Title

Organizations of Manufacture and Machinofacture

Description

In this comparison, we regain the sense in which [. . .] the detail worker nevertheless uses his tool. In the employment of hand tools, ‘the movements of the instrument of labour proceed from the worker’ (Marx 1930: 451); the tool does not itself prescribe the envelope of its movement. Yet it is this envelope that determines the form of the product that will be passed on, as material, to the next worker down the line. Thus the worker must already have some conscious idea of the form he sets out to reproduce, and must be able to translate that idea – through acquired sensorimotor skills – into the movements of hand and tool. In machinofacture, however, the situation is quite otherwise, for the shape of the product is already ‘written in’ to the machine, the movements of which are predetermined. The consciousness of the machine operative is, so to speak, short-circuited. Though the worker probably knows, if only from prior observation, what the product will look like, he does not actually need to know, and the product’s materialisation is not at all dependent on such knowledge.

Designer

Ingold, Tim

Date

2000

Source

The perception of the environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill.

Bibliographic Citation

Ingold, Tim. (2000). The perception of the environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. Routledge.

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