The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood

1 2111 3 4 5111 6 7 8 9 10 1 2111 3111 4 The Perception of the Environment 5 6 7 8 In this work Tim Ingold offers a persuasive new approach to understanding how human 9 beings perceive their surroundings. He argues that what we are used to calling cultural 20 variation consists, in the first place, of variations in skill. Neither innate nor acquired, 1 skills are grown, incorporated into the human organism through practice and training in 2 an environment. They are thus as much biological as cultural. To account for the gener- 3 ation of skills we have therefore to understand the dynamics of development. And this in 4 turn calls for an ecological approach that situates practitioners in the context of an active 5 engagement with the constituents of their surroundings. 6 7 The twenty-three essays comprising this book focus in turn on the procurement of liveli- 8 hood, on what it means to ‘dwell’, and on the nature of skill, weaving together approaches 9 from social anthropology, ecological psychology, developmental biology and phenome- 30 nology in a way that has never been attempted before. The book is set to revolutionise 1 the way we think about what is ‘biological’ and ‘cultural’ in humans, about evolution and 2 history, and indeed about what it means for human beings – at once organisms and 3 persons – to inhabit an environment. The Perception of the Environment will be essential 4 reading not only for anthropologists but also for biologists, psychologists, archaeologists, 5 geographers and philosophers. 6 7 Tim Ingold is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. 8 9 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 118 • ii • Skill 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 118 Tools, minds and machines • iii • 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3111 4 5 The Perception of the 6 7 8 Environment 9 20 1 2 Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill 3 4 5 6 7 8 Tim Ingold 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 TL E D U G 3 O E R 4 • • T 5 a p y u lo ro 6 r G & Francis 7 118 London and New York • iv • Skill 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 For Anna and Susanna, 8 in memory of my mother, 9 L. M. Ingold (1910–1998) 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 First published 2000 6 by Routledge 7 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE 8 Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada 9 by Routledge 30 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 1 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group 2 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. 3 © 2000 Tim Ingold 4 5 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter 6 invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or 7 retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. 8 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data 9 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library 40 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data 1 A catalogue record for this book has been requested. 2 3 ISBN 0-203-46602-0 Master e-book ISBN 4 5 6 ISBN 0-203-77426-4 (Adobe eReader Format) 7 ISBN 0–415–22831–X (hbk) 118 ISBN 0–415–22832–8 (pbk) Tools, minds and machines • v • 1 2 Chapter One 3 4 5 Contents 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3111 List of figures viii 4 Acknowledgements x 5 6 General introduction 1 7 8 9 PART I: LIVELIHOOD 20 Introduction to PART I 9 1 2 Chapter One 3 Culture, nature, environment: steps to an ecology of life 13 4 5 Chapter Two 6 The optimal forager and economic man 27 7 Chapter Three 8 Hunting and gathering as ways of perceiving the environment 40 9 30 Chapter Four 1 From trust to domination: an alternative history of 2 human–animal relations 61 3 Chapter Five 4 Making things, growing plants, raising animals and 5 bringing up children 77 6 7 Chapter Six 8 A circumpolar night’s dream 89 9 Chapter Seven 40 Totemism, animism and the depiction of animals 111 1 2 Chapter Eight 3 Ancestry, generation, substance, memory, land 132 4 5 6 7 118 • vi • Contents PART II: DWELLING 1 2 Introduction to PART II 153 3 4 Chapter Nine 5 Culture, perception and cognition 157 6 Chapter Ten 7 Building, dwelling, living: how animals and people make 8 themselves at home in the world 172 9 10 Chapter Eleven 1 The temporality of the landscape 189 2 Chapter Twelve 3 Globes and spheres: the topology of environmentalism 209 4 5 Chapter Thirteen 6 To journey along a way of life: maps, wayfinding and navigation 219 7 Chapter Fourteen 8 Stop, look and listen! Vision, hearing and human movement 243 9 20 1 PART III: SKILL 2 3 Introduction to PART III 289 4 5 Chapter Fifteen 6 Tools, minds and machines: an excursion in the philosophy 7 of technology 294 8 Chapter Sixteen 9 Society, nature and the concept of technology 312 30 1 Chapter Seventeen 2 Work, time and industry 323 3 Chapter Eighteen 4 On weaving a basket 339 5 6 Chapter Nineteen 7 Of string bags and birds’ nests: skill and the construction 8 of artefacts 349 9 Chapter Twenty 40 The dynamics of technical change 362 1 2 Chapter Twenty-one 3 ‘People like us’: the concept of the anatomically 4 modern human 373 5 Chapter Twenty-two 6 Speech, writing and the modern origins of 7 ‘language origins’ 392 118 Contents • vii • 1 Chapter Twenty-three 2 The poetics of tool-use: from technology, language and intelligence 3 to craft, song and imagination 406 4 5 Notes 420 6 7 References 436 8 Index 454 9 10 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 118 • viii • Skill 1 Chapter One 2 3 4 Figures 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 1.1 Universal reason, alternative worldviews, and the reality of nature. 15 3 1.2 ‘Day and night’ (1938). Woodcut by M. C. Escher. 17 4 1.3 Lévi-Strauss’s and Bateson’s views on mind and ecology. 18 5 1.4 Janácˇek’s sketches of the sounds of the waves, recorded at the Dutch 6 port of Flushing in 1926. 23 7 2.1 The ‘primitive’ hunter-gatherer as economic man and as optimal forager. 28 8 2.2 Alternative foraging strategies in a patchy environment. 35 9 3.1 ‘Non-Western’ and ‘Western’ intentional worlds compared. 42 20 3.2 Western anthropological and hunter-gatherer economies of knowledge. 46 1 6.1 Western and Ojibwa models of the person. 104 2 7.1 An Inuit man and a polar bear greet one another. Drawing by 3 Davidialuk Alasuaq. 114 4 7.2 Dead human spirit and sand monitor. Painting by Djawada Nadjongorle. 115 5 7.3 Antilopine kangaroo with mimih spirit. Painting by Namerredje 6 Guymala. 116 7 7.4 Inuit hunter and caribou. Drawing by Davidialuk Alasuaq. 117 8 7.5 On killing a hoodless caribou. Drawing by Davidialuk Alasuaq. 122 9 7.6 Two masks from the Kuskokwim-Yukon area of Alaska. 125 30 7.7 Miniature waterfowl carved in walrus ivory by Inuit of the Ungava District, 1 northern Quebec. 127 2 8.1 ‘The tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil – that is, 3 of human culture’ (after Kroeber). 134 4 8.2 The relation between descent-line, life-line and generation, according 5 to the genealogical model. 136 6 8.3 The transmission/exchange of substance in the genealogical and 7 relational models. 146 8 10.1 Human and animal architecture: beaver lodge and Eskimo house. 174 9 10.2 Fox, owl and oak tree. 177 40 10.3 Ant, bark-boring beetle and oak tree. 178 1 10.4 The Mbuti Pygmy camp of Apa Lelo. 179 2 10.5 Building plans of three periods from the Mesopotamian site of 3 Tell es-Sawwan. 180 4 10.6 The first hut. 183 5 10.7 The ‘stone circle’ from Bed I of Olduvai Gorge. 184 6 11.1 The harvesters (1565) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. 202 7 12.1 The environment as lifeworld and as globe. 209 118 Figures • ix • 1 12.2 The fourteen spheres of the world (1564). Drawn by Giovanni Camillo 2 Maffei of Solofra. 210 3 12.3 Yup’ik cosmology in cross section. 211 4 12.4 Lithosphere, biosphere and noosphere. 213 5 13.1 The spatial orientation experiment: the original maze. 221 6 13.2 The spatial orientation experiment: the replacement maze. 222 7 13.3 The relations between mapping, mapmaking and map-using. 231 8 13.4 The cartographic illusion. 234 9 14.1 Saussure’s depiction of language at the interface between thought 10 and sound.

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