In this work Tim Ingold offers a persuasive new 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. To account for the generation of skills we have therefore to
understand the dynamics of development. And this in turn calls for an
ecological approach that situates practitioners in the context of an
active engagement with the constituents of their surroundings.
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.
This edition includes a new Preface by the author.
