October 4. Lorenza Mondada, Linguistics, University of Basel

Touching bones: the work of forensic anthropologists on political desaparecidos in Brazil

A practice through which state violence was administrated by South American dictatorships in the last part of the XXth consisted in dismembering and disappearing the bodies of political opponents. In response, a practice through which justice operated later on consisted in reassembling these bodies, reconstituting the skeletons, drawing the profiles and possibly achieving the identification of the persons. This talk reflects about how fieldwork in a forensic laboratory in Brazil, conducted in the tradition of EMCA studies of work, can cast original light on the work of forensic anthropologists. Adopting a praxeological approach, the talk explores two sets of practices: on the basis of video-recordings it offers a detailed analysis of the practices of the anthropologists reassembling the bodies; it also connects these practices through the reading of historical reports, to the opposite practices of the dictatorship, dismembering these bodies in order to impede their identification. In this way a praxeological approach shows how practices of re-membering (in the double sense of putting again together and preserving the memory) oppose practices of dismembering.

 

October 11. Sasha Kulenkova Media, Culture, and Communication, New York University

Interactions of a young multimodal speaker with dysarthria and his mother: establishing the meaning of gaze signs in different communication contexts

In this data session, I would like to discuss the meaning-making methods of a 9/10 year-old multimodal dysarthric communicator and his mother, who is his closest communication partner (the data is in Russian). These interactions draw on the boy’s creative and sometimes playful use of gazes, vocalizations, facial expressions and body movements, and his mom’s scaffolding activities. The boy shares with his mother a system of well-developed and still emerging gaze signs which can be called homesigns (Safar, de Vos 2022), but reliant on eyes, rather than hand movements. The use of gaze signs is different from the use of formal language – it’s not that linear, it’s more syncretic. The establishment of meaning of the gaze signs often happens incrementally, over several rounds of repair, with the boy providing and the oral-speaking partner guessing the ‘clues’ (reminiscent of a ‘hot-cold’ game), which then serve as a basis for deducing the final repair solution. I’m interested in looking at several cases of these interactions where: 1) the same gaze sign is used in different communication contexts; 2) where the mother’s role shifts from being the addressee of the boy’s talk to that of a mediator between the boy and a less familiar communication partner.

 

October 18. Mandy Bateman, Education, Birmingham City University.

Infant Agency in Early Childhood Education Mealtimes

 

October 25. Lauren Vogelstein, PiLa-CS Postdoctoral Associate Lucas Foundation Computing Equity Collaboration Postdoctoral Associate Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, & Human Development, New York University

Choreographing Science Project

Choreographing Science is a design-based research project focused on informal learning environments engaging scientists and youth in choreographic and agent-based modeling inquiry and foregrounding embodiment in the process of scientific discovery. Our first iteration of the project took place in the Summer of 2022 as a two week full-day camp where ten middle schoolers, two scientists, three choreographers, and three learning scientists came together at a local theater to engage in embodied and creative scientific inquiry together. The structure of camp foregrounded the use of choreographic tools to raise and explore questions about the scientists’ research, the biomechanics of walking and cellular repair of spinal cord injury. These tools included, generating multiple physical representations of ideas, creating improvisational choreography through sets of rules to follow, and breaking down complex systems into enactable rules and aggregate patterns. In this analysis we focus on an hour-long episode of the group’s inquiry from the fourth day of camp. One of the youth participants, Danielle, offered a suggestion of thinking of the biomechanics of walking “like a puppet.” Her quiet and timid affective stance was met with collective engagement in developing ideas about marionettes, leading to an extended period of choreographic research and the generation of ideas about how signals are sent and interpreted in the body.

 

November 1 Sarah Jean Johnson, Education, University of Texas at El Paso

“La pasión y el enojo brujo”: The engendering of ethos and professional perception in children’s ensemble learning

“Individualmente el bailarín tiene que tener toda la pasión y el enojo brujo para realmente luchar … si tu no lo traes individualmente solo el grupo no va a funcionar… Y ahí viene la fuerza.”

The headnote is a quote from a maestro (teacher) of traditional Mexican folkloric dance. He speaks of a dancer needing to have “the passion and witchy anger” to really fight and that one must bring this disposition as an individual for the group to function—it is from where comes the strength (of the performing ensemble). In the interview from which the quote originates, he further elaborates on the daily practice this involves, despite the body hurting, and the collaborative spirit one must bring to the practice so the group is working in the “misma frecuencia,” or same frequency. What the maestro is implicitly voicing is that learning something new is hard and requires a demeanor and ethic of discipline, hard work, perseverance, and love for the practice–La pasión y el enojo brujo.

‘Social and cultural, practice-based’ theories, in their reconceptualization of learning and human development as a social process rather than an individual attainment, bring to the fore the principal role of social interactions and cultural practices (Lee et. al., 2020). How an ethic for learning—la pasión y el enojo brujo, for example—is engendered as part of gaining a specialized knowledge, such as that involved in performing traditional dance, remains partially accounted for in our emergent understanding within these theories.

Recent scholarship (e.g. Johnson, in review; Vossoughi, 2021), which considers the ethical and experiential quality of relations within embodied learning, frames how I investigate the engendering of the ethos intrinsic within skilled performances in ensemble learning (Kendon 1990). Furthermore, Goodwin and Smith’s (2021) notion of professional perception provides a basis for understanding how the perceptual and somatic features of enskillment achieve their relevance (to participants and analysts alike) through the systematic embodied and discursive practices through which actors make them publicly comprehensible.

The instructional setting is a community-based ballet folklórico program in El Paso, Texas, located a short distance from the border with Mexico. The pupils are of the ages four to twelve years, with the majority classified as English language learners at their schools. I spent a year in the setting using video-based ethnographic methods, which included interviewing families, teachers, and children.

For analysis of the video sources, I take a microethnographic approach (Erickson, 1992); I describe the pedagogical moments—and the interactional practices of which they are comprised—that are pivotal to a child dancer’s development of the ethos and professional perception of skilled performance. These analyses are further informed by participants’ perspectives, such as the maestro’s description of the disposition a dancer needs to bring to the practice.

Practices I highlight include the constellation of resources that guide professional perception, such as when the maestro’s touch sculpted a boy’s posture, morphing the child’s form from the awkward slump of a preadolescent to embody the dignified broad chest of the charro (cowboy). I also focus on moments of frustration or, alternately, those of breakthroughs. The latter was evidenced when a young girl performed a zapatear sequence of rhythmic stomps well but not with precision. The maestro exclaimed, “Beautiful!” Then with a serious tone, he said, “Now…Do that again. Don’t/stomp/so/hard,” pausing after each word for emphasis.” In her repeat performance, the nails in the child’s shoes made a light, crisp sound and her face beamed with delight as she recognized her achievement.

In describing the practices which engender in children the ethos and professional perception of a folkloric dancer, this study responds to calls for equity-focused scholarship to value the affective, embodied, and multisensorial ways of knowing of children from nondominant backgrounds (Bucholtz et. al., 2018).

 

Nov. 8. Asta Cekaite, Child Studies, Linkoping University and Annukka Pursi, Education, University of Helsinki

“The intercorporeality of waking and awakening in adult-child interactions”

 

November 15 AAA : No Lab

 

November 22 Ali Reza Majlesi, Education, Stockholm University

Accountability and Affectivity in human-robot interaction

In her thesis, Suchman (1984: 3) argues that “artifacts built on a planning model of human action confuse plans and situated action.” She encourages us to study interactive objects including technology by looking at “how it is that actors use the circumstances that a particular occasion provides [… in order] to provide for their action’s developing purpose and intelligibility” (ibid). The “action’s developing and intelligibility” is not only an issue of accountability but also affectivity. This forms the core objective my study of human-robot interactions. My data consists of conversation with a social robot in which the exchange of questions and answers between the robot and human participants become consequential not only in terms of further development of the conversation but also in terms of its impact on the stance that participants take toward the topic and/or toward each other.

 

November 29. Lourdes de León, Linguistics and Anthropology: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social CIESAS) and Hilario Chi Canul Universidad de Quintana Roo -CTM and  Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social

Directive trajectories in Mayan families: A look at Tsotsil Mayan peasant families and bilingual Spanish-Mayan Yucatec urban families in goal-oriented activities (part 2)

 

December 6 Mikhail Belov, Faculty of Social Sciences, Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences

Turn-CATting: Do Cats Take Turns?

For a long time in EMCA, as well as in Sociology, animals were often perceived as beings with limited rational, intellectual, social, and interactional capacities. However, recent shifts in academic perspectives have led to a heightened focus on studying animals both as autonomous entities and in comparison to humans. This research aims to explore the turn-taking dynamics of cats when playing with a laser pointer that is guided by human. The laser pointer serves as an instrument that creates a semantic field around which, and in orientation to which, the interaction between cats occurs. Yet, the data reveals that such a semantic field is not the sole focus of the interCATants. They actively utilize resources such as gaze and body positioning to organize turn-taking during their mutual play. This study offers initial insights into the multifaceted nature of turn-taking in cats, highlighting the intricate interplay of various communicative modalities both of cats and humans.

 

December 13 Olga Anatoli Smith, Child Studies, Linkoping University

Enskilment, challenge, and mundane tasks in bilingual early childhood education

This data session will focus on practices of everyday didactics in a bilingual Swedish-English preschool, specifically how preschool teachers and children (1-5yo) accomplish mundane tasks, including dressing, eating, walking, and how such interactions may afford children’s language learning.

 

 

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