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Schooling and Skipperhood: The Development of Dexterity
Author(s) -
Pálsson Gísli,
Helgason Agnar
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1525/aa.1998.100.4.908
Subject(s) - embeddedness , fishing , embodied cognition , ethnography , situated , relation (database) , fish <actinopterygii> , sociology , cognition , psychology , epistemology , social science , fishery , computer science , philosophy , database , artificial intelligence , anthropology , biology , neuroscience
Focusing on data relating to Iceland, we examine differences in the performance of fishing skippers both in and out of school and explore the development of dexterity and the connections among fishing practice, schooling, and fishing success. Our ethnographic and statistical analyses indicate that, contrary to the prevailing assumption of many educators, skippers' performance in marine school has little direct relation to success in fishing. We conclude that while schooling serves important other purposes, critical abilities required for locating and catching fish are largely developed in the course of everyday practice. Our findings substantiate much recent theorizing on embodied knowledge and schooling, emphasizing the embeddedness of learning and cognition. There are good grounds, we argue, for placing practical knowledge, situated activities, and communities of practice at the center of the theoretical and environmental agenda, [ dexterity, fishing, practice, schooling, Iceland ]