Abstract:
Most philosophical discussions of life in a more-than-human world continue to revolve around a human centre. Accounts of interspecies communication, for example, invariably focus on exchanges between humans and nonhumans, never between nonhumans of different kinds. Behind this bias, there still lurks an assumption that humans are exceptional in the extent to which they enrol other kinds into their collective lives. Rejecting this assumption, we recognise that just as much as humans share a world with nonhumans, so do stones share a world with non-stones, trees with non-trees, sheep with non-sheep. How, then, can we rewrite the history of the world in a way that allows every inhabitant to be itself-in-relation-to-others, rather than only in relation to us?
Bio:
Tim Ingold, FBA, FRSE, is Professor Emeritus of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. He has carried out fieldwork among Saami and Finnish people in Lapland, and has written on environment, technology and social organisation in the circumpolar North, on animals in human society, and on human ecology and evolutionary theory. His more recent work explores environmental perception and skilled practice. Ingold’s current interests lie on the interface between anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. His recent books include The Perception of the Environment (2000), Lines (2007), Being Alive (2011), Making (2013), The Life of Lines (2015), Anthropology and/as Education (2018), Anthropology: Why it Matters (2018), Correspondences (2020) and Imagining For Real (2022).