How can we define mastery? Reflections on learning, embodiment and professional identity

Abstract

In this article we reflect upon the knowledge production process through the body in the social-material arrangement of craft. Resorting to the embodiment paradigm, we aim to theoretically understand how someone reaches the mastery that characterizes the domain of craft skill. In analogy with craft practices, we analyze how knowledge that relies under practical performances such as skill are built and kept through the bodily relation with the making of things in the immediate contact with the world. At the end, we conclude that such reflections about mastery may be useful to investigations on professional identity.