Messy objects and multiple ontologies
Why does this matter? Mostly because we can waste a lot of time arguing over
definitions and normative prescriptions of learning, or about which theory of learning is
the best (has the most explanatory power, is the more robust, fecund, generalizable, etc),
or about what workplace learning is the most desirable (most politically supportable,
most useful, etc) when we might simply acknowledge that we are talking about different
objects. To try to collapse these objects into one and suggest that they are simply
different worldviews is to assume that there is one world, one ontology (for example,
that of whomever is speaking). Everyone and everything else is appropriated into this
one world. Others’ worlds of framing, touching, analysis and reality are relegated to
being merely a different ‘view’ of this world. With such a move, then, we can compare these views and even find them deficient according to the prevailing ontological laws
governing our own knowledge. Henare, Holbraad and Wastell (2006) show how
classical anthropology often fell into this trap. For example, an ethnographer meets
Cuban diviners who try to show him that aché, a substance used in their séances,
constitutes divinatory power. Our researcher may understand this as their (naïve)
worldview of what is really just white powder. But for the Cuban diviners, the powder
is magic, it is power. In their reality, this object is fundamentally different to the white
powder that exists for the researcher. Henare et al. argue that this is an important
distinction – to appreciate that the question is not just of different worldviews, but of
different ontological worlds. In studies of workplace learning, it seems that a similar
thing is happening: we each may be looking at an object that appears to be the same
entity, and calling it the same thing, when it actually exists as different co-habiting
entities.