(De)possession and (in)visibility. The digital metamorphosis of knowledge and skills training in the Swiss timber construction industry

At the crossroads of studies on vocational and professional education and training (VPET), and the socio-anthropology of sight and visibility, this article examines how the issues of ownership and possession of knowledge and skills are at the heart of the digitalization of woodworking trades and the apprenticeships that lead to them. Based on material collected during an ethnographic survey in the timber construction industry in Switzerland, the article analyses the ways in which the digitalization of production activities reinforces or removes workers’ visual expertise, the gestural repertoires that make them up, the forms of socio-professional visibility associated with them, and the VPET that shapes them.