Abstract
This chapter discusses how the craft of the ethnographer involves having an open mind to how we as participant observers bring our own framework of cultural interpretation into observations of others as implicit comparisons. Moreover, the chapter takes up the discussion, begun in Chap. 5, of how mattering matter emerges in cultural learning processes. This time I consider how ethnographers learn from surprises formed by culture contrasts, forming unexpected connections between meaning and materials. Contrasting cultures emerge in a frictioned process that develop space-time-matter and move fields of attention back and forth between the analytical and the empirical fields. The learning process is exemplified with a student-project called ‘Surprising Practices’, where students at the Department of Education at Aarhus University tested being learning ethnographers. It involved calling forth otherwise implicit comparisons made by newcomers arriving at other people’s practiced places.
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Notes
- 1.
The training course was conducted together with my late colleague Kirsten Fink-Jensen who wrote a book in Danish inspired by the course named “Forbløffende Praksisser” in which she explored surprises from a more phenomenological point of view (Fink-Jensen 2013). The students granted us permission to use their materials. All personal and place names are omitted and the groups and study-sites are not identified.
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Hasse, C. (2015). Learning from Culture Contrast. In: An Anthropology of Learning. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9606-4_6
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