LOCAL VERNACULAR KNOWLEDGE AS A HYBRID LEARNING ECOLOGY: AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF EDUCATION APPROACH TO THE WEAVING WORKSHOPS AT THE HAMEZI FESTIVAL
Abstract
This article examines weaving instruction at the Hamezi Festival in Eastern Crete as a form of locally embedded pedagogy within the wider ecology of lifelong cultural learning. Positioned along the continuum between formal and informal education, the festival blends structured workshops with spontaneous and socio-culturally grounded interactions. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2024 and 2025, the article explores how weaving workshops function as embodied, situated and community-rooted learning ecology in a setting where cultural participation and learning unfold simultaneously. Guided by an anthropology of education framework, and drawing on theories of situated and embodied learning, local knowledge, local/vernacular literacies, and the “education of attention,” the analysis shows how novices become progressively embedded in craft communities through guided participation, shared effort, narrative exchange and gradual perceptual attunement to materials, tools and gestures. Research findings indicate that the weaving workshops of the Hamezi Festival constitute a hybrid learning ecology, in which tacit knowledge, embodied skill and local cultural values circulate alongside more formalized instructional elements, forming a pedagogical infrastructure in which cultural knowledge is both preserved and actively reworked. The study contributes to debates on alternative and informal learning ecologies, sustainable politics of local knowledge and anthropological approaches to teaching and learning broadly conceived.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejae.v11i1.6675
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