Apprenticeship Pilgrimage Developing Expertise through Travel and Training [Hardcover]

Apprenticeship 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 Marions 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.In?Apprenticeship Pilgrimage:?Developing Expertise through Travel and Training, Griffith and Marion theorize that traveling to enhance physical skill transforms the pilgrims 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 books 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.?What happens when ones skill level in dance, the martial arts, or other activities surpasses local training opportunities? Lauren Miller Griffith and Jonathan S. Marion provide a new and exciting apprenticeship pilgrimages model including local, regional, opportunistic, and virtualthat practitioners undertake to acquire knowledge, skills, and legitimacy originally unavailable.Lauren 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 slƒ7