Knowledge in Motion: Constellations of Learning Across Time and Place

Spirit mediums of East Africa. Healers and fishermen of the Amazon River Basin. Potters of the American Southwest. People contending with climate change long ago. All share “knowledge in motion,” a process of drawing on experiences past and present while engaging in daily practice in relation to contexts of time, place, and power.

In the last twenty-five years, scholars from a number of disciplines have explored “situated learning,” specifically investigating how learning relates to social reproduction and daily life. In Knowledge in Motion, contributors focus on learning through time and at a variety of scales, particularly as they relate to power and politics, with implications for emergent communities and constellations of practice.

This volume brings together archaeologists, historians, and cultural anthropologists to examine communities engaged in a range of learning practices around the globe, from Africa to the Americas. Contributors draw on the growing interdisciplinary scholarship on situated learning to explore those processes in relation to power and broader forces that shape knowledge during times of turbulent change.

Enriching the diversity of regions and disciplines, Knowledge in Motion focuses on how learning, knowledge transmission, and the emergent qualities of communities and constellations of practice are shaped by changing spheres of interaction or other unstable events and influences. The contributions forge productive theories and methodologies for exploring situated learning and its broad-ranging outcomes.

Andrew P. Roddick is an assistant professor in anthropology at McMaster University, where he serves as director of the Laboratory of Interdisciplinary Research of Archaeological Ceramics.
 
Ann B. Stahl is a professor and the chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Victoria. She is the author of Making History in Banda: Anthropological Visions of Africa's Past and editor of African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction.