Papers by Tom Martin
J Cult Cogn Sci, 2024
This paper considers a historical boat building practice in light of Runeson's (Scan J Psychol 18... more This paper considers a historical boat building practice in light of Runeson's (Scan J Psychol 18:172-179, 1977) concept of 'smart instruments', tools that exploit particular features of situated processes to aid their users in complex cognitive operations. The key example here is that of the 'spiling stick,' a flexible baton used to determine the twodimensional shape of board stock that will eventually twist to fit a three-dimensional position on the hull of a ship. The authors illustrate the complexity of the cognitive operation carried out by the 'coupled system' (Clark and Chalmers in Analysis 58:7-19, 1998) of boat builder and spiling stick by performing a comparable operation solely with advanced math and physics, tools unavailable for most of the history of wooden boat building. The notion of a 'smart instrument' is then discussed in more detail as the authors argue that spiling need not be seen as a mathematical operation supported by material aids, but rather that math and materials provide equal routes for comparable cognitive work.
The Journal of Modern Craft , 2024
This essay explains my pedagogical approach on the MA in Critical Craft (MACR) as well as the phi... more This essay explains my pedagogical approach on the MA in Critical Craft (MACR) as well as the philosophical commitments that underpinned my teaching there. Working as core faculty on the program for three years, I regularly led students through embodied ethnographic trials as a way to help them tune their attention to the kind of everyday understanding so often overlooked in academic research. In addition to being the kind of understanding usually expressed in craftwork, this bodily perceptual engagement is – I argue here – our most basic and fundamental kind of knowing. With the closing of the MACR program, we lose one of the few spaces with a dedicated focus on this kind of learning, a loss for reflective craftspeople as well as those not yet familiar with the depth of their innate capacity for knowing from the body.
This Is Not a Retreat, 2023
Say you read the newspaper every day. You follow the political power struggles, the foreign armed... more Say you read the newspaper every day. You follow the political power struggles, the foreign armed conflicts, the constant handwringing about the state of the economy. Some days you keep thinking about the news as you drive to work, and some days you forget about it almost immediately.
And then one day you die.
What will the newspaper look like once you are dead? For the rest of us, the contents will remain the same. You may be gone, but the goings-on of the world are still relevant to us. This is a little bit of a mind-bender because, until yesterday, the us included you, and now it does not. That is true for everyone contained within the us. How can it still be us, then? Well, us was never about you, or me, or any one person. Us was this process that you got swept up in when you were born, a set of minor worries, lesser joys, and banal preoccupations that you took part in as a matter of course, as a necessary part of being alive (you thought). Wars abroad; the stock market; celebrity gossip; these things never mattered to you, since they did not concern you specifically. These things belonged to us, and when you died, us kept going without missing a beat.
Craft in Moments of Pause, MA Critical Craft Program Publication, 2022
Short science fiction essay illustrating ideas from research on embodiment through the example of... more Short science fiction essay illustrating ideas from research on embodiment through the example of android intelligence.
Studies in Philosophy and Education, 2022
This paper extends well-established arguments for the liberal potential of vocational education b... more This paper extends well-established arguments for the liberal potential of vocational education by advocating for the necessity of craft learning in a liberal education curriculum. The case for the necessity of craft learning in liberal education is established in two parts, the first looking toward Aristotle and the second toward Heidegger. First, ideas from Aristotle are employed to articulate a vision of liberal education as that which supports the performance of our characteristic human activity. The paper then splits with Aristotle to suggest that such activity is not defined by rational contemplation, but rather by the circumspective engagement with materials through which our being-in-the-world becomes apparent to us. If, as Heidegger suggests, these practical engagements demonstrate our most fundamental mode of encountering the world and one another, then any liberal education focused on the fulfillment of our potential for understanding must include some craft learning by necessity.
Phenomenology & Practice, 2020
This paper presents insights into the lived experience of maritime carpentry practices, based on ... more This paper presents insights into the lived experience of maritime carpentry practices, based on six months of sensory-ethnographic fieldwork as a wooden boat builder's apprentice. In particular, the author explores the widely-reported experience of tools 'withdrawing' from consciousness as craftspeople master their use. Without contradicting these interpretations-many of which are constructed by way of reference to ideas from Merleau-Ponty-the author suggests further theoretical resources to examine the perceptual experience of work after tools cease to be the main focus of the craftsperson's attention. Heidegger's idea of 'circumspection' is presented as a way to illuminate the relational nature of the subsequent mode of perception, in which the work as a whole fills the consciousness, rather than the individual instruments through which the work is achieved.
Ethnography Made Simple, Open Educational Resource (OER) Textbook, 2020
This is a chapter in an OER textbook created by Guttman Community College (CUNY). The text is lic... more This is a chapter in an OER textbook created by Guttman Community College (CUNY). The text is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, and is therefore freely available for reuse.
"Watching people, talking with them, and actively engaging in social practices are the participatory techniques through which the ethnographer learns to see the world as his or her participants do, rich with socially constructed and historically situated meaning. Yet the focus on seeing the world as your participants do sometimes eclipses the other sensory modes that people employ to make sense of social and material interactions. Especially in the ethnography of work, it is important to understand how your participants understand non-visual information, such as the textures of the materials they use or the feeling of the tools they operate. This embodied understanding cannot be adequately examined just by watching another person’s body; in these cases, ethnographic data collection requires feeling, hearing, smelling, and tasting the physical world as well. Throughout this chapter, these non-visual methods of data collection will be collectively referred to as the techniques of sensory ethnography."
Ethnography Made Simple, Open Educational Resource (OER) Textbook, 2020
This is a chapter in an OER textbook created by Guttman Community College (CUNY). The text is lic... more This is a chapter in an OER textbook created by Guttman Community College (CUNY). The text is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, and is therefore freely available for reuse.
"Because human action is closely tied to the physical spaces in which it unfolds, it is important that ethnographers pay close attention to the role that their location and surroundings play in their research. Maps allow us to record how our participants move across landscapes and through time, interacting with physical environments and with other people. As with all ethnographic recording, maps represent the ethnographer’s interpretation of people, places, and events; mapping is another way to record your unique perspective on how your research participants lead their daily lives."
Mind, Culture, and Activity, 2012
Short academic commentary on delivery of 'Youth Mechanics' program, describing implementation of ... more Short academic commentary on delivery of 'Youth Mechanics' program, describing implementation of action-research method and alternative curriculum. Also, a critique of the current state of vocational education and its role in social reproduction
Craftwork as Problem Solving: Ethnographic Studies of Design and Making, 2017
In "Craftwork as Problem Solving: Ethnographic Studies of Design and Making" (Trevor Marchand, ed.)
Thesis Chapters by Tom Martin
Oxford PhD Dissertation, 2019
Becoming a wooden boat builder requires ‘getting the feel’ for the tools and materials of the tra... more Becoming a wooden boat builder requires ‘getting the feel’ for the tools and materials of the trade by learning to perceive these objects in terms of their practical purposes in the workshop. In this project, I explore such learning from a sensory-ethnographic perspective, journaling how my own perceptual experience transforms over six months of work building boats. To supplement this first-person method, I carry out participant observations and long-form interviews with boat builders, paying particular attention to the ways in which newcomers to the workshop are guided through the learning process. I interpret the rich accounts of learning that result through concepts from philosophy, exploring how the perception that I record can be seen to demonstrate a fundamental mode of human understanding. Using Heidegger’s idea of ‘being-in-the-world’, I show how learning entails a constant re-alignment of understanding through which individuals continually rediscover their human capacity for meaning-making. By investigating the link between perception and understanding in the craft workshop, I contribute to theoretical debates over the nature of human cognition while also illuminating the complex and often-overlooked cognitive processes that underpin practical work.
My findings show how ‘getting the feel’ entails learning to perceive practical objects in new ways, recognising aspects of tools and materials that are invisible to the unaccustomed viewer. In some cases, ‘the feel’ involves specific combinations of objects appearing together in terms of work that they perform, rather than separately as discrete entities. In other cases, it entails tools and materials appearing to transform, splitting apart or combining in perception as their defining practices demand. Throughout the investigation, I show how understanding varies between the three workshops, and how each contains its own mechanisms for introducing the newcomer to situated ways of seeing and feeling. Despite their differences, however, the workshops share three main modes of learning: self-motivated exploration, expert guidance, and participation in a community designed to reproduce the skills and understanding it requires of its future members. By continually participating in each of these three modes, boat builders accumulate expertise as they move between settings and progress within them, ‘getting the feel’ for gradually-shifting constellations of materials, people, and practices.
Books by Tom Martin
Palgrave Macmillan, 2021
Through an examination of three wooden boat workshops on the East coast of the United States, thi... more Through an examination of three wooden boat workshops on the East coast of the United States, this volume explores how craftspeople interpret their tools and materials during work, and how such perception fits into a holistic conception of practical skill. The author bases his findings on first-person fieldwork as a boat builder’s apprentice, during which he recorded his changing sensory experience as he learned the basics of the trade. The book reveals how experience in the workshop allows craftspeople to draw new meaning from their senses, constituting meaningful objects through perception that are invisible to the casual observer. Ultimately, the author argues that this kind of perceptual understanding demonstrates a fundamental mode of human cognition, an intelligence frequently overlooked within contemporary education.
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Papers by Tom Martin
And then one day you die.
What will the newspaper look like once you are dead? For the rest of us, the contents will remain the same. You may be gone, but the goings-on of the world are still relevant to us. This is a little bit of a mind-bender because, until yesterday, the us included you, and now it does not. That is true for everyone contained within the us. How can it still be us, then? Well, us was never about you, or me, or any one person. Us was this process that you got swept up in when you were born, a set of minor worries, lesser joys, and banal preoccupations that you took part in as a matter of course, as a necessary part of being alive (you thought). Wars abroad; the stock market; celebrity gossip; these things never mattered to you, since they did not concern you specifically. These things belonged to us, and when you died, us kept going without missing a beat.
"Watching people, talking with them, and actively engaging in social practices are the participatory techniques through which the ethnographer learns to see the world as his or her participants do, rich with socially constructed and historically situated meaning. Yet the focus on seeing the world as your participants do sometimes eclipses the other sensory modes that people employ to make sense of social and material interactions. Especially in the ethnography of work, it is important to understand how your participants understand non-visual information, such as the textures of the materials they use or the feeling of the tools they operate. This embodied understanding cannot be adequately examined just by watching another person’s body; in these cases, ethnographic data collection requires feeling, hearing, smelling, and tasting the physical world as well. Throughout this chapter, these non-visual methods of data collection will be collectively referred to as the techniques of sensory ethnography."
"Because human action is closely tied to the physical spaces in which it unfolds, it is important that ethnographers pay close attention to the role that their location and surroundings play in their research. Maps allow us to record how our participants move across landscapes and through time, interacting with physical environments and with other people. As with all ethnographic recording, maps represent the ethnographer’s interpretation of people, places, and events; mapping is another way to record your unique perspective on how your research participants lead their daily lives."
Thesis Chapters by Tom Martin
My findings show how ‘getting the feel’ entails learning to perceive practical objects in new ways, recognising aspects of tools and materials that are invisible to the unaccustomed viewer. In some cases, ‘the feel’ involves specific combinations of objects appearing together in terms of work that they perform, rather than separately as discrete entities. In other cases, it entails tools and materials appearing to transform, splitting apart or combining in perception as their defining practices demand. Throughout the investigation, I show how understanding varies between the three workshops, and how each contains its own mechanisms for introducing the newcomer to situated ways of seeing and feeling. Despite their differences, however, the workshops share three main modes of learning: self-motivated exploration, expert guidance, and participation in a community designed to reproduce the skills and understanding it requires of its future members. By continually participating in each of these three modes, boat builders accumulate expertise as they move between settings and progress within them, ‘getting the feel’ for gradually-shifting constellations of materials, people, and practices.
Books by Tom Martin
And then one day you die.
What will the newspaper look like once you are dead? For the rest of us, the contents will remain the same. You may be gone, but the goings-on of the world are still relevant to us. This is a little bit of a mind-bender because, until yesterday, the us included you, and now it does not. That is true for everyone contained within the us. How can it still be us, then? Well, us was never about you, or me, or any one person. Us was this process that you got swept up in when you were born, a set of minor worries, lesser joys, and banal preoccupations that you took part in as a matter of course, as a necessary part of being alive (you thought). Wars abroad; the stock market; celebrity gossip; these things never mattered to you, since they did not concern you specifically. These things belonged to us, and when you died, us kept going without missing a beat.
"Watching people, talking with them, and actively engaging in social practices are the participatory techniques through which the ethnographer learns to see the world as his or her participants do, rich with socially constructed and historically situated meaning. Yet the focus on seeing the world as your participants do sometimes eclipses the other sensory modes that people employ to make sense of social and material interactions. Especially in the ethnography of work, it is important to understand how your participants understand non-visual information, such as the textures of the materials they use or the feeling of the tools they operate. This embodied understanding cannot be adequately examined just by watching another person’s body; in these cases, ethnographic data collection requires feeling, hearing, smelling, and tasting the physical world as well. Throughout this chapter, these non-visual methods of data collection will be collectively referred to as the techniques of sensory ethnography."
"Because human action is closely tied to the physical spaces in which it unfolds, it is important that ethnographers pay close attention to the role that their location and surroundings play in their research. Maps allow us to record how our participants move across landscapes and through time, interacting with physical environments and with other people. As with all ethnographic recording, maps represent the ethnographer’s interpretation of people, places, and events; mapping is another way to record your unique perspective on how your research participants lead their daily lives."
My findings show how ‘getting the feel’ entails learning to perceive practical objects in new ways, recognising aspects of tools and materials that are invisible to the unaccustomed viewer. In some cases, ‘the feel’ involves specific combinations of objects appearing together in terms of work that they perform, rather than separately as discrete entities. In other cases, it entails tools and materials appearing to transform, splitting apart or combining in perception as their defining practices demand. Throughout the investigation, I show how understanding varies between the three workshops, and how each contains its own mechanisms for introducing the newcomer to situated ways of seeing and feeling. Despite their differences, however, the workshops share three main modes of learning: self-motivated exploration, expert guidance, and participation in a community designed to reproduce the skills and understanding it requires of its future members. By continually participating in each of these three modes, boat builders accumulate expertise as they move between settings and progress within them, ‘getting the feel’ for gradually-shifting constellations of materials, people, and practices.