When anthropologists learn, the potentials of such learning are not realized or fulfilled by wilful acts. In this proposal I explore how anthropologists learn in ways that transform socio-material environments and embody us in new ultra-social collectivities.
Paper long abstract:
Anthropologists are professional learners, yet we tend to discuss the topic of learning primarily instrumentally as a topic for educations in schools. In this proposal, I shall contend that the concept of learning is essential for understanding what anthropology is all about. What is learning in an anthropological sense? Some would equate it with experience, but this, on its own, is not enough to deepen our understanding of what learning really is. Contrary to a onetime experience, learning is an ongoing process of inquiry building on preceding learning. It is fundamentally a process, which underlies the ways in which we attend to the world. It is an ongoing process of transformation whereby the traces of what we have previously learned are mobilized in the course of learning something new. We learn, in other words, with potentials - and as anthropologist we build up potentials through learning that make us capable of being receptive (corresponding) to the material and social lives of other people. There is an rather an ongoing creation of fields of attention, emergent agency and the mutual responsiveness - or correspondence - that these make possible ( Ingold 2017 ). I shall exemplify the process of learning as an anthropologist three ways, each of which challenges instrumental understandings of learning: 1. Learning is our way of escaping preformed and fixed categorisations when we meet new people in new environments. 2. Our potentials for learning are not in our head, nor in our individual bodies but in the relations we form as we correspond 3. As we build up new potentials for further learning we join new ultra-social collectivities.
Accepted Contribution:
Contribution description:
Paper long abstract:
Anthropologists are professional learners, yet we tend to discuss the topic of learning primarily instrumentally as a topic for educations in schools. In this proposal, I shall contend that the concept of learning is essential for understanding what anthropology is all about. What is learning in an anthropological sense? Some would equate it with experience, but this, on its own, is not enough to deepen our understanding of what learning really is. Contrary to a onetime experience, learning is an ongoing process of inquiry building on preceding learning. It is fundamentally a process, which underlies the ways in which we attend to the world. It is an ongoing process of transformation whereby the traces of what we have previously learned are mobilized in the course of learning something new. We learn, in other words, with potentials - and as anthropologist we build up potentials through learning that make us capable of being receptive (corresponding) to the material and social lives of other people. There is an rather an ongoing creation of fields of attention, emergent agency and the mutual responsiveness - or correspondence - that these make possible ( Ingold 2017 ). I shall exemplify the process of learning as an anthropologist three ways, each of which challenges instrumental understandings of learning: 1. Learning is our way of escaping preformed and fixed categorisations when we meet new people in new environments. 2. Our potentials for learning are not in our head, nor in our individual bodies but in the relations we form as we correspond 3. As we build up new potentials for further learning we join new ultra-social collectivities.
Anthropology as education
Session 1