 30s, the two families that run the farm left the city to forge a new life—even if it meant a pay cut. Their motivations ring a familiar tone. One owner said he earned less money but instead received a “quality of life wage increase.” The other saw farming as a way to work outside and stay active. He had no desire to go back to his former life, “I just want people to know, it’s okay to work with your hands.”
But why? They want work rooted in things that matter, like the land and relationships with others. On market day, people line up for their fresh vegetables and grass-fed meats. Their products are more expensive than what customers can expect at a supermarket, but at a price that foodies are willing to pay. With every purchase, customers get a story about heirloom varietals or heritage breeds. At each point of sale, there is human interaction, not just a cash nexus.
While rural South Carolina has seemingly little in common with the gentrifying neighborhoods in Masters of Craft, both have undergone drastic economic shifts of their own. In rural areas, corporate agriculture has acquired and consolidated the smaller family farms that once dotted rural landscapes across America. Mechanization has also shrunk labor needs. Those who have kept their farms are growing old; most are over the age of 65.
On the other hand, something interesting has happened in the past decade. Young adults have begun farming again. According to the 2012 Census of Agriculture, the number of farmers under 35 years old increased for only the second time in the last 100 years. This new cohort is coming from unexpected places. Most of them (75 percent) did not grow up on a farm, and the vast majority (81 percent) have educational degrees beyond high school. While the business model of “old” family farms may be gone, young farmers are inventing new strategies.
When comparing Greenbrier farms to the storefronts in Masters of Craft, I came to understand the draw of old jobs more clearly. Just because one generation loses access to the work available to its predecessor does not mean that the lore of better days goes away. Economic transitions may make old business models untenable, but this generation has found a way—with cultural omnivores footing the bill.