The Life of Lines

Tin Ingold is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. In this strikingly original book he extends and redefines his field with a fascinating interdisciplinary exploration and building on his previous work, Lines: A Brief History. Drawing on the work of thinkers like James Gibson (the ecological theory of perception) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Ingold stretches the reader's mind in new directions and with the development of everyday metaphors in new ways. The three parts are entitled Knotting, Weathering and Humaning and are all about what is to be human. In the first part, he shows how the world of life is not built from blocks (or blobs) but is entwined in meshwork, where we are bound and knit together. The joiner is aptly named as one who joins wood together. We experience different forms of surface in mountains, skyscrapers and ground, while our experience of walking teaches us that moving is knowing.

He coins the term 'lineaologist' to describe his study, pointing out that lines are also paths, inscriptions, imprints and impressions. Clouds are designed in whirls or whorls, and we use the word atmosphere both literally and metaphorically. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, Ingold sees perception as a double movement of action and passion, inspiration and expiration, fission and fusion even as we breathe - our world emerges from this process. So do sounds, a point that he illustrates by drawing both the sound and given the score of a Bach cello suite. The premise of the third part is that the word human in fact a verb. We are always in process, never complete - something that the word invented by Ramon Llull conveys: homificans. We are always in the making or in the growing. We lead our lives and are also led, we live and are also lived. Ingold makes a subtle distinction with between and in-between, the former referring to interaction and the latter to correspondence and characterised by attention and care. He concludes that his discipline is one of participant observation with an emphasis on this in-between where observing does not entail objectification but rather attention to persons and things, learning from them. This is surely a ground-breaking study that will enable readers to see social anthropology in a new light.