It has now risen to the level of common knowledge that the ancient Greeks in general, and the Athenians of the classical period in particular, disdained work and considered those who engaged in such pursuits base. While it is relatively easy to find proof-texts among Athenian literary sources to support this claim, it is necessary to examine from what sort of ideological perspectives such sentiments arose. This project undertakes a re-examination of labor and its representations in ancient Athens in order to shed light on the worlds of elite and non-elite Athenians alike. I first examine and discuss literary depictions of workshops in order to demonstrate that the democratic city of Athens was marked by a strong culture of social, intellectual and political exchange within the context of economic production. I then offer select interpretations of portrayals of workshops and workers on Attic vases from the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. In so doing I show that labor and laborers, far from being consistently and overwhelmingly portrayed in a negative fashion, or as banal “genre” types, provide vase-painters (laborers themselves) with opportunities to examine and challenge Athenian social codes and relationships. I then turn to shoemakers and their products in order to demonstrate that the sort of connectivity illustrated in the first three chapters is reflected in the technical processes of shoe production, both with respect to the variability of final products, and with respect to the social networks of production necessary for the creation of such products. Finally, I conclude the dissertation by showing how the modern (common knowledge) view of Athenian laborers as socially marginal figures has obscured our appreciation for the growth and utilization of actual, ancient “common knowledge” on the part of ancient laborers. All of this took place within a political system, Athenian direct democracy, which thrived on the development of social capital and the cooperative exchange of ideas and technical expertise among all classes and statuses, citizen and non-citizen alike. Therefore, elite depictions of laborers as radically uninformed and fundamentally unfit to act as political agents, and as base characters in general, ought to be understood as normative responses to the developing power and effectiveness of working people within the context of democratic Athens. As a result, this project points the way towards the study of labor and the technical processes of economic production not simply as components of social history, or the history of technology, but as necessary parts of the intellectual and political history of democratic Athens.