Inequalities have historically been conceptualised and empirically explored with primary reference to the human. Both measurements of educational inequalities through the production of data about students, teachers and schools, and ethnographic explorations of inequalities in the spoken accounts of human actors in schools can elide affective…

This article examines the relationship between skill acquisition and the constitution of economic selfhood in Trinidad. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork among garment workers in a context of industrial decline, I show how their formal, informal, and illicit means of acquiring sewing skills are inextricably linked to the fragmented and unstable…

This article discusses forms of "boundary-work" in school-based training for industrial work or, put another way, discourse and practices that cross, blur or reinforce boundaries between school and industry. The discussion builds on two ethnographic studies, one conducted in the 1980s and one in 2006, to provide insights on continuity…

Laboratory ethnographies have provided valuable insights in the workings of contemporary science and technology and about facts in the making. Nearly all these ethnographic studies have been conducted at nonprofit research institutes. In this article, the authors argue that it is time for science and technology studies (STS) ethnography to direct…

Second-generation cultural-historical activity theory, which drew its inspiration from Leont'ev's work, constituted an advance over Vygotsky's first-generation theory by explicitly articulating the dialectical relation between individual and collective. As part of an effort to develop third-generation-historical activity theory, I propose in this…

Ethnographic scientists have determined that there are about 300 ethnic communities in Russia. The number of indigenous peoples in the North barely adds up to 200,000, and they make up less than 2 percent of the total population of the Russian North. They have been designated in different ways in official documents, for example "the small…

As part of a larger research project on workplace learning, a study examined learning at work as it is experienced among product planners in Finland. The study focused on three questions: (1) What kind of experience do employees interpret as learning? (2) What kind of meanings do employees give their action and learning individually and together?…