Description
This book focuses on a team of traditional builders specialized in the construction of towering mosque minarets in Sanaca with whom the author worked as a building labourer in order to learn about learning in a context in which formal technical training, engineers, and drawn plans are non-existent. Through a combination of rich architectural and ethnographic description, this study of apprenticeship and human spatial cognition provides a fascinating insight into the daily lives and activities of a professional class of craftsmen, and investigates the unique teaching-learning processes that distinguish their trade and mould both their professional and social characters. The study of expert knowledge examines the ethnographic material in the light of theoretical ideas derived from a synthesis of cognitive science, cognitive anthropology, phenomenology, and philosophy-of-mind. Illustrated throughout.
