New Spaces for Difference

Critical Studies of Learning Practices
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-1-009-73450-9
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 384 Seiten

This book brings together an international team of scholars to explore participation, change and transformative possibilities in everyday life. Drawing on critical ethnographic and participatory research from Brazil, Denmark, and Italy, it examines how people in marginalized positions – socially excluded children and young people, former gang members, rock musicians, bank employees and sex workers – engage in learning practices across diverse contexts. The chapters challenge conventional notions that oppose equality and difference, offering a critical perspective grounded in social practice theory, critical psychology, and urban anthropology. With a strong focus on co-produced knowledge and learners' perspectives, the book offers new conceptual tools for understanding learning as a dynamic, relational and political process rooted in everyday struggles. Essential reading for researchers, students, and professionals across education, anthropology, psychology, social work, pedagogy, and human geography.

Autoren/Hrsg.

França, Marina V

Gomes, Ana Maria R

Kousholt, Dorte

Lave, Jean

Mørck, Line Lerche

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of figures; List of contributors; Part I. Spaces for Difference: 1. How it all began: developing a collaborative inquiry into learning, marginality and change Dorte Kousholt, Marina V. França and Ana Maria R. Gomes; 2. Learning through differences: the possibilities of everyday life Ana Maria R. Gomes, Jean Lave, Dorte Kousholt, Marina V. França and Line Lerche Mørck; Part II. Learning Differences in Contemporary Cultural Practices: 3. On practice, practitioners and the learning of futebol in Brazil Eliene Lopes Faria and Ana Maria R. Gomes; 4. Apprenticeship, conflicts and learning in bakeries in Denmark Klaus Nielsen; 5. Co-participative learning through 'diverse experts' relationality: a case study in a major Italian bank Roberta Bonetti; 6. Songwriting as learning: a dialectical perspective on Danish rock band practice Lars Brinck; Part III. Learning from the Margins in Cross-Contextual Struggles: 7. Learning and personal/political transformation: the Danish production school way Jean Lave; 8. Learning not to belong – processes of exclusion in Danish schools Dorte Kousholt; 9. Learning sex work in Brazil across contexts of continuity and difference Marina França; 10. Learning to become a good Muslim – transformative mo(ve)ments beyond gang engagement and radicalization in Denmark Line Lerche Mørck and Iram Khawaja; Part IV. Contradictory Co-Production of Everyday Life with Children: 11. Participation of children and adolescents in household care: exploring learning processes in everyday life in Brazil Adriana Drummond and Ana Maria R. Gomes; 12. For all? Co-producing 'street-lab', a local cultural project in Denmark Line Lerche Mørck and Maja Baunbjerg; 13. Urban space and children territorialization in a Brazilian metropolis Samy Lansky and Maria Cristina Gouvea; 14. Rethinking problems in Danish Schools: learning from everyday conflicts Charlotte Højholt and Dorte Kousholt; Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Mørck, Line Lerche
Line Lerche Mørck is a critical psychologist researching mo(ve)ments beyond gang involvement, radicalization, and marginalization. She has developed theories on boundary communities and expansive learning, and has published on practice research and mo(ve)ment methodologies, gang exit, forensic psychiatry, and social practice ethics-often in collaboration with former gang leaders.

França, Marina V
Marina V. França is an anthropologist specializing in gender and sexuality studies. Her research focuses on sex work, including the dynamics of situated learning. She has also collaborated on projects with indigenous groups and researchers related to indigenous knowledge and rituals and, audiovisual and university education.

Gomes, Ana Maria R
Ana Maria R. Gomes is an anthropologist dedicated to ethnographic research on schooling processes as part of everyday lives of different collectivities. She has been involved in research and outreach activities mainly on intercultural education among indigenous peoples in Brazil; learning and culture; cosmopolitics and ecology of practices.

Kousholt, Dorte
Dorte Kousholt is a critical psychologist dedicated to ethnographic research on children's everyday lives across home, daycare, and school, exploring the everyday struggles of children, families and interdisciplinary support. Through long-term research partnerships with practitioners, she examines the contradictory conditions for collaboration among diverse professionals to contribute to social change.

Lave, Jean
Jean Lave is a social anthropologist whose work explores learning practices in theoretical/ethnographic terms, including Cognition in Practice (1988), Apprenticeship in Critical Ethnographic Practice (2011), Everyday Life and Learning (with Ana Gomes, 2019), and What is Learning For?: Changing Relations of the Past and the Future in the Present (2026).