B - Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1991. (pp. 29-58) AND "Estranged Labor Learning" Outlines 1:19-48. 2002.

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All theories of culture and social ordering rely, more or less explicitly, on a theory of learning

Which one? A very complex question to which Jean Lave gave a provocative answer

In 'Marriage in India' (1961: 95), Dumont concludes with a plea for systematic studies of uncle-niece marriage. Indeed, there is neither adequate case material for a thorough exposition of this practice in any particular society, nor systematic theoretical analysis of the problem. ... The purpose of this paper is to present a formal analysis ..., in the hope that it might serve as a guide for ethnographic enquiry. (Lave 1966: 185)

  1. Jean Lave in movement from from the Krikati (Ge) of Amazonia and their kinship systems
    1. to everyday cognition among taylors in Liberia (1982 and passim)
    2. to supermarkets (1988)
    3. to apprenticeships (1991)
    4. to reflection on her fieldwork (2011)
  2. from learning as a psychological process to learning as a social one
    1. "community" as the setting

      2. Note that the word "community" is VERY misleading. Think rather of an assemblage of people who have come together for some purpose, whether voluntarily, or through being caught (born into, etc.) and then need to recruit new people (or turn down some who might want to join). Note further that the phrase "community of practice" is Etienne Wenger's (1998). It is not Lave's.

    2. to "practice" as the means
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BUT ... in pursuing this learning theory Lave also opened the way to theorizing about movement through social structures.

  1. an apparently simple, recursive, and extremely powerful model:
    1. from
      1. legitimate
      2. peripheral
      3. participation
    2. to
      1. full participation
  2. As a model, this is to be manipulated to examine issues that it implies
    1. illegitimacy
    2. boundaries and their crossing
    3. the "gravity well" of established communities
    4. "chutes and ladders" in the paths from peripheral to full: blockages
    5. etc.: Varenne on "getting caught" (November 2021)
  3. but is it really a model of learning rather than social ordering and thus alienation?
    1. Lave & McDermott (2002) playing off Marx as they critique the collapse of learning into what is to be measured by schools and other assessing institutions that eventually are in the business of determining the absence of learning and to mete consequences for this absence
  4. and yet it is also the most powerful model for the evidence that all people move through social positions:
    1. as such, a major advance on all theories of social structure (systemic processes, etc.) that only consider the organization of populations into classes (races, genders, etc.)