Jakob Krause-Jensen

TY - UNPB

T1 - ETHNOGRAPHY AND/AS EDUCATION

AU - Krause-Jensen, Jakob

PY - 2021

Y1 - 2021

N2 - In their inaugural volume of the Teaching Anthropology journal, David Mills and Dimitrina Spencer wrote: ‘For teaching to be an act of hope, pedagogy has to be more than one-sided cultural transmission and reproduction’ (Mills and Spencer 2011). Six years later, in his recent book ‘Anthropology and/as Education’, Tim Ingold develops and expands on a similar point. Supported by pragmatist philosopher and educational thinker John Dewey, he argues that education in general and anthropology in particular is not to be understood as ‘transmission of knowledge’ from one generation to the next, but rather should be seen as a process of developing a particular sensibility or ‘attention’, a far more open-ended, uncertain process. Ingold’s book is wonderful. It is compellingly argued, and refreshing in its scope and theoretical ambition. Nevertheless, it contains few examples of particular courses or educational practices to lend support to his aims and claims. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, I intend to substantiate and support Ingold’s argument by providing two contemporary examples of experiments in teaching anthropology from Denmark that build on students’ fieldwork experiences. Second, and contrary to Ingold, I argue that these examples implicitly put ethnography rather than anthropology at centre stage.

AB - In their inaugural volume of the Teaching Anthropology journal, David Mills and Dimitrina Spencer wrote: ‘For teaching to be an act of hope, pedagogy has to be more than one-sided cultural transmission and reproduction’ (Mills and Spencer 2011). Six years later, in his recent book ‘Anthropology and/as Education’, Tim Ingold develops and expands on a similar point. Supported by pragmatist philosopher and educational thinker John Dewey, he argues that education in general and anthropology in particular is not to be understood as ‘transmission of knowledge’ from one generation to the next, but rather should be seen as a process of developing a particular sensibility or ‘attention’, a far more open-ended, uncertain process. Ingold’s book is wonderful. It is compellingly argued, and refreshing in its scope and theoretical ambition. Nevertheless, it contains few examples of particular courses or educational practices to lend support to his aims and claims. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, I intend to substantiate and support Ingold’s argument by providing two contemporary examples of experiments in teaching anthropology from Denmark that build on students’ fieldwork experiences. Second, and contrary to Ingold, I argue that these examples implicitly put ethnography rather than anthropology at centre stage.

KW - teaching anthropology

KW - teaching activities

KW - research based teacing

M3 - Working paper

BT - ETHNOGRAPHY AND/AS EDUCATION

ER -