IMHICIHU   13380
INSTITUTO MULTIDISCIPLINARIO DE HISTORIA Y CIENCIAS HUMANAS
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Training whalers in 19th century
Autor/es:
SENATORE, MARIA XIMENA
Lugar:
Berlin
Reunión:
Workshop; Learning How: Training Bodies, Producing Knowledge; 2015
Institución organizadora:
Max Plank Institute
Resumen:
The whaling industry grew in the 19th century as a response to the increasing demand for energy, and it brought about global expansion, high mobility, and multiculturalism. This growing industry also embodied new things as it expanded. It generated practical knowledge on the navigation of spaces unknown up to then, observations of nature and the environment, and technological developments. Whaling expeditions articulated an intersection between planned and uncertainty, between familiar and novel, and they were part of learning processes at multiple scales. This industry rested on the great number of new people hired who were unskilled in both whale hunting and life on board. They were called greenhands. The training they were given in their first voyage allowed them to be promoted to the category of seamen and get considerably better working conditions for their next trip. It is clear that the greenhands were expected to become well trained, but the bibliography is not clear about this process. This paper tries to establish what this training entailed and the way this learning process was built on the ship. For the greenhands the ship was a new and unknown place and life on board meant ruptures in all material, social, temporal, and spatial dimensions of practices. This paper works on New England ship logbooks, a source of written evidence that is part of the material world of whaling expeditions. The methodological approach to this particular type of documents is presented.