“This is when the man goes catching salmon at night.” Educational paths ‘in the open’.
Paolo Gruppuso
(University of Catania)
Contribution description:
This contribution reflects over the role of anthropology to unsettle ontological and epistemological assumptions by exploring and experimenting other ways of learning and being together in academia.
Paper long abstract:
My contribution draws upon the experience of working in the interdisciplinary context of the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo (Italy), where I have worked as a research fellow involved in didactic activities, both as teacher of anthropology and co-coordinator of a post-graduate program. I will present two examples in which the potential of anthropology emerged in triggering educational paths that led students and myself ‘in the open’ (Ingold 2007), out of our certainties and exposed to other possibilities of knowing food and landscapes in their reciprocal relations.
The first example concerns recipes, conventionally understood as sets of instructions independent from socioecological contingencies, to be followed in a specific order. We challenged this hegemonic understanding by discussing the ‘recipes’ that George Hunt collected amongst Native Americans of the Pacific North West coast (Boas 1921). By studying and discussing together, we realised that those ‘recipes’, far from being recognisable as such, are indeed stories that question our approach to food, as much as hegemonic educational models. We had the opportunity to experiment ‘for real’ this alternative gastronomic and educational model by organising a ‘traditional feast’ under the guidance of Teetl'it Gwich'in Chief Wanda Pascal.
The second example regards landscapes and the role it plays in shaping relations with food, nutrition, and gastronomic imagination. Each programs at the University of Gastronomic Sciences includes foraging workshops led by the resident professor of ethnobotany, who leads students in the fields surrounding the University, teaching them to recognise edible plants, and giving information about their traditional use. In the programme I was co-coordinating I introduced a workshop, aside the foraging classes, inspired to critical mapping approaches (Wood 2010), to the story system of Australian aboriginal people (Milroy and Revell 2013), and to George Hunt’s recipes (Boas 1921). We ended up telling stories along canals and making experiments that helped us to trigger different relations with the landscape through memory, imagination, and the senses.
These examples support the idea of anthropology as inherently educational. However, at the same time, they also demonstrate that for being genuinely educational, anthropology needs to abandon its status as a discipline, and being regarded instead as an undisciplined approach that leads practitioners to experiment with other possibilities of life, thus exposing them to a fully educational process.
Accepted Contribution:
Contribution description:
Paper long abstract:
My contribution draws upon the experience of working in the interdisciplinary context of the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo (Italy), where I have worked as a research fellow involved in didactic activities, both as teacher of anthropology and co-coordinator of a post-graduate program. I will present two examples in which the potential of anthropology emerged in triggering educational paths that led students and myself ‘in the open’ (Ingold 2007), out of our certainties and exposed to other possibilities of knowing food and landscapes in their reciprocal relations.
The first example concerns recipes, conventionally understood as sets of instructions independent from socioecological contingencies, to be followed in a specific order. We challenged this hegemonic understanding by discussing the ‘recipes’ that George Hunt collected amongst Native Americans of the Pacific North West coast (Boas 1921). By studying and discussing together, we realised that those ‘recipes’, far from being recognisable as such, are indeed stories that question our approach to food, as much as hegemonic educational models. We had the opportunity to experiment ‘for real’ this alternative gastronomic and educational model by organising a ‘traditional feast’ under the guidance of Teetl'it Gwich'in Chief Wanda Pascal.
The second example regards landscapes and the role it plays in shaping relations with food, nutrition, and gastronomic imagination. Each programs at the University of Gastronomic Sciences includes foraging workshops led by the resident professor of ethnobotany, who leads students in the fields surrounding the University, teaching them to recognise edible plants, and giving information about their traditional use. In the programme I was co-coordinating I introduced a workshop, aside the foraging classes, inspired to critical mapping approaches (Wood 2010), to the story system of Australian aboriginal people (Milroy and Revell 2013), and to George Hunt’s recipes (Boas 1921). We ended up telling stories along canals and making experiments that helped us to trigger different relations with the landscape through memory, imagination, and the senses.
These examples support the idea of anthropology as inherently educational. However, at the same time, they also demonstrate that for being genuinely educational, anthropology needs to abandon its status as a discipline, and being regarded instead as an undisciplined approach that leads practitioners to experiment with other possibilities of life, thus exposing them to a fully educational process.
Anthropology as education
Session 1