Article Title：Dancing with children in the field: on the relevance of embodied knowledge and its methodological consequences
Abstract：
In contexts where dancing proves a relevant daily practice, dancing with children may provide an extremely interesting strategic option for education ethnographers. Drawing from my empirical material, I describe how dancing was accidentally introduced as a role in the field (dance teacher) before later becoming an unexpectedly great ethnographic tool. Through a series of different breakdowns, I found this constituted the key to gaining better access to complicated domestic fields and thereby also attaining a closer cultural intimacy with participants, getting more easily integrated into educational contexts, overcoming communication problems and issues with reluctant informants. From this methodological insight, I here reflect on the theoretical aspects involved: should we overlook practices deemed irrelevant from the school agent point of view but essential to domestic contexts, we risk reinforcing symbolic violence through research. Therefore, I conclude by stressing the importance of focusing on apparently 'irrelevant' forms of domestic embodied knowledge transmission.
Keywords: Embodied knowledge; dance enculturation; cultural intimacy; breakdown; symbolic violence; reluctant informants
DOI: 10.1080/17457823.2018.1447386
Source：ETHNOGRAPHY AND EDUCATION
Welcome to correct the error, please contact email: humanisticspider@gmail.com
