Apprenticeship and Embodied Learning For this project you have two choices: Choice 1- Undertake your own apprenticeship Undertake an apprenticeship that involves you as a novice and at least one other person as a skilled practitioner. This can be something seemingly simple.
For example, f you have avoided acquiring domestic skills you might apprentice to a close relative to learn how to cook, do laundry, change diapers etc. Or, you could take a formal, organized class, such as a cooking class or a pottery class. You could take on something more physically challenging- learn ballroom dancing, take tennis instructions or, like Wacquant, learn a martial art. Whatever you decide to apprentice in, you must pay attention not just to what people say and do. As Wacquant tells us, the reasons behind any individual’s conduct are not simply “…“out there” in the form of publicly available symbols” and observable practices. The reasons can also be found “… “in here”, in the invisible schematic of cognition, cathexis, and action through which the probe and construct the world around them”. For this project, undertake an apprenticeship, and write a paper of 3,500-4,000 words in which you provide: a. some background for your apprenticeship study- what you did, with whom, for how long, in what context, the reasons for your choice b. a discussion of apprenticeship as a research method and discussion of the concepts you’ve used – derived from assigned readings on carnal sociology, habitus, enactive ethnography, apprenticeship as a method and any other sources you find relevant c. a description and analysis of your experiences in performing the phenomenon you apprenticed in from “out there” and “in here” perspectives. OR Choice 2- Use Josette Normandeau’s capoeira apprenticeship Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art that combines elements of music and dance and is practiced to traditional Brazilian berimbau music. Several sociologists and anthropologists have undertaken ethnographic studies of capoeira. Using the documentary presented by J https://youtu.be/_o2k8zJIdmI n as your site for observation of an apprenticeship, and drawing on the papers assigned for this exercise, write a paper of 3,500-4,000 words in which you provide a. some background for Normandeau’s apprenticeship study- what she apprenticed as, with whom, for how long, in what context, the reasons for her choice of apprenticing in capoeira. b. a discussion of apprenticeship as a research method and discussion of the concepts you’ve used – derived from assigned readings on carnal sociology, habitus, enactive ethnography, apprenticeship as a method and any other sources you find relevant c. Describe Josette’s experiences from the point of view of an outside observer, using the tools of ethnography, to describe “ the practices” that underpin the relations between maestra and Normandeau as a student seeking to learn capoeira. Then, to the best of your ability, describe them again, using the concept of habitus, as a means of uncovering Normandeau’s ‘in here” experience as an apprentice (Wacquant 2015:381).
