I am sailing—towards a transactional analysis of ‘body techniques’

Abstract

In recent years there has been a growing interest in questions related to embodiment and learning. Within the field of ‘body pedagogics’ great efforts have been made to develop theory and methodology that can deal with the corporeal aspects of experience and knowledge without adopting any form of dualistic conceptions of body/mind and organism/environment. This article connects to this body of research. The purpose is to first present a synthesis of James' radical empiricism, Dewey's transactional understanding of experience and learning and Marcel Mauss' concept of ‘body techniques’ and the notion of education embedded in it. Against the background of this theoretical development, and with a Transactional Model of Analyzing Bodying (TMAB), we then show how we can analytically come to terms with different dualistic problems that research into ‘body pedagogics’ has to deal with. We use an empirical example of dinghy sailing to create knowledge about what we learn when learning embodied knowledge, and how this learning takes place. We argue that experience is an important concept for understanding the acting knowing human being, describing how experience is organized and developed and outlining how this organization can be understood as learning. We hold that situations where someone learns to embody certain knowledge are cases of overt actions, in which we can see what kinds of relations are created and how these relations become meaningful for further action.

Keywords:

• Experience
• Body Pedagogics
• Body Techniques
• Learning
• Transaction
• Radical Empiricism
• Sailing
• Video Analysis

Notes

1. Because pragmatism has evolved along many lines we will here emphasize that our point of departure is the transactional perspective, for example, Jim Garrison (2001), Mark Johnson (2007).

2. ‘Universal holism’ here refers to the idea that every human behaviour can be explained upon one single principle of how parts relate to wholes.

3. To some degree there is an overlapping between Dewey's and Bourdieu's concepts of action. It is possible to notice this in relation to habit, context and creativity. Dewey though, we would say, is more distinct in his focus on learning in relation to the idea that human beings encounter ‘problematic situations’ which has the capacity to transform experiences and habits (see Shilling, 2008, pp. 18–19, and also Emirbayer and Maynard, 2011, for a longer analysis in relation to ethnomethodology.).

4. To see bodies as activities (or projects) rather than a thing is a perspective that has been utilized by body researchers who focus at the body as lived experience. Empirical studies worth mentioning here are for instance Budgeon (2003) McMahon, Penney, and Dinan-Thompson (2012) and Hanson (2007).

5. The term ‘fall off’ means to steer the boat in a direction with/away from the wind, for example, if the sail caches the wind from the right hand side ‘fall off’ means to steer the boat to the left.

6. Here, we use the constructed verb ‘bodying’ with reference to Sullivan (2001; see page 17 above) to emphasize that body is not a ‘thing’ but rather a function of our responding to the environment.

7. Dinghy sailors steer their vessels in other ways too, for example, by using and moving their bodies to weight the boat or by adjusting the sails, although this is not explicitly seen in our data. In our example, Toby is a novice who has not yet learned to master all the different manoeuvres.

8. Anything surrounding an organism that does not enter into its functioning is not a part of its environment.