Abstract
This chapter sketches how anthropological critiques of dominant theories of learning and technology have a tendency to be absorbed and instrumentalised by the hegemonic projects they target. In particular, the chapter traces how anthropological critiques of mainstream cognitive theory and artificial intelligence research during the 1980s and early 1990s were adapted and deployed in the early 2000s as part of an effort to ‘reimagine’ learning institutions for the digital age. In tracing this history, the chapter argues for the importance of attending to the institutional relations that structure the production, circulation, and application of not just technologies and sociotechnical interventions but also anthropological critiques.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For a more general review of these and other ‘sociomaterial’ approaches to education research, see Fenwick et al. (2011).
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
These anthropological critiques extended far beyond the application of cognitive theory in educational settings, but they also complement and add ethnographic rigour to more sociological critiques of institutionalised schooling. For examples of the latter, see Apple (2012) and Selwyn (2011). Selwyn’s work is relevant to the foci of this chapter in that it critiques mainstream discourses on education technology, many of which deploy concepts and assumptions from cognitive psychology. For an anthropological critique of educational institutions that draws on the works cited in this chapter, see Varenne and McDermott (1998).
- 5.
Suchman’s (2002) advocacy of ‘located accountabilities’ in technology production makes an analogous point. For an example of how to incorporate institutional analysis into theories of situated activity, see Dorothy Holland and Jean Lave’s edited volume, History in Person (2001), and, in particular, their discussion of the notion of ‘local contentious practice’. In a related vein, Lave (2011) reflexively develops and applies her theory of learning to her own transformations as a scholar and theorist working in different institutional arrangements.
- 6.
According to Vann and Bowker (2001, pp. 247–248), Etienne Wenger, Lave’s co-author on Situated Learning, also played a prominent role in introducing anthropologically informed theories to management consultants when he published a follow-on volume to Situated Learning, titled Communities of Practice (Wenger 1998).
- 7.
For an account of the formation of the Digital Youth Project, see Ito et al. (2019, p. xiii).
- 8.
For example, Mizuko Ito, who worked at IRL and PARC in the 1990s, went on to run the Digital Youth Project before co-founding and acting as Research Director for the MacArthur-funded Digital Media and Learning Research Hub at the University of California, Irvine. I worked for the Ito and the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub for several years while I was a graduate student.
- 9.
As we stated in the book, networked publics comprise ‘the active participation of a distributed social network in the production and circulation of culture and knowledge’ (Ito et al. 2009, p. 19).
- 10.
For a fuller account, see: Disruptive Fixation: School Reform and the Pitfalls of Techno-Idealism (Sims 2017).
- 11.
While I use a pseudonym for the school, I am aware that the school’s uniqueness and notoriety make it impossible to anonymise the school’s identity without effacing much of what makes the school theoretically and politically significant. As such, I use additional measures to protect the identity of research participants who shared information with me in confidence or whose actions I observed. I discuss the strategies I used to mitigate these risks in Sims (2017, pp. 182–183).
- 12.
The quote comes from a report that the school’s founders wrote about their planning processes.
- 13.
In general, the people who remained most enthusiastic and hopeful about the Downtown School were people with little direct involvement in the classrooms. Given this spatial separation, their understandings and imaginings of the school appeared to be shaped primarily through representations and public rituals.
References
Althusser, L. (1971). Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses: Notes Toward an Investigation. In Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (pp. 127–188). New York: Monthly Review Press.
Anderson, C. (2004). The Long Tail. Wired Magazine, October 2004.
Apple, M. W. (2012). Education and Power. Second Edition. New York: Routledge.
Boltanski, L, & Chiapello, E. (2005). The New Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Verso.
Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J. (1977). Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture. Beverly Hills, CA.: SAGE.
Brown, J. H., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. Educational Researcher, 18(1), 32–42.
Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (1991). Organizational Learning and Communities-of-Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation. Organization Science, 2(1), 40–57.
Chaiklin, S., & Lave, J. (1993). Understanding Practice: Perspectives on Activity and Context. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Dreyfus, H. L. (1972). What Computers Can’t Do: A Critique of Artificial Intelligence. New York: Harper & Row.
Dreyfus, H. L., & Dreyfus, S. E. (1986). Mind Over Machine: The Power of Human Intuition and Expertise in the Era of the Computer. New York: Free Press.
Duguid, P. (2008). Community of Practice Then and Now. In A. Amin & J. Roberts (Eds.), Community, Economic Creativity, and Organization (pp. 1–10). New York: Oxford University Press.
Eckert, P. (1989). Jocks and Burnouts: Social Categories and Identity in the High School. New York: Teachers College Press.
Eckert, P. (1995). Trajectory and Forms of Institutional Participation. In L. Crockett & A. Crouter (Eds.), Pathways Through Adolescence: Individual Development in Relation to Social Contexts (pp. 175–195). Hillsdale, NJ.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Fenwick, et al. (2011). Emerging Approaches to Educational Research: Tracing the Socio-Material. New York: Routledge.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Pantheon Books.
Gee, J. P. (2003). What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hall, S. (1981). Notes on Deconstructing the Popular. In R. Samuel (Ed.), People’s History and Socialist Theory (pp. 227–240). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Haraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 575–599.
Holland, D., & Lave, J. (2001). History in Person: An Introduction. In D. Holland & J. Lave (Eds.), History in Person: Enduring Struggles, Contentious Practice, Intimate Identities (pp. 3–33). Sante Fe: School of American Research Press.
Hutchins, E. (1995). Cognition in the Wild. Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press.
Ingold, T. (1996). Situating Action V: The History and Evolution of Bodily Skills. Ecological Psychology, 8(2), 37–41.
Ingold, T. (1997). Eight Themes in the Anthropology of Technology. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Social and Cultural Practice, 41(1), 106–138.
Ito, M. (2008). Introduction. In K. Varnelis (Ed.), Networked Publics (pp. 1–14). Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press.
Ito, M., Baumer, S., Bittanti, M., Boyd, D., Cody, R., Herr-Stephenson, B., Horst, H. A., Lange, P. G., Mahendran, D., Martinez, K. Z., Pascoe, C. J., Perkel, D., Robinson, L., Sims, C., & Tripp, L. (2009). Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Ito, M., Gutiérrez, K., Livingstone, S., Penuel, B., Rhodes, J., Salen, K., Schor, J., Sefton-Green, J., & Watkins, C. (2013). Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design. Irvine, CA: Digital Media and Learning Research Hub.
Ito, M., Baumer, S., Bittanti, M., Boyd, D., Cody, R., Herr-Stephenson, B., Horst, H. A., Lange P. G., Mahendran, D., Martinez, K. Z., Pascoe, C. J., Perkel, D., Robinson, L., Sims, C., & Tripp, L. (2019). Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media—10th Anniversary Edition. Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press.
Jenkins, H. (1992). Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge.
Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Purushotma, R., Robinson, A. J., & Weigel, M. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Chicago, IL.: The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Knorr-Cetina, K., & Mulkay, M. (1983). Science Observed: Perspectives on the Social Study of Science. Thousand Oaks, CA.: Sage Publications.
Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1979). Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts. Beverly Hills, CA.: Sage Publications.
Lave, J. (1988). Cognition in Practice: Mind, Mathematics and Culture in Everyday Life. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Lave, J. (2008). Epilogue: Situated Learning and Changing Practice. In A. Amin & J. Roberts (Eds.), Community, Economic Creativity, and Organization (pp. 283–294). New York: Oxford University Press.
Lave, J. (2011). Apprenticeship in Critical Ethnographic Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lave, J. (2019). Learning and Everyday Life: Access, Participation, and Changing Practice. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Lave, J., & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Levinson, B., Foley, D., & Holland, D. (1996). The Cultural Production of the Educated Person. Albany NY.: State University of New York Press.
Orr, J. E. (1996). Talking About Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job. Ithaca, NY.: Cornell University Press.
Searle, J. R. (1980). Minds, Brains, and Programs. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3, 417–457.
Selwyn, N. (2011). Schools and Schooling in the Digital Age: A Critical Analysis. New York: Routledge.
Shaffer, D. W. (2006). How Computer Games Help Children Learn. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sims, C. (2014). Video Game Culture, Contentious Masculinities, and Reproducing Racialized Social Class Divisions in Middle School. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 39(4), 848–857.
Sims, C. (2017). Disruptive Fixation: School Reform and the Pitfalls of Techno-Idealism. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press.
Suchman, L. (1987). Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Suchman, L. (2002). Located Accountabilities in Technology Production. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 14, 91–106.
Traweek, S. (1988). Beamtimes and Lifetimes: The World of High Energy Physics. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
van Maanen, J., & Barley, S. R. (1984). Occupational Communities: Culture and Control in Organizations. Research in Organizational Behavior, 6, 287–365.
Vann, K., & Bowker, G. (2001). Instrumentalizing the Truth of Practice. Social Epistemology, 15(3), 247–262.
Varenne, H., & McDermott, R. (1998). Successful Failure: The School America Builds. New York: Westview Press.
Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Willis, P. (1977). Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sims, C. (2022). Learning, Technology, and the Instrumentalisation of Critique. In: Bruun, M.H., et al. The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7084-8_21
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7084-8_21
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-16-7083-1
Online ISBN: 978-981-16-7084-8
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)