Apprenticeship as method: embodied learning in ethnographic practice

Abstract

Apprenticeship, the process of developing from novice to proficiency under the guidance of a skilled expert, varies across cultures and among different skilled communities, but for many communities of practice, apprenticeship offers an ideal ethnographic point of entry. For certain kinds of anthropological fieldwork, such as studies of bodily arts, apprenticeship may offer an essential research method. In this article, three anthropologists discuss their experiences using apprenticeship in fieldwork and consider the practical and theoretical issues of apprenticeship as a site of ethnographic inquiry. As a channel for achieving social inclusion, apprenticeship offers anthropologists opportunities to navigate and chart interpersonal power, access to emic types of knowledge, first-hand experience of the pedagogical milieu, and avenues to acquire cultural proficiency. Because apprenticeship itself includes mechanisms to socialize emerging skill, such as disciplining the generation of variation that is inherent in each individual's rediscovery or reinvention of skill, apprenticeship encourages our subjects to collaborate with us by allowing them to critique the ethnographer's performance and provide feedback in familiar, locally-meaningful ways.

Timing in Bruce Lee’s Writings as Inspiration for Listening Musically to Hand Combat and Martial Arts Performance

“…79 martialartsstudies.org A large drum is the lead instrument of the ensemble, 9 and it is one of the last things to be learned in the curriculum. During my ethnographic apprenticeship [Downey, Dalidowicz, and Mason 2014], I thus spent a lot of time practising kung fu and lion dancing in order to work my way up to the drum. My fieldwork at Hong Luck was undergirded by 25 years of experience in a range of other martial arts as well as my training in music, which has proven helpful for thinking through the rhythm of combat.…”

Ode à un Dieu agonisant

“…C'est pour cela que ce groupe a été retenu pour cet article. Les entrevues avec Antediluvian sont constituées d'entretiens semi-structurés et non structurés effectués au cours de l'année 2015 et durant l'été 2017, recueillis dans le cadre d'une étude ethnographique axée sur l'apprentissage (Downey et al 2015 ;Lave 2011) que j'ai menée au sein du milieu métal extrême sur une période d'environ 10 ans. Selon une méthode inspirée par Harris Berger (1999), j'ai demandé à des musiciens (guitaristes et auteurs-compositeurs) de la scène d'Edmonton de m'enseigner leur musique (sous la forme de faux cours de guitare).…”

‘Boxing Is Our Business’: The Embodiment of a Leftist Identity in Boxe Popolare

“…Quoting Wacquant and his double usages of "habitus as a topic and a tool" [67], "the apprenticeship of the sociologist is a methodological mirror of the apprenticeship undergone by the empirical subjects of the study" (p. 5). Furthermore, for Downey, Dalidowicz and Mason [68] (p. 183), the accomplishment of social competency may offer "an essential research method" to study bodily arts and martial 1 For the religious and spiritual nature attached to MACS pedagogy, see [57][58][59]. arts.…”