This week in my sociology course on Work and Society (SOCI 340) we are reading and talking about the role of the body and technology for work. Humans use their bodies, in tandem with tools, to do almost any kind of work you can imagine. From the earliest hunter-gatherer societies up until the postindustrial workplace of today, our bodies, and the strength, motion, and creativity that they generate, are the starting point for everything we do. At the same time, we tend to take for granted our bodies and the skills that we perform through them; because such skills are “embodied,” it can be hard to articulate just what we’re doing.
Plan for the SOC 340 box—made from 1×4 and 2×6 dimensional lumber.
To help understand the place of the body for work and society, today we visited the sculpture studio in Ryan Studios (thanks to Prof Dewitt Godfrey for letting us use the space and tools!). My friend Todd Thomsen, a local designer and contractor, helped us build a box made from dimensional lumber. The idea was to give students a sense of using bodily skills with both hand and power tools. We read an editorial piece by Matthew Crawford, who argues that high school and college curricula devalue the place of manual work and skill in contemporary US education. Similarly, an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education describes several college programs with significant hands-on learning experiences for their students. If you go back 100 years or so, Colgate students would also have this type of work as a key aspect of their years on campus—students back in the day helped to build West Hall with stone from a quarry just above campus.
So we decided to build a box that seems simple but is actually the basis for much of the built environment around us—floors, walls, and ceilings in our homes are essentially variations on the box we built in class. Students started by sharpening a pencil with a utility knife, then using it to measure and mark the pieces that we used for the bottom of the box. After cutting those with hand saws (and trying to stay square and on the cut line!) we moved to a power saw for cutting the sides. Students got to see the skills involved in each type of work, which was also the case when we assembled the box using both hammer and nails as well as screws and a power driver.
If you would like to see the box in person, please visit the SOAN Department Lounge, on the 4th floor of Alumni Hall!
Sophomore Anastassia Bougakova uses the power miter saw to cut a side piece of the box.
Todd helps seniors Mike Kastner and Caroline Brainerd screw the bottom planks on the box.
Anastassia Bougakova and Maya Atakilti drive screws into the bottom of the box.
Our box is complete—you can see it in person by visiting the SOAN Lounge on the 4th floor of Alumni Hall.