The seminar offers an account of my journey into the anthropology of craftwork and deliberations on the apprentice-style method that I developed and employed in studies with masons, woodworkers and a multimedia artist. Training alongside the craftspeople I study has been key to my discoveries about the ways we as humans learn and become enskilled (and deskilled). My presentation revisits main findings from fieldwork in West Africa, Arabia and London and critically examines the evolving research questions and methods that defined not only what I was seeking but also how I went about finding it.
Trevor H. J. Marchand is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology, independent researcher and consultant, and Action Learning facilitator. His subject expertise is in space, place and architecture; craft knowledge, skill learning and apprenticeship; and embodied cognition communication.
In addition to the seminar, a workshop from 2.30–4.30pm is offered- in person only & registration required!
Studying Skill & Embodied Ways of Knowing: an exploratory workshop on anthropological field methods
Apprenticing as a technique of anthropological inquiry is well suited to the study of learning and knowing in practice-based contexts where talking is often upstaged by doing. It also equips anthropologists with first-hand experience – and possibly some level of expertise – in the practices and site politics that they theorise and write about. However, apprenticing as an anthropological method also has its challenges, which we will explore this week. Our exploration of methods, potential benefits and challenges will be grounded in the experiences and projects of workshop participants.
registration under: kulturanthropologie(at)uni-graz.at
Link to the Zoom session: https://uni-graz.zoom.us/j/63942240668?pwd=uQwLMJqqgjooc8KvOKeTbkjtJX5MP5.1
Meeting-ID: 639 4224 0668
Kenncode: 608629
The lecture is part of the current seminar series "Anthropologies of Skill and Making" at the Department of Cultural Anthropology and European Ethnology, University of Graz