Muscles, Morals and Mind: Craft Apprenticeship and the Formation of Person

Abstract

The paper considers apprenticeship as a model of education that both teaches technical skills and provides the grounding for personal formation. The research presented is based on long-term anthropological fieldwork with minaret builders in Yemen, mud masons in Mali and fine-woodwork trainees in London. These case studies of on-site learning and practice support an expanded notion of knowledge that exceeds propositional thinking and language and centrally includes the body and skilled performance. Crafts -like sport, dance and other skilled physical activities -are largely communicated, understood and negotiated between practitioners without words, and learning is achieved through observation, mimesis and repeated exercise. The need for an interdisciplinary study of communication and understanding from the body is therefore underlined, and the paper suggests a way forward drawing on linguistic theory and recent neurological findings. It is argued that the validation and promotion of skilled practice as 'intelligent' is necessary for raising the status and credibility of apprenticestyle learning within our Western systems of education.

The Quarry as Sculpture: The Place of Making

“…An apprenticeship does take time; that is the point. As a learning method apprenticeships counter the mind-body or mind-matter dualism through sensual exposure to the response mechanisms of materials in the presence of '[m]uscles, morals and minds' (Marchand, 2008). Marchand further elaborates on this subject in a later paper with 'knowledge-making is a dynamic process arising directly from the indissoluble relations that exist between minds, bodies, and environment' (Marchand, 2010: 2).…”

“…This is fine, for it is the exchanges between the times and spaces of knowledge that bring about productive discourse and cultural flux. What I believe researchers such as Marchand (2008Marchand ( , 2010Marchand ( , 2014, whose fieldwork is embedded in the practices of apprenticeships, have made explicit is that an even more fundamental and tacit material condition can take place prior to any written work or discourse. Thus my working of the granite, and my development of skills around the granite and quarry, become a form of notation of events that materialise within different media.…”

“…I am a participant in the working of granite, and any textual productions are a result of the invisible thread of material activity occurring through the working world. Again, as Marchand (2008Marchand ( , 2010Marchand ( , 2014 has so consistently articulated, making things with people is a portal into the soul of a place and the essence of knowledge. Sculpture, as a discipline, is ideally suited to the delicate reading of a place, where matter -as a confluence of people and place -is experienced as a synthesis of lifeforms.…”

RISE 6(2) - Full Issue

“…At the same time, many anthropologists focusing on structure of traditional apprenticeship have described it as learning system that compels immersion in learning environment that, in addition to facilitating technical know-how, structures the practitioners' hard-earned acquisition of social knowledge, worldviews and moral principles that denote membership and status in a trade (Marchand, 2008;Simpson, 2006). However, it has been acknowledged that commonsense understanding of apprenticeship and a good deal of academic research on the subject take for granted that the apprenticeship relation serves to pass on technical knowledge on the one hand and cultural values on the other (Argenti, 2002).…”

Embodying Teaching: A Body Pedagogic Study of a Teacher’s Movement Rhythm in the ‘Sloyd’ Classroom

“…Thirdly, in handicraft-oriented education such as 'sloyd', empirical research has approached learning as certain master-apprentice relationships (e.g., Nielsen and Kvale 1999;Marchand 2008Marchand , 2010b) and a gender and culture bound process (Illum 2006;Sigurdsson 2014). Different academic disciplines have contributed knowledge about the development of conceptual tools and empirically grounded analyses of particular craft activities (Sennett 2008;Marchand 2010a;O'Connor 2007;Illum and Johansson 2009).…”