1
Piers Locke, University of Kent
Formal Instruction and Apprenticeship Learning Among
Nepali Elephant Handlers
Preliminary fieldwork conducted in the Royal Chitwan National Park,
Nepal in the summer of 2001 confirmed the significance of
apprenticeship learning for the maintenance and utilisation of the
elephant resources that are so crucial to the operations of the park. In the
past, elephants in Nepal were used for big game hunting, transportation,
logging and other agricultural work. But since the inception of Chitwan
as Nepal’s first National Park in 1973, a new era of elephant deployment
has been inaugurated, in which their main uses are in providing jungle
safaris for tourists, assisting in the monitoring of large mammals like
tiger and rhinoceros, as well as engaging in anti-poaching reconnaissance.
The Research Context
Data supplied to me by the Nepal Conservation Research and Training
Centre (NCRTC) based near Sauraha, a village situated in the buffer zone
that surrounds the park, and which acts as a nexus point for the local
2
tourist economy, suggested that Chitwan is currently home to 22 elephant
stables or Hattisars, housing some 127 elephants or Hatti. This includes
both park-operated Hattisars and also those of the 7 safari resorts
licensed to operate within the park. The Park Management Unit itself
was, at that time, employing some 132 elephant staff or Hattisares.
Additionally, there is an elephant-breeding centre at Khoreshore, housing
some 26 elephants, the aim of which is to enable the park to become selfsufficient in captive elephants and no longer reliant on India for the
purchase of new animals.
While the Park Management Unit and the NCRTC are mainly composed
of high status immigrants from the hills (Pahari), the Hattisares are
mainly drawn from the lower status, ethnic Tharu, considered the
indigenous dwellers of the lowland strip of Nepal known as the Tarai
(see Guneratne 2001 & 2002). Each stable is headed by a Subba, who
acts as the main point of contact between officials and handlers. In each
stable 3 staff are allocated to each elephant, ideally with their own
specific responsibilities, and encoding a triadic hierarchy of authority. Of
greatest seniority is the Phanit or driver, the handler with the most
longstanding experience, who drives by pressing his toes on the temporal
3
region behind the elephant’s ears. Then there is the Patchuwa, whose job
is to cut grass and to take the elephant for grazing and bathing. Lastly,
there is the Mahout, whose job is to clean the stable and prepare the
elephant’s supplementary diet, parcels of unhusked rice, molasses, and
salt wrapped in grass, referred to in my presence as dana, meaning gift, or
kuchi, as they are more commonly known throughout both India and
Nepal. As observed at the Hattisar of the NCRTC however, these tasks
appear to be interchangeable, with Phanits rarely seen doing any driving
work, and with junior Mahouts regularly taking elephants out grazing.
What matters is the seniority encoded by the hierarchy.
The handlers of each Hattisar seem to enjoy a relative autonomy from
park authorities in the everyday practices of elephant care (also attested to
for West Bengal, and Kerala in an Indian handbook for Mahouts;
Namboodiri (ed) 1997), coming in to close contact mainly through the
issuing of specific tasks and the cooperation that they require. However,
there is a recognition that Hattisare practices are less than optimally
integrated with park agendas, in addition to which there are persistent
personnel problems, with many handlers quitting through dissatisfaction,
and others lacking in motivation and commitment.
4
In part, this probably reflects changes in the pattern of recruitment and
assignment of Hattisares. Lynette Hart claims that the former cultural
tradition of elephant driving being passed from father to son, and of
drivers maintaining a partnership with a specific elephant for life, (still
apparent in her co-authored study of Mahouts in South India [Hart &
Sundar 2000]) is decreasing, so that elephant driving, once perceived as a
way of life, is now increasingly perceived merely as an employment
opportunity (1994: 310), albeit one that offers a modicum of status to
people, many of whom would otherwise be destined to a hard life as
landless labourers (1994: 303). In the light of these personnel issues, a
Hattisare Education Program has been formulated with a view to the
further professionalisation of Hattisares (Dhakal, 2001).
The Hattisare Conservation Education Program
This proposed program, still awaiting funding for its implementation, is
intended to both further integrate handlers with the agendas of the park’s
continuing development and to enable them to take a greater pride in their
work. It is considered imperative that Hattisares understand the
ecological impact of their elephants. Each day an elephant consumes
5
somewhere in the region of 200kg of fodder, which involves 2 hours of
early morning grass-cutting, in addition to 5 or 6 hours open grazing
within the park according to the whims of the driver. Throughout the park
this adds up to roughly 16 tons of fodder removed daily for feeding,
which poses detrimental impacts to the park’s biodiversity, of which the
Hattisares are considered to be relatively ignorant. For example, some
elephant handlers deliberately let forests burn in the mistaken belief that
this allows new shoots of grass to sprout. They may also disturb
important bird habitats while lopping trees for fodder, as with the Vulture
which nests in the Simal tree, the most common fodder of the winter
season.
Hattisares (mostly Patchuwas and Mahouts) spend more time inside the
park than any other park and research staff, and therefore can play a vital
role in park protection and management by providing valuable
information on wildlife sightings and poacher activities. The elephant
staff represents an under-exploited resource in this respect, and with
sufficient training they could act as frontline conservation messengers.
Whilst undertaking their typical daily activities within the park, the
following inputs to park management are envisaged for handlers:
6
Monitoring endangered species (rhino, tiger, elephant, bison)

Preparing a daily journal of animal sightings and listing bird species

Reporting on adverse environmental activities, and providing
information on poaching activities (sadly on the increase since the
recent escalation of political violence between Government and
Maoist forces)

Enabling visitors to make better wildlife sightings whilst minimising
damage to flora and fauna

Providing better care for domestic elephants to ensure they are
healthy and happy for work

Collecting fodder selectively by considering habitat protection

Reporting any human activity that is offensive to the rules and
regulations of the park
The program would both impart to elephant staff a greater knowledge of
biodiversity conservation and aim to improve standards of elephant care.
Training is envisaged as being informal and participatory, with
instruction by wildlife technicians, botanists, and veterinary assistants.
The key components of such a training package would include:
The concept of ecosystem
7

General plant ecology and physiology

Seed dispersal and its importance for maintaining forest habitat

Environmental considerations in selecting trees for lopping for
fodder

Risks associated with wild animals in their natural habitat

Environmental considerations for the collection of forest products

Understanding of the adverse impact of fire in grassland and forest
habitats

The role of Hattisares in anti-poaching and monitoring activities

Better maintenance and care of domestic elephants

Saving elephants from transferable diseases transmitted by domestic
livestock
My research has the potential to provide essential data for the effective
implementation of this program by assessing current levels of
understanding through the profiling of the distribution of knowledge and
expertise among Hattisares, whether they are employed primarily for
park or tourist activities. It is further hoped that this would also serve to
highlight as-yet-unrecognised problems associated with Hattisares and
their elephant handling practices, as well as the social dynamics existing
between handlers and their employers. It should be noted that an uneasy
8
historical relationship obtains between Pahari and Tharu, although this is
not so acute in Chitwan as in other locales such as the Dang Valley. The
Tharu became victims of land appropriation and impoverishment in the
wake of the malarial eradication programs of the 1950s which made the
once inhospitable Tarai attractive to settlers from the hills, encouraged by
the government (Guneratne 1998, McDonaugh 1997).
One further aspect of the Hattisare Conservation Education Program is
the intention to produce a standardised training manual, the sale of which
might produce additional revenue. However, such a manual has already
been produced by the Elephant Welfare Association of Kerala in
conjunction with the Zoo Outreach Organisation (“Practical Elephant
Management: A Handbook for Mahouts”, Namboodiri (ed) 1997), and
which I believe the Nepali authorities are currently unaware of.
Didactic Instruction and Apprenticeship Learning
Mahout manuals and training programs can however, only function as a
complement to the situated practical knowledge acquired through the
participation and imitation of the neophyte apprentice. Those portions of
such manuals which deal with handling skills can only provide rules-of-
9
thumb, which represent the codifications of practical experience, and
which, in-and-of themselves are insufficient to master a skill (Scott 1998:
330). Such a linguistic means of imparting knowledge is constrained by
its communicative mode, that of didactic instruction, which results in
declarative or propositional forms of knowledge, what Ryle termed
knowledge-that, whereas learning by participation and imitation results in
a skills based knowledge or mastery, what Ryle termed knowledge-how
(Crossley 2001: 102).
To understand apprenticeship learning then requires a consideration of
embodied knowledge; those forms of knowledge evident only in practice
and which are highly resistant to linguistic articulation. Two key sets of
intellectual resources, somewhat overlapping, but deriving from
countervailing epistemologies (Cartesian and anti-Cartesian) will be
considered as potential tools for the development of an account of
Hattisare apprenticeship learning; firstly connectionist formulations of
schema theory, and secondly Bourdieu’s practice theory, including a
consideration
of
insights
gleaned
from
his
phenomenological
predecessors. Both approaches share an associationist and enculturative
conception of perception and cognition.
10
Schema Theory and Connectionism
In “Language, Anthropology and Cognitive Science” Maurice Bloch
argues both that Social and Cultural Anthropology have been overly
preoccupied with the linguistic components of human culture, and that
ethnographic research has much to offer the interdisciplinary field of
Cognitive Science. Whereas Cognitive Psychology experimentally probes
the nature of human cognition under controlled conditions, and Artificial
Intelligence (AI) attempts to simulate human cognition (or aspects of it)
in computers, anthropology conducted by participant observation allows
us to examine how cognition is actually employed in natural
environments. Six key contentions may be derived from his paper:
1. Much of what constitutes culture is neither linguistically formulated nor
organised in language-like ways, instead largely comprising unstated,
implicit knowledge (1991: 189).
2. This view of culture is attested to by ethnographic studies of
apprenticeship that suggest that most learning is not a result of explicit,
Socratic instruction, but is acquired through tentative participation and
imitation (1991: 186).
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3. To understand learning processes therefore requires a reconsideration of
theories of thought.
4. The dominant model of thought has been that of sentential logic
(simulated in AI as serial symbolic processing), a linear form of reasoning
mirrored in the semantic structure of language and which effectively
represents our folk-model of thought. However, this cannot account for the
speed and efficiency with which we perform daily tasks and cope with
familiar situations (1991: 190).
5. Instead, a connectionist theory of thought, inspired by neurological
models of brain function (and simulated in AI as parallel distributed
processing) can better account for the cognitive aspects of performing tasks
and coping with situations.
6. If learning is not primarily linguistic in character, then active participant
observation can only be endorsed as a means of approximating other
peoples’ knowledge and experiences in the world.
Before addressing the connectionist formulation of schema theory as
presented in Claudia Strauss and Naomi Quinn’s ‘cultural models’
12
approach (1997), it is first necessary to outline what is meant by a
schema. In essence, a schema refers to implicit knowledge in the form of
a network of associations that enable us to develop understandings that
permit meaningful action in the world. For Casson schemas are both data
structures and data processors, a pattern of action as well as a pattern for
action (1983: 438), which allow us to both organise and process
experience, being not merely a ‘picture’ in the mind, but also; “a kind of
mental recognition ‘device’ which creates a complex interpretation from
minimal inputs” (D’Andrade 1995: 136). This suggests then that; “We
comprehend events in terms of the schemas they activate” (1995: 122).
Alternatively, as Strauss and Quinn put it: “The essence of schema theory
in the cognitive sciences is that in large measure information processing
is mediated by learned or innate structures that organise related pieces of
our knowledge” (1997: 49). (With regard to the identification of possible
shared schemas among elephant handlers, Hart’s study in Chitwan
revealed a high degree of concordance among their perceptions of the
individual and social behaviour of elephants, the perceptions attributed to
tamed elephants, and their interactions with drivers. It seems reasonable
to attribute this to the acquisition of shared schemes of discrimination and
13
judgement).
With connectionism we encounter a theory of how schematisation
processes might actually operate in the human brain (Strauss & Quinn
1997: 50). Until relatively recently, as already mentioned, sentential logic
has been the dominant model of thought (Bloch 1991: 190), a serial form
of reasoning analogous to what Fillmore has labelled ‘checklist’ theories
of necessary and sufficient conditions, in which a meaning is; “specified
in terms of conjunctions of discrete properties, called variously
‘distinctive features’, ‘semantic components’ and ‘criterial attributes’”
(Casson 1983: 435).
In AI this sequential mode of analysis was simulated in computers by
means of Serial Symbolic Processing. In this model, symbols/binary bits
are the basic objects of the mind/computer. The senses/input devices
bring in information from the outside world that is encoded to create a
representation that is manipulated by the mind/computer using the rules
of logic (as in a syllogism) or in a heuristic search (as in looking for an
optimal chess move). The rules are applied serially, forming a chain of
steps through which a decision is reached (D’Andrade 1995: 137).
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Rules are symbolic representations founded in linear sequentiality, but
schema theory doesn’t suggest a rule-based mode of thought, instead
presupposing an indexical representation founded in holistic simultaneity
(Tyler in Casson 1983: 431). To illustrate, Bloch talks of a Malagasy
shifting cultivator’s ability to recognize a section of forest as potentially
good land in which to make a swidden, a feat achieved near
instantaneously, far quicker than would seem reasonable if this involved a
cognitive process along the lines of a checklist of criterial attributes that
must be fulfilled in order to identify land as good for swiddening. Instead,
what seems more likely to be occurring is the matching of a mental model
of a good swidden with a mental model of the particular patch of forest in
question (Bloch 1991: 187). Bloch also cites his own acquired ability to
recognize land good for swidden cultivation to suggest that participant
observation is a good method for learning the schemas of another culture,
thereby endorsing active participant observation as a valid research
strategy (especially if one’s object of enquiry is apprenticeship
processes).
While Serial Symbolic Processing proved useful for developing chess-
15
playing and logic-solving programs, does it really serve as an adequate
model of the cognitive process by which an expert chess player actually
makes game moves? Dreyfus and Dreyfus found that; “what seems to
distinguish the expert from the novice is not so much an ability to handle
complex strategic logico-mathematical rules, but rather the possession, in
memory, of an amazingly comprehensive and organized store of total or
partial chessboard configurations, which allows the expert to recognize
the situation in an instant so as to know what should be done next”
(Bloch 1991: 188).
However, the expert has not merely remembered many previous games,
but developed a cognitive apparatus which enables him/her to remember
many games and configurations more easily and rapidly than the nonexpert, and to draw on that experience in dealing with novel situations
(Bloch 1991: 188). Bloch is arguing then; “that learning is not just a
matter of storing received knowledge…but that it is a matter of
constructing apparatuses for efficient handling and packing of specific
domains of knowledge and practice”, and also that; “the operations
connected with these specific domains not only are non-linguistic but
also must be non-linguistic if they are to be efficient” (Bloch 1991: 189).
16
This pattern-recognition perspective on thought processes has been
simulated in AI with parallel distributed processing networks, in which a
multitude of processors acting in parallel feed information simultaneously
to create a holistic synthesis (Bloch 1991: 191). Similarly, in
Connectionism, a neural metaphor is used to picture knowledge.
Knowledge is conceived: “not as sets of sentences but as implicit in the
network of links among many simple processing units that work like
neurons” and which are arranged in layers (Strauss and Quinn 1997: 51).
Neurons receive excitatory and inhibitory signals from other neurons.
When they work in parallel they produce intelligent action. These
chemical synapses are modified by experience, and with learning,
neurons undergo structural changes so that, in future, they are more or
less likely to contribute to the firing of another (Strauss and Quinn 1997:
51-52). New knowledge then; “consists of changing connection weights
that shift the likelihoods of what units will activate which” (Strauss and
Quinn 1997: 53).
This view of new knowledge and skills as resulting from the development
of neural networks, as we shall see, has much in common with
17
Bourdieu’s description of learning the dispositions of the habitus, in that
it also assumes that knowledge is not represented sententially in our
heads, but that much learning proceeds without the need for explicitly
stated rules (Strauss and Quinn 1997: 53, D’Andrade 1995: 147,
Bourdieu 1977: 76). Just as habitus, in finding a middle-ground between
deterministic and rational-choice approaches to action, posits a ‘regulated
improvisation’ by which actors draw on prior experience to deal with
novel situations, so too; “schemas as construed in connectionist models
are well-learned but flexibly adaptive rather than rigidly repetitive”
(Strauss and Quinn 1997: 53). The outputs of connectionist networks are
improvisational because they are created on the spot, but regulated
because they are guided by previously learnt patterns of association.
Bourdieu’s Habitus
The notion of habitus, as derived from Mauss’ essay on body techniques
(1979: 97-122) has been developed in order to resolve, or at least
circumvent, the tired but resilient opposition of subjectivism and
objectivism
and
all
its
attendant
dualities;
individual/society,
determinism/freedom, conditioning/creativity, conscious/unconscious
(Bourdieu 1990: 25 & 55, Bourdieu 2000: 128, Crossley 2001: 82).
18
Bourdieu strives to develop a conception of human action that can
account for its regularity, coherence and order without ignoring its
negotiated and strategic nature, and this is what the concept of habitus is
designed to achieve.
“An agent’s habitus is an active residue or sediment of his past that
functions within his present, shaping his perception, thought and action
and thereby moulding social practice in a regular way. It consists in
dispositions, schemas, forms of know-how and competence, all of which
function below the threshold of consciousness…These dispositions and
forms of competence are acquired in structured social contexts whose
pattern, purpose and underlying principles they incorporate as both an
inclination and a modus operandi” (Crossley 2001: 83). These
incorporated habits do not merely dispose one to continue with particular
forms of practice in particular ways, but are also resources for the
generation of new practices, which in turn impact on the (everdeveloping) habitus of the agent.
This emphasis on the competence, know-how, skill and disposition of the
agent allies Bourdieu with proponents of phenomenological approaches.
His crucial criticism of, and point of divergence from these approaches
19
however, lies in their apparent failure to locate the interpretive horizon of
the agent in the structural context from which it emerges. Although no
one agent’s habitus will be identical to that of any other’s, Bourdieu
considers individual biographies as but strands in a wider collective
history. “An individual habitus is but a variant of a collective root”
(Crossley 2001: 84). The system of dispositions and schemas that
constitute any one habitus is considered a structural variant of larger
group or class habituses, expressing the difference between the
trajectories or positions inside or outside the various classes which
influence the composition of one’s habitus.
Two further terms from Bourdieu’s ‘conceptual tool kit’ are required to
better understand the conditioned and conditioning relation of the agent’s
habitus to its social environment; that of field and capital. While habitus
accounts for the dispositions, schemas, and competencies that both
generate and shape action, field provides the context for action, or the
parameters of possibility, while capital provides the resources available to
the actor within that context, or that which shapes the parameters of
possibility.
20
For Bourdieu, modern societies are differentiated into interlocking fields,
some of which coincide with institutions such as the family, the media,
and academia, but which can also assume sub and trans-institutional
forms. These fields are constituted through competitive exchanges of
goods (taken in its widest possible and potentially abstract sense) that are
deemed valuable within that field. The field of elephant handling for
instance might be characterised in terms of competition for a rank and
prestige rooted in experience, skill and mastery of elephants. The
hattisare who is called on to perform complex and demanding operations
(such as the Phanit’s role in the corralling and capture of Rhinos chosen
for translocation, or in dealing with elephants in the dangerous state of
musth) will be someone recognised as possessing those qualities which
most closely conform to the prototypic schema of the ideal handler.
Bourdieu’s account of the activity of agents competing for capital within
a field draws on the rich metaphorical resource of ‘the game’, in which
‘players’ have a stake or interest, which Bourdieu is fond of referring to
as illusio; by which he means the pursuit of goals and the adherence to
norms and distinctions appropriate to its field. So, a dynamic and
dialectical relation obtains between habitus and field. “Agents’ actions
21
are shaped both by their habitus and by the exigencies and logic of ‘the
game’ as it unfolds” (Crossley 2001: 87). Capital is what is at stake when
an agent operates according to the parameters for action given by a field.
“Anything may count as capital that is afforded, however tacitly, an
exchange value in a given field, and that thereby serves both as a resource
for action and as a ‘good’ to be sought after and accumulated” (Crossley
2001: 87).
This amounts to what I term a multi-valent theory of capital. “In addition
to financial capital, Bourdieu lists as the main forms of capital: symbolic
capital (i.e. status); social capital (i.e. useful contacts and networks); and
most famously, cultural capital, which may manifest in the form of
educational qualifications, ‘tasteful’ dispositions and manner, or the
possession of highly regarded artefacts and goods” (Crossley 2001: 87,
my italics). For Bourdieu it is one’s capital assets that largely define
one’s social position, in turn determining the conditions that shape one’s
life experiences and thus also one’s habitus. And the various forms of
capital depend on agents’ (mis)recognition for their value and power.
“They are all, to a degree, valuable because we agree that they are
valuable” (Crossley 2001: 87). Being rooted in habit, they are seldom
22
identified as consensual agreements at all. “like footballers involved in a
game, social agents must perceive and treat (misrecognise) the arbitrary
framework of social fields as real and natural if they are to play
effectively” (Crossley 2001: 93, see also Bourdieu 1990: 68).
Analogues of Habitus in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty
In “The Phenomenological Habitus and its Construction” Nick Crossley
argues that the phenomenology of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty provide a
broader and deeper understanding of habituation than is available in
Bourdieu’s accounts, in particular, by focusing on Husserl’s notions of
typification and pairing, and Merleau-Ponty’s corporeal schema. His
critique of Bourdieu is not so much substantive as it is a concern with
matters of emphasis in his expositions. Bourdieu’s insistence on habitus
is considered to pre-empt his conception of agency by his failure to
sufficiently remind us that the habitus is a property of agents: It is not
habits that act but agents, not habits that improvise but agents, and not
habits that act strategically but agents. Thus, the generative role of agency
appears to be underplayed, making him vulnerable to charges of
determinism. In addition, Crossley contends that the sociological vision
usurps the philosophy of the subject, claiming: “His work…offers us
23
relatively little in the way of an analytical toolbox for opening up and
exploring the subjective side of the social world. The concept of the
habitus hints at the possibility for a hermeneutic dimension to social
analysis but sadly does no more than hint” (2001: 98).
“Merleau-Ponty’s exploration of the nature of habit is rooted in his
broader analysis of human embodiment and agency. Arguing against
Cartesian mind/body dualism and a variety of forms of idealist
philosophy, he seeks to establish the irreducibly embodied nature of
human subjectivity and agency” (Crossley 2001: 99). In the Cartesian
tradition the body is merely an appendage of the mind, but for MerleauPonty we are our bodies! Merleau-Ponty wishes both to avoid idealist
views of a disembodied mind as well as mechanistic views of
consciousless bodies (as in the stimulus/response of psychological
behaviourism), just as Bourdieu wishes to avoid the either/or option of
subjectivist and objectivist explanations by means of reasons (Rational
Choice Theory) or causes (Structuralism) (Bourdieu 2000: 139, 1994:
133).
Where Descartes and Kant explained meaning and action by recourse to
24
the reflective acts of a transcendental ego, Merleau-Ponty argues that our
primary relation to the world is one of practical involvement and mastery.
“Our primary manner of being is not ‘I think’ as Descartes suggests, but
rather ‘I can’ or ‘I do’” (Crossley 2001: 100). Since one is one’s body,
one does not therefore relate to it as an external object as Descartes’
thinking implies. If I move my arm it does not require a prior intentional
thought. The act is intentional, but not in the sense that the action is added
to or caused by that intention.
As with Maurice Bloch’s contentions, such an intentional act need not be
formulated either linguistically or reflectively. This involves knowledge,
but not in the intellectualist sense, as with Ryle’s distinction between the
discursive knowledge-that and the embodied knowledge-how. Rather, as
Bourdieu would put it, it is a doxic knowledge; knowledge that does not
require conscious formulation, but which ‘fits’ the exigencies of the
circumstances, and which may also be characterised as functional and
‘interested’. Furthermore: “It is not only my own body that I ‘know’ in
this way, moreover. I have a pre-reflective sense or grasp on my
environment, relative to my body, as is evidenced by my capacity to
move around in and utilise that space without first having to think how to
25
do so” (Crossley 2001: 101).
“It is this fundamental coordination of the embodied agent with both self
and world that lies at the root of Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the
corporeal schema. The corporeal schema is an incorporated bodily knowhow and practical sense; a perspectival grasp upon the world from the
‘point of view’ of the body (Crossley 2001: 102). Crossley illustrates this
idea of incorporation by means of the example of driving a car, but one
could just as easily use the example of driving an elephant. Over time one
incorporates a sense of the dimensions of the car or elephant, so that one
comes to adopt an extended point of view in which the car or elephant
acts as a prosthesis of the body, an extension to one’s corporeal schema.
The corporeal schema is considered the active ingredient of agency,
situating agents perceptually, linguistically, and through motor activity.
Of course, a key difference between the examples of driving a car and an
elephant concerns the sentience of the elephant, and hence the possibility
of intersubjectivity between driver and elephant. Indeed, in interpreting
Merleau-Ponty, Crossley argues that this bodily sense is also of
fundamental relevance to social interactions, providing the grounding for
26
intersubjectivity. “Just as we can incorporate the dimensions of a car
within our corporeal schema, we can incorporate a social group”
(Crossley 2001: 103). Similarly, and also drawing on Merleau-Ponty,
Sheets-Johnstone also argues that intercorporeality provides the basis for
intersubjectivity (c.f. 2000). Just think of the way we talk of ‘esprit de
corps’ to capture the sense of solidarity that develops in social
movements or among various constituencies who share some defining
interest. “The agent thinks, in these cases, from the point of view of the
group. The group bestows a collective power upon its members and each
member feels and wields this power, perhaps unknowingly, in individual
actions” (Crossley 2001: 103).
Habit, formulated in contradistinction to the conditioned reflex posited by
traditional behaviourists, acts as an addition to the corporeal schema.
“Habit involves a modification and enlargement of the corporeal schema,
an incorporation of new ‘principles’ of action and know-how that permit
new ways of acting and understanding. It is a sediment of past activity
that remains alive in the present in the form of the structures of the
corporeal schema; shaping perception, conception, deliberation, emotion,
and action” (Crossley 2001: 104). Habit is conceived then as a form of
27
embodied and practical understanding, manifesting as competent and
purposive action, a knowledge-in-action, only evident in its performance.
The key implication of relevance here, is that we learn not so much by
thinking as by doing.
By drawing on Husserl’s thinking about apperception, Crossley also
argues that habits do not merely regulate the way we act, but also shape
the ways in which we make sense of our environments. Husserl’s writings
serve to remind us of the extent to which action in the world is guided by
habituated expectation. All perception is perspectival and hence partial,
requiring us to tacitly impute ‘hidden’ qualities or dimensions, to ‘fill in
the gaps’ in order to develop a seeming perception of the whole (as with
the implicit knowledge of schemas which provide the framework with
which to make sense of situations).
Husserl identifies two closely linked processes of apperception which he
refers to as typification and pairing. “Typification entails the formation of
habitual perceptual schemas that simplify complex perceptual input. In
effect the uniqueness and particularity of each new moment of our
experience is simplified by being subsumed into a general category or
28
‘type’. Thus, even when we approach objects that, strictly speaking, we
have never encountered before, we will see them in terms of the broader
type to which they belong. Moreover, newly typed objects are ‘paired’
with objects of the same type that we have experienced in the past, and
properties and qualities attributed to them accordingly” (Crossley 2001:
109).
So, as with Bourdieu’s habitus, and Strauss and Quinn’s cultural models,
perceptual experience is shaped by biographically acquired habit. Lived
experience may disappear from conscious recall, but will remain latent,
sedimented in the form of habitus, and ready to be reawakened by an
active association, disposing the agent to respond in ‘typical’ ways to
‘typical’ situations. In sum, sedimented experience contributes to the
constitution of the habitus/corporeal schema through the associational
processes of typification and pairing which shape the perceptual schemas
by which one both makes sense of, and acts upon the world.
Reiterating a point already made in the discussion of Bourdieu’s Logic of
Practice: “Typifications and pairing, as well as know-how and agentic
dispositions more generally, usually arise out of social interactions within
29
collectivities and, as such, tend to be shared. Most aspects of our
individual habitus, as Bourdieu has done most to show, are rooted in the
shared habitus of the groups to which we belong” (Crossley 2001: 110).
Finally, such phenomenological stances attempt to provide an alternative
to determinist accounts of human social life. For they suggest that human
behaviour is not so much determined by external events as it is engaged
by them, replying purposively to its environment in accordance with the
meanings that environment has for the agent, meanings which have been
shaped by the acquired schemas and dispositions of the habitus. In that
habits are considered a residue of action, they also function as a testament
to agency.
Ontogenetic Foundations of Apprenticeship Learning
In the preceding discussion, habituation has been presented as deriving
from both innate and acquired sources, and as being ‘durably installed’
(Bourdieu 1990: 57). Maxine Sheets-Johnstone has suggested that some
of the most fundamental acquired dispositions of relevance to accounts of
apprenticeship learning may be found in child development, specifically
30
referring to joint attention, imitation and turn-taking (2000: 343).
Joint visual attention is about ‘looking where someone else is looking’, a
shared focus in other words. Non verbal communicative efforts stemming
from joint attention can be recognised by a clear and codifiable set of
behaviours, namely; head orientation, visual gaze, and vocalisations
coupled with one-fingered pointing gestures. Joint visual attention is then,
the first step toward a ‘meeting of minds’. Already then it can be seen
that the intersubjectivity essential to apprenticeship learning is more
fundamentally grounded in an intercorporeal awareness, an awareness
that includes not just a sense of one’s own body and that of another, but
also of agency and intentionality.
Sheets-Johnstone then relates these insights to examples of apprenticeship
learning in adult life, citing Akre and Ludvigsen’s study of how
physicians develop professional knowledge and skills in their daily work.
“A foundational capacity to focus on the same object with another person
and to be aware both of what the person does with respect to the object
and of the meaning the other person attaches to what he or she is doing
with the object is at the core of medical practice. In sum, the skill of a
31
physician has its epistemological roots in ontogeny, in the communal act
of shared attention, in the transfers of sense that are part and parcel of the
sharing, and in the active and semantically resonant kinetic-tactilekinaesthetic bodies that are its foundation” (2000: 350).
In as much as apprenticeship is not just learning in a purely instrumental
sense, but also involves socialisation, then, when considering the range of
its current and historical implementations, one becomes aware of the
often authoritarian and oppressive character of apprenticeship learning.
Joint attention is considered to engender; “certain social values and
certain cultural groomings through the bodily comportments and
vocalisations
of
actively
participating
mothers
and
caretakers.
Apprenticeship learning in adult situations is socially saturated in
basically similar ways” (Sheets-Johnstone 2000: 351).
Sheets-Johnstone goes on to cite Jean Lave’s work in which learning is
portrayed as ‘situated activity’ that cannot be reduced to merely formal
didactic training, and in which (drawing on Bourdieu) practice is a matter
of adjusting to institutionally structured possibilities for action. Lave’s
concern with learning through participation functions as an implicit
32
testimonial to shared attention since participation entails common focus
and involvement.
With regard to imitation, the work of psychologist Andrew Meltzoff is
utilised to argue that infants as young as two or three weeks old imitate
adult tongue protrusions, mouth openings, and lip protrusions,
subsequently concluded to be an ability present from birth. While his
research hinges on reductive explanation by recourse to ‘entities’
postulated as key mechanisms, Sheets-Johnstone is more concerned with
understanding imitation experientially as a developmental phenomenon.
By extending this kinetic thematic as elaborated in her treatment of joint
attention, infant imitation may be seen as an example of kinetickinaesthetic matching, a matching that isn’t so much achieved through
the establishment of some representational schema or other hypothetical
entity, as it is from the primal animation which resonates through the
tactile-kinaesthetic body.
Finally we come to turn taking. “Turn-taking is uniformally recognised
by child psychologists as a precursor of language” (Sheets-Johnstone
33
2000: 362). The alternating pattern of smiling and vocalising between
mother and child serves as the principal lesson in turn taking, the cardinal
rule for all later discourse between two or more people. So, the
ontogenetically acquired dispositions of joint attention, imitation and
turn-taking are seen to serve to shed light on the learning of nonrepresentational knowledge that is ‘etched’ as it were, in the body.
The Dilemma of Operationalisation
In this final section I consider some of the difficulties of
methodologically applying these insights to apprenticeship learning.
Bourdieu’s theory of practice seems to supply a hermeneutic perspective,
which, as such, does not allow a simple empirical verification of his
insights. This is acknowledged in his critique of the structuralist tendency
to confuse ‘models of reality’ with the ‘reality of models’ (Bourdieu
1990: 39). For the structuralist derives rules from the study of the
regularities of social practice and then accords those rules an explanatory
status in accounting for them (Crossley 2001: 82, Bourdieu 1994: 133).
This could only be countenanced if the synoptic vision which Bourdieu
attributes to those who make such an epistemocentric fallacy’ were
34
possible, by which is meant the assumption that one can step outside of a
situated perspective. But Bourdieu does not automatically accord the
social scientist such an epistemological privilege (indeed he has been an
ardent advocate of encouraging epistemic reflexivity as an essential part
of academic practice). Rather, he suggests that the social scientist is better
placed than most to strive to identify the objective conditions which
influence one’s habitus since his/her field provides the interest (illusio) to
do so, aided by the use of specialised research methods (Crossley 2001:
93-94). Similarly, Strauss and Quinn concede that the schemas they
derive from their research are inferred, and as such are analytic
constructs.
However, the ‘cultural models’ approach of Strauss and Quinn seems to
offer a clearer picture of how these theoretical insights might be applied;
by means of discourse analysis. In my own research, with its greater
concern for embodied forms of knowledge, I intend to utilise data
gathered through the use of digital video. By replaying footage of various
Hattisare task performances to key informants, it is hoped that the
commentary they supply will be useful in training and directing my
attention toward the acquired bodily skills of managing tame elephants.
35
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