Learning and everyday life access, participation and changing practice

194 Pages·2019·1.334 MB·English

by  Jean Lave

Learning and Everyday Life
Written byworld-renowned social anthropologist, Jean Lave,with anafter-
word by Brazilian anthropologist Ana Maria R. Gomes, this book weaves
together ethnographic accounts of work and learning, apprenticeship and
everydaylife,throughacriticaltheoryofpractice.Eachchapterexploresin
different ways the proposition that learning is a collective, transformative
processofchangeinthehistoricallypoliticalcomplexrelationsofeveryday
life. At the same time, the book demonstrates the changing character of
Lave’s own research practice over two decades. Lave addresses work
practicesandeverydaylifeanddiscussestheproblemofcontextanddecon-
textualization. Analyzing two decades of ethnographic studies of craft
apprenticeship,sheexploresteachingaslearningandexaminesthereciprocal
effectsoftheoriesofeverydaylifeandlearning.
jean lave is Professor Emerita at the University of California, Berkeley.
Sheisasocialanthropologistandcriticaltheorist.Herbooksincludeoneof
the most cited works in the social sciences Situated Learning: Legitimate
PeripheralParticipation(withE.Wenger,Cambridge,1991)aswellasthe
prize-winningUnderstandingPractice(withS.Chaiklin,Cambridge,1993).
Published online by Cambridge University Press
Published online by Cambridge University Press
Learning and Everyday Life
Access, Participation, and Changing Practice
Jean Lave
UniversityofCalifornia,Berkeley
Afterwordby
Ana Maria R. Gomes
Published online by Cambridge University Press
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DOI:10.1017/9781108616416
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Title:Learningandeverydaylife:access,participationandchangingpractice/
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Description:Cambridge,UnitedKingdom;NewYork,NY,USA:Cambridge
UniversityPress,[2019]|Includesbibliographicalreferences.
Identifiers:LCCN2018043477|ISBN9781108480468(hardback)|
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Contents
Acknowledgments page vi
Introduction: The Long Life of Learning inPractice 1
1 The Savageryof theDomestic Mind 10
2 The ProblemofContext and Practices ofDecontextualization 27
3 Ethnographies ofApprenticeship 51
4 Teaching as Learning,in Practice 83
5 ProductionSchools 104
6 Everyday Life: Logical Operator, Social Zone, or
Social Practice 114
7 SituatedLearning: Historical Process and Practice 133
Afterword: Learning Together – New Challengesand
Ethnographic Scenarios 158
ana maria r. gomes
References 170
Index 185
v
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Acknowledgments
This book has grown, changed, and taken shape in its travels between the
Instituto de Estudos Avançados Transdiciplinares at the Universidade Federal
de Minas Gerais and the Slow ScienceInstitute in Berkeley; throughencoun-
terswithparticipantsintheBrazilianDanishWorkshoponLearninginPractice
in Belo Horizonte (2013) and Copenhagen (2017); and in meetings in San
Francisco,inMexicoCityandinSt.Andrews.So,weareindebtedtostudents
in the PhD program at UFMG, including Xakriabá teachers and researchers,
and especially colleagues Maria Cristina Gouvêa and Eduardo Mortimer. We
mustalsonotestudentsandcolleaguesfromAarhusandRoskildeuniversities
and the Danish Pedagogical University in Denmark, brought together by
leaders of the Brazilian Danish Workshop, Dorte Kousholt, and Line Lerche
Moerk, to thank them for many intense and thoughtful discussions about our
work,andmanymemoriesofgoodfellowship.OurcolleagueandfriendElsie
Rockwell first took an interest in our project as it sprouted in 2011 in Belo
Horizonte. She encouraged its development and improvement both through a
meeting at DIE-CINVESTAV in Mexico City in 2013 and by her searching
and provocative reading of our manuscript. Gill Hart has patiently and ruth-
lessly read draft after draft – for which the book is very much the better in
every respect. Peter Skafish had a very similar effect on the Introduction.
Anthropologist Janet Keller, a long-time colleague, friend, and extraordinary
editor, welded our first attempt at a two-language endeavor into a coherent
draft. Without her we could not have continued on to finish the project. Lucy
Suchman’sperspicaciousreflectiononthemanuscripthasbeenextraordinarily
helpful in bringing it together. Two generous anonymous readers for
CambridgeUniversityPressgaveususefulandinterestingideasforimproving
the manuscript – as has our editor, Andrew Winnard, Executive Publisher,
Language, Linguistics, Anthropology at Cambridge University Press. Jacob
Liming,hasappliedremarkableintellectualandtechnicalsophisticationtothe
preparationofthemanuscript.Ourheartfeltthankstooneandall.
vi
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Introduction
The Long Life of Learning in Practice
The seven essays brought together in this book trace a trajectory of critical
theoreticalandethnographicresearchasithasgrownandchangedovermany
years.Myworkasawholeattempts,ithasbeensaid,toexcavatethepoliticsof
knowledge that inform theories of learning, and to reconceive learning in/as
transformation, and as itself always a cultural/historical practice. This began
with a conception I proposed years ago of learning as “situated in context.”
It has continued into my recent attempts to work out a dialectical notion
of learning as “changing participants’ changing participation in (humdrum,
complicated,conflictual)everydaypractice.”Theessaysshowhowthoseideas
havechangedintheprocessofmoving,first,frommyearlyethnographicwork
on apprenticeship and everyday math practices, to a very different view of
trajectoriesofchangingparticipationinthepracticesofeverydaylife;second,
fromtheideathatthereareisland-likecontexts(plural)inwhichpersonsthus
situated engage in “the same” activities differently, to that of participation in
socialpracticeofpersonsmovingincomplexrelationsthroughandacrossthe
contexts of their everyday lives (everyday lives now understood as produced
with others in historical, political relations); and, third, from an inkling that
these are contradictory processes to a deeper appreciation of the dialectical
relations ofwhich they arecomposed.
It probably is not a surprise, then, that I do not believe “learning” is an
individualorpsychologicalphenomenon.Iworryaboutthetheoretical,ethno-
graphic and political implications of work in fields that claim “learning” as
centraltotheirdisciplines(e.g.,education,psychology).Byreducinglearning
toindividualpsychologicalprocessestheytherebyignoretheconflictingforces
and relations that change participation in always-changing social practice.
Educativedisciplinesandinstitutions thatlimit themselvestosuchreductions
donothavethecritical analyticpowertoconceiveoflearnersandlearningin
such transformative terms. As for anthropologists, they too largely share the
commonsenseviewoflearning,whichistoimaginethat“learning”isalready
accountedforinnotionsofteaching.Ortheyjustavoidthesubjectaltogether,
assumingthatitisnotpartoftheirremit.Myownviewisthatanthropologists
who ignore that learning is, as this book contends, an effect and source of
1
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2 LearningandEverydayLife
social change, do so at their peril. But it is rare that those interested in social
change–whetherasinteraction,orinstitutionalizedlocalpractices,orepochal
struggles – feel compelled to seek, again, a transformative rather than repro-
ductive conception oflearners learning.
So, whether because of their politics or their (lack of) social theoretical
formation, orboth, researchers inthesocialsciences tend tothinkoflearning
onlyasthemeansforreproducingastablesocialorder.Thisisanunfortunate
view, given the integral role that learning plays in undermining, upsetting,
reordering – changing – the social processes that compose social life. Each
essay in this book can be read as a response to this state of affairs. If I were
to summarize my approach here (as elsewhere), I might distill it into these
six points:
1) Trytoformulatecriticalargumentsagainstproblematiccustomarypsycho-
logical, educational, sociological practices that underwrite reduced and
decontextualized conceptions of learning. Such arguments are difficult to
make–buttheyareneededfortheforseeablefutureforotherswhowillin
turn change andpass them on.
2) Insistthatacriticalsocialtheoreticalformation,andnotjustpoliticalwill,
is urgent and necessary in order to pursue change. Show why this is so as
concretelyas possible.
3) Recognize at the same time that a critical theoretical formation is never
adequate by itself, but always only part of critical encounters between the
analytic terms and questions addressed in historical/ethnographic research
projects,andtheassumptionsandtheoreticalclaimsthatunderliethem.At
best, eachshould inform and also change theother.
4) There are, of course, many brilliant exceptions to my hyperbolic com-
plaints, so find colleagues who share in the same struggles from similarly
critical perspectives and try to join with them and change my work in
response totheirwork.
5) On the basis of the above, work toward an encompassing, dialectical
understandingoflearningasanintegralpartoftheconditionofpossibility
for social life in all its political–economic, historical, and processual
particularities.
6) Recognize that these tasks are worth spending a lifetime on, because
learning,whichalwaysembodiespossibilitiesforchange,alwaysembodies
possibilities for transformative change. It is part of – and essential to –
revolutionizing future practice.
Thiscritical“agenda”sumsuptheimpetusthatledmetowritetheseessays.
But there is also another, more immediate reason for gathering them together
here. This book has taken shape in collaboration with anthropologist Ana
Gomes at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. I began to write about the
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108616416.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press
Introduction 3
situatedness of learning around 1980, a decade before the publication of
SituatedLearning(1991);andeventhatbookhashadalongerlifethanmany
of its current readers. Thinking about the age of this work led us to wonder
how,incommunicatingamonggenerationsofresearchers,itwouldbepossible
toshowwhathashappenedasbothmyworkandthetimeshavechanged–and
Ana suggested that this collectionof essays mighthelp.
Butthereismoretoitthanthat.IfoundAnaGomesandtheanthropologists
withwhomsheworksinBeloHorizonteengagedinclosestudiesofeveryday
life and learning in their city. I was intrigued by the way in which they were
lookingatparticipants’everydayengagementsinpractice,andfollowingthem
through and across the multiple contexts that compose those everyday lives.
These anthropologists are also participants in struggles to transform relations
betweenthehegemoniceducationalapparatusesoftheBrazilianstate,UFMG,
and new indigenous visions of educational practice. These initiatives are
emerging as indigenous people and anthropologists have invented new state
and local organizations to provide the kinds of spaces they need in which to
worktogether,reinventedrelationsbetween universitiesandindigenouscom-
munities, and remade anthropological participation in indigenous community
practices as well; both parties are engaged in new forms of co-production of
their shared ethnographic practice. (Ana Gomes explores these challenges in
her Afterword. You might want to read that next.) The impetus for this book
came, then, from finding that my ideas about learning in and as changing
practice resonate with and inform their work. Their radical vision of ethno-
graphic relations and political action make me feel that this book is worth
sendingout into theworld.
Ana and I collaborated in choosing the essays, bringing together work that
explores interrelated research questions, the sometimes divergent collective
conversations that nourished them, and the particular intellectual movements
that in different ways allowed me towrite them inthe first place. Though the
essayscametogetherasawholeasweselectedandassembledthem,theycan
also be read in almost any order. I have accordingly provided a separate
introductionforeachofthem,andwillonlysayabriefwordaboutthemhere.
Thefirstessay(Chapter1),“TheSavageryoftheDomesticMind,”(1981),
wasformeanopeningsalvoonaclusterofissuescommontoearlyanthropo-
logicalconcernswithrationalityand“theprimitivemind”andtopsychological
theories of learning (and experimental method). Ethnographic research on
everyday math practices provided the empirical resources for joining the
debate. This essay serves as a point of departure for exploring the book as a
whole.Thesecondandthirdessaysopenouttoquestionsoftheory–andthen
practice – provoked by discussions that followed from Situated Learning
(1991): “The Problem of Context” (Chapter 2) asks what a variety of our
theoretically sophisticated colleagues were debating about conceptions of
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4 LearningandEverydayLife
situation, context, practice, learning, and activity; and “Ethnographies of
Apprenticeship” (Chapter 3) reviews a large body of ethnographic studies of
craft practice and apprenticeship, wondering how (or if) they contextualized
learninginilluminatingways.Anaproposedthefourthessay(Chapter4)asan
antidote to common complaints that I rarely discuss teaching. Even there the
title serves notice that it explores “Teaching as Learning in Practice.” In that
spirit, the following essay (Chapter 5), “Production Schools,” explores the
subtleandcontradictorypowerofanextraordinaryDanishschoolthatoperates
asamatterofcoursewiththeassumptionthatteachingisacomplexpracticeof
learning. The final two essays reflect changing theoretical developments in
ways that bring them closer to the present. “Everyday Life” (Chapter 6)
explores different ways in which “the everyday” is conceived with respect to
learning, for sooner or later every theory of learning makes claims about the
everydaylifeofwhichitispart.Thisquestion(alongwithbroadertheoretical
debatesaround“everydaylife”),loomsincreasinglylargerinmywork,asthe
relationbetweenthemisubiquitousandyetoftenconceivedinconfusedways
that demand clarification. Finally, I wrote the last essay for this book (Chap-
ter7)tobringittoanendwith(somethingcloseto)apointofarrival.Itbegins
with my own critical review of Situated Learning as a prelude to exploring
relationsbetweenGramsciantheoryofpracticeandcriticalpsychologyonthe
conduct ofeveryday life.
The essays indeed reflect a long arc of change in the theoretical and
ethnographic projects they explore. Read in sequence, they demonstrate what
Imeanbysaying,asIoftendo,thatweareallapprenticestoourownchanging
practice. In fact, every ethnographic project I have undertaken has felt like a
preamble to the one before and has ended with an inevitable sense that yet
another project is needed; surely an active process of apprenticeship to past
and futurework.
Theoretical development, too, is similarly open ended: Think of one’s
theoretical formation as being like an ethnographic project. A field research
project is many years in the making, involving years in the field, years of
analysisandwriting,andyearsoftalkingwithothersaboutit.Thesamecan
be said about the exploratory and transformative intentions animating the
process of theoretical formation. It is a very long-term project; it changes
over time, and is a situated practice – it is situated, that is, as part of other
practices.Itisanongoingprocessofcollectivediscussionandpuzzlingover
difficulttheoreticaltexts,andofethnographicinquiry,analysis,andcritique.
(It is in part, also, its institutional, intellectual, political, scholarly contexts,
andrelations.)Butperhapsthemostimportant,andmostdifficult,stepisthe
labor of getting one’s theoretical understanding and related ethnographic
inquiry to meet “in the middle” and challenge each other – so that neither
stays the same.
https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108616416.001 Published online by Cambridge University Press