CfP: "Learning How" Workshop, 5.-6.2.15, Berlin, Germany
Call for papers:
Learning How:
Training Bodies, Producing Knowledge, Workshop
05-06 February 2015,
organizers: Nina Lerman, Stewart Allen, Research Group Histories of Planning,
Dep. III, Artefacts, Action and Knowledge, Max-Planck Institute for the History
of Science, Berlin, Germany
The focus of this
workshop will be on processes of learning in relation to material production:
how a less-knowing body becomes more-knowing; how mastery is understood by both
"masters" and others; what provisions and resources might be
available, and to whom, in a particular time and place. Finding words to
analyze knowledge of material processes is often a contested project, but
whatever terms scholars choose -- regenerating/ acquiring/ emulating/
developing knowledge -- we propose there is a common set of questions to
explore and a rich conversation to be had.
The
tools of the project "Histories of Planning" are particularly adept
at opening and analyzing processes of knowledge production and regeneration:
"making material things work" highlights both the intentions of
actors engaged in perpetuating material techniques, and the improvisations and
insights produced in artisanal encounters over generations, within communities,
across boundaries, between bodies and minds. The rubric demands situating types
of knowledge specifically -- in particular materialities, workplaces,
workshops, kinship groups, classrooms, laboratories, markets, structures of
power etc. – yet seeking methodological and comparative points of commonality
and conversation.
Focal
questions for this workshop will be:
·
What are the structures, from
apprenticeships to classrooms, to pay scales to inheritance, within which
learning is envisioned? How rigid or flexible are the rules, plans, boundaries?
·
How is "learning" understood by
the people involved? Who is expected to become knowledgeable, and about which
materials and processes?
·
How do we go about studying and
articulating human learning processes, familiar or unfamiliar, historical or
contemporary? When can we assume a common neurological being or when should we
emphasize the contingent cultural constructions of knowing?
·
Similarly, when can we assume continuities
of specific materialities -- "stone", "wood",
"metal", etc -- and when do apparently obvious continuities turn out
to be materially incommensurate?
·
How do various cultures, societies, or
communities define and value modes of knowing, and how do these differences
shape the questions we can ask?
Against
this topical background the workshop invites discussions about how
anthropologists, historians, sociologists, archaeologists, scientists and
others can know, investigate, and write about the nonverbal, the veiled and the
embodied. We seek to interrogate and explore the different forms of knowledge
produced by different disciplinary methods (e.g. interviews, archival research,
participant observation, quantitative sampling etc.) and how such data may be
used to generate and inform novel understandings of the subjects under
scrutiny.
Contributors are
requested to send in a 250-300 word abstract with their biographical details
(full name, institutional affiliation, e-mail address and telephone numbers) by
16 May, 2014.
Funding will be
available.
The
“Histories of Planning” project is online here: http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/research/projects/DeptIII_SchaeferDagmar-HistoriesOfPlanning
If
you have questions about the workshop contact Nina Lerman or Stewart Allen at learninghow@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de