title: Tracking Porters: Learning the Craft of Techno-Anthropology.
abstract: Anthropology attempts to gain insight into people's experiential life-worlds through long-term fieldwork. The quality of anthropological knowledge production, however, does not depend solely on the duration of the stay in the field, but also on a particular way of seeing social situations. The anthropological perspective is grounded in socio-cultural theory and forged by a distinct relativist or contextualist epistemological stance. The point is to understand events, concepts and phenomena from the insiders' point of view and to show how this view relates to the particular social and cultural context. In this chapter, we argue that although anthropology has its specific methodology - including a myriad of ethnographic data-gathering tools, techniques, analytical approaches and theories - it must first and foremost be understood as a craft. Anthropology as craft requires a specific 'anthropological sensibility' that differs from the standardized procedures of normal science. To establish our points we use an example of problem-based project work conducted by a group of Techno-Anthropology students at Aalborg University, we focus on key aspects of this craft and how the students began to learn it: For two weeks the students followed the work of a group of porters. Drawing on anthropological concepts and research strategies the students gained crucial insights about the potential effects of using tracking technologies in the hospital.
authors.affiliation: Department of Learning and Philosophy, Aalborg University, Denmark.
authors.forename: Maja Hojer
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Bruun
authors.affiliation: Department of Learning and Philosophy, Aalborg University, Denmark.
authors.forename: Jakob
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Krause-Jensen
authors.affiliation: Department of Learning and Philosophy, Aalborg University, Denmark.
authors.forename: Margit
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Saltofte
mesh_terms: D000884:Anthropology, Cultural / Q000193:education*; D020811:Biomedical Technology; D003718:Denmark; D004517:Education, Professional / Q000379:methods*; D017598:Efficiency, Organizational; D006126:Group Processes; D006797:Housekeeping, Hospital; D006801:Humans; D018794:Problem-Based Learning; D012107:Research Design