Description
Book SynopsisLauren Miller Griffith and Jonathan S. Marion introduce the concept of apprenticeship pilgrimage to help explain why performers travel to places both near and far in an attempt to increase both their skill and their legitimacy within various genres of art and activity. What happens when your skill-level surpasses local training opportunities, whether in dance, martial arts, or other skills and practices? Apprenticeship Pilgrimage provides a new and exciting model of apprenticeship pilgrimagesincluding local, regional, opportunistic, and virtualthat practitioners undertake to develop embodied knowledge, skills, and legitimacy unavailable at home. For most people, there is a limit to how much training is available from the teachers and classes at home. As skill and know-how increase, the resources and training opportunities available become limits on one's learning. Similarly, a practitioner's legitimacy may be suspect without exposure to appropriate cultural context, such as ties with t
Trade ReviewApprenticeship Pilgrimage presents an exciting new theoretical roadmap for understanding travel to develop embodied expertise. Drawing on participant observation and deft analyses of interviews with capoeira practitioners, ballroom dancers, and students of martial arts who travel to gain embodied knowledge and legitimacy in their chosen activities, Griffith and Marion’s book is theoretically sophisticated, wonderfully insightful, and engagingly written. This is a volume that merits a place on the “must read” list of all students and scholars of tourism and mobility studies, expressive culture and dance. -- Kathleen M. Adams, Loyola University Chicago; author of Art as Politics: Recrafting Identities, Tourism and Power in Tana Toraja, Indonesia
In Apprenticeship Pilgrimage: Developing Expertise through Travel and Training, Griffith and Marion theorize that traveling to enhance physical skill transforms the pilgrim’s sense of self and improves his or her status in a community of practice, increasing social connections and perceived expertise. The authors rely on personal experiences, and those of other capoeiristas and ballroom dancers, as well as yoga practitioners and martial artists, and richly examine existing literature in travel studies, performance studies, and anthropology. Among the book’s many strengths are the authors’ thoughtful treatment of the economic and cultural tensions of educational travel and a history of such pilgrimages, from guild-related tramping, to the Victorian “grand tour,” and to contemporary study abroad. -- Ann Dils, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Table of ContentsChapter 1: Apprenticeship Pilgrimage: Going, Learning, and Doing Chapter 2: Local Pilgrimage: Staying Close to Home Chapter 3: Regional Pilgrimage: Going a Bit Farther Chapter 4: Major Pilgrimage: Traveling as Far as it Takes Chapter 5: Opportunistic Pilgrimage: When Opportunities Arise Chapter 6: Post Pilgrimage: The New “You” Chapter 7: “Virtual” Pilgrimage: Doing without Travel
