Abup talks - Tim Ingold - "The life of lines"

Tim Ingold is British anthropologist and Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. In his recent work, he links the themes of environmental perception and skilled practice, replacing traditional models of genetic and cultural transmission, founded upon the alliance of neo-Darwinian biology and cognitive science, with a relational approach focusing on the growth of embodied skills of perception and action within social and environmental contexts of human development. This has taken him to examining the use of lines in culture (Lines: a brief hostory), and the relationship between anthropology, architecture, art and archaeology (Making). Our humanity, Ingold argues, does not come ready-made but is continually fashioned in our movements along ways of life. Starting from the idea of life as a process of wayfaring, Ingold presents a radically new understanding of movement, knowledge and description as dimensions not just of being in the world, but of being alive to what is going on there. A central concern in Ingold's writings is a call to rescue the practice of anthropology from ethnography (the presentation of empirical data on human societies and cultures). Instead of seeing the purpose of anthropology as the mere description of human practices, Ingold purports to show that practicing anthropology is a way of engageing in the lives of others, with the potential to contribute to real transformation, through explorations of the conditions and possibilities of human life in the world. Ingold aims to bring anthropology back to the center of public debates about what it means to be human, about freedom, about responsibility, about ethics.