There have been many recent studies of apprenticeship in traditional ‘trades’. For instance, the work of Lave (2011) on apprentice tailors in western Africa, Rogoff’s (1995) work with Guatemalan midwives, Keller and Keller’s (1996) ethnographical examination of American craft-based blacksmithing, Gamble’s (2001) investigation of how cabinet makers in South Africa learn tacit skills, Racca and Roth’s (2001) study of Canadian apprentices in electrical trades, Simpson’s (2006) research on apprentice ship-builders in western India, and Marchand’s (2008) ethnographical field work with minaret builders in North Africa. Each of these studies, contribute to an understanding of how apprenticeships are enacted. From these studies, emerges the understanding that the enactment of apprenticeship is more than the development of a set of occupational skills. As such, an apprenticeship also constitutes a rite of passage, a form of induction into working life and adult responsibilities (Lehmann 2007), accompanied by the formation of occupational identity (Kirpal 2004). An apprenticeship, therefore, does more than prepare young people for work: it provides them with a particular identity and positions them in a world where occupations may also be shorthand statements of their individuality (Hall and Chandler 2005).I like the lists of 'trades' which form the focus of the studies (most of them ethnographic, I think, Kate). I also like the emphasis on what apprenticeship offers beyond 'the development of a set of occupational skills'. There is the idea of 'induction into ... adult responsibilities' (which echoes what I said yesterday about this being a relationship that comes after those with parent and teacher). And there is the formation of 'a particular identity', which Chan talks about elsewhere in terms of a type of 'becoming'.
Can one undergo an apprenticeship as an activist?
I think this is now called radicalization. I have spent time with communist and hard core socialists I have marched and protested and perhaps this goes back to your first post about silence - is the political act - the not flying to save carbon, the eating of organic food, the driving an electric car - the moving away from the group to find the personal silence- is the collective action which is more than protest something about communion - collective responsibility.
ReplyDeleteI like this post as many of the people you cite, Richard, are people I read as ethnographers. It makes me realise the concept of practice (literacy practices, apprenticeships) is central both to the everyday, but also to this kind of being. What is different about practice is somehow schooling doesn't acknowledge the way it works, as something connected and pulled to relationships that are intergenerational and nested in communities.
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