Learning to dance in rural Mali

This paper concerns the practice of vernacular dance performance in a peasant village in rural southern Mali. Based on participant observation, focused interviews, and audio-visual documentation, we report on how children and youths typically acquire the skills to dance in this village. We find that, strikingly, the development of these skills appears to take place largely during the performance practice itself. By contrast, teaching does not play a role. This observation has implications for the concept of transmission, typically understood as the handing-down of specific bits of cultural knowledge from one generation to the next. Such a model of transmission may appear plausible with respect to institutions of modern pedagogy such as schooling or museums. By contrast, practice-theoretical conceptualizations of situated learning emphasize the relationship between the learning process and its social environment, assuming that learners' development of cultural skills is embedded in its practical implementation. Prominent such theories have emerged from the intersection of anthropology and developmental psychology, and their relevance has been shown in the anthropology of childhood. The ethnographic research presented in this paper suggests that these theories are consistent with how people learn to participate in vernacular dance performance in southern Mali.