The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and SkillIn this work Tim Ingold offers a persuasive approach to understanding how human beings perceive their surroundings. He argues that what we are used to calling cultural variation consists, in the first place, of variations in skill. Neither innate nor acquired, skills are grown, incorporated into the human organism through practice and training in an environment. They are thus as much biological as cultural. The twenty-three essays comprising this book focus in turn on the procurement of livelihood, on what it means to 'dwell', and on the nature of skill, weaving together approaches from social anthropology, ecological psychology, developmental biology and phenomenology in a way that has never been attempted before. The book is set to revolutionise the way we think about what is 'biological' and 'cultural' in humans, about evolution and history, and indeed about what it means for human beings - at once organisms and persons - to inhabit an environment. The Perception of the Environment will be essential reading not only for anthropologists but also for biologists, psychologists, archaeologists, geographers and philosophers. |
Contents
Culture nature environment steps to an ecology of life | 13 |
The optimal forager and economic man | 27 |
Hunting and gathering as ways of perceiving the environment | 40 |
From trust to domination an alternative history of humananimal relations | 61 |
Making things growing plants raising animals and bringing up children | 77 |
A circumpolar nights dream | 89 |
Totemism animism and the depiction of animals | 111 |
Ancestry generation substance memory land | 132 |
SKILL | 289 |
Tools minds and machines an excursion in the philosophy of technology | 294 |
Society nature and the concept of technology | 312 |
Work time and industry | 323 |
On weaving a basket | 339 |
Of string bags and birds nests skill and the construction of artefacts | 349 |
The dynamics of technical change | 362 |
People like us the concept of the anatomically modern human | 373 |
DWELLING | 153 |
Culture perception and cognition | 157 |
Building dwelling living how animals and people make themselves at home in the world | 172 |
The temporality of the landscape | 189 |
Globes and spheres the topology of environmentalism | 209 |
To journey along a way of life maps wayfinding and navigation | 219 |
Stop look and listen Vision hearing and human movement | 243 |
Other editions - View all
The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill Tim Ingold Limited preview - 2000 |
The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill Tim Ingold Limited preview - 2000 |
The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill Tim Ingold Limited preview - 2000 |