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Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2012.41:427-442. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
• Our comprehensive search Department of Anthropology, School of Social Science, University of Aberdeen,
Aberdeen AB24 3QY, Scotland, United Kingdom; email: tim.ingold@abdn.ac.uk
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427
AN41CH26-Ingold ARI 16 August 2012 19:7
works; for the latter, human beings and other have been at the forefront of rethinking the
organisms are bound in webs of life. Yet practi- received dichotomies between nature and soci-
tioners of these two fields are speaking past one ety, and between biology and culture, that had
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428 Ingold
AN41CH26-Ingold ARI 16 August 2012 19:7
and suggest how they may be overcome through publications on material culture, for authors to
a focus on the active materials that compose the register a general complaint against academic
lifeworld. I conclude with some observations on social science for its tendency to reckon as if
materials, mind, and time. there were no things or objects in the world,
only persons. One such author is Bjørnar Olsen.
In mounting his recent defense of things, Olsen
MISSING NONHUMANS (2010, p. 21) appeals to the authority of the
A team of philosophically inclined chim- philosopher Michel Serres, who has this to say:
panzees has embarked on the sociological
study of a human group. One of the first things The only assignable difference between an-
they notice is that activities they are used to imal societies and our own resides. . .in the
performing directly on one another, such as emergence of objects. Our relationships, so-
grooming, are displaced onto the manipulation cial bonds, would be as airy as clouds were
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2012.41:427-442. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
of artifacts such as combs and brushes. They there only contracts between subjects. In fact,
observe, too, that there is no point in the lives the object, specific to the Hominidae, stabi-
of human beings, from cradle to grave, when lizes our relationships. (Serres 1995, p. 87)
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features of the landscape that lend them their increased almost exponentially. This does not
distinctive character. As in the totemic land- necessarily imply, however, a proportionate in-
scape of Aboriginal Australia (Myers 1986) or crease in the mobilization of things nonhuman.
the homeland of the Koyukon of Alaska (Nelson For what comes out unequivocally, both from
1983), every such place is woven as a gathering the evidence of prehistory and from the ethnog-
of stories, of the comings and goings of diverse raphy of peoples who have not taken the high
human and other-than-human beings (Ingold road to Postmodernia, is that there never has
2000b, pp. 52–58). Keith Basso (1992, p. 126), been a time when all sorts of nonhumans have
in his classic study of the storied landscape of not been enrolled in the tasks of keeping life go-
the Western Apache of Arizona, shows how ing. What has changed is the nature of the non-
mountains and arroyos take over from grand- humans. As some have appeared on the scene,
mothers and uncles in the moral education of others have vanished. In the history of industri-
younger generations. They are active players in alization and postindustrialization, for example,
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2012.41:427-442. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
the Apache world. Artifacts, by contrast, may a host of nonhumans once directly tasked with
play a small or even negligible part in bear- providing the wherewithal for human life have
ing the load of interpersonal relationships, as been sidelined, as the menagerie of the farm-
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anthropological studies of hunting and gather- yard gave way to the cornucopia of the super-
ing societies have revealed (Woodburn 1982). market.
They are readily made, or improvised on the In their efforts to bring things back in, the-
spot, and equally readily discarded. What mat- orists have proposed a symmetrical approach,
ters for the people, as Robin Ridington (1982, in which nonhumans of all sorts are allowed
p. 470) has aptly noted, comprises not artifacts to play a role, alongside human beings, in
but artifice. the conduct and continuation of social life
In light of these observations, and return- (Olsen 2003, 2007, 2010, p. 9; Webmoor 2007;
ing to Olsen’s defense of things, what are we to Witmore 2007). With its geometrical conno-
make of the following? tations, the concept of symmetry is less than
apposite, since precisely what is not implied is a
If there is one historical trajectory running all relation between terms that are equal and oppo-
the way down from Olduvai Gorge to Post- site. On the contrary, the approach seeks a way
modernia, it must be one of increased mix- of talking about persons and things that both
ing: that more and more tasks are delegated allows for heterogeneity and is nonoppositional
to nonhuman actors, and more and more ac- (Latour 2005, p. 76). Humans and nonhumans
tions mediated by things. Only by increas- are different, but they are not to be regarded
ingly mobilizing things could humans come as ontologically distinct (Witmore 2007, p. 546).
to experience ‘episodes’ of history such as the What is most remarkable about this principle
advent of farming, urbanization, state forma- of symmetry, however, is that it rests on a claim
tions, industrialization, and postindustrializa- to human exceptionalism, along with a vision
tion. (Olsen 2010, pp. 9–10) of progress from the animal to the human and
from the hunting and gathering of our earliest
No doubt the citizens of Postmodernia are ancestors to modern industrial society, which
surrounded by a wealth of artifacts infinitely in could have come straight out of the nineteenth
excess of what was available to the little band century. Paradoxically, an approach that deon-
of creatures, known to science as Homo habilis, tologizes the division between the human and
who camped at Olduvai Gorge some two mil- the nonhuman and that establishes in its place
lion years ago, whose only tools were crude a level playing field is justified on the grounds
stone choppers. We can be equally sure that, that in the manner of their engagement
in the broad course of history, the number and with material things and in the progressive
kinds of artifacts that humans have used have history of this engagement human beings are
430 Ingold
AN41CH26-Ingold ARI 16 August 2012 19:7
fundamentally different from all other living & Miller 1999, pp. 12–13, 126). If we are to
kinds. Hardly could a symmetrical approach reintegrate the study of material culture with
rest on a more asymmetrical foundation! ecological anthropology, then the externs must
“How,” asks Olsen, “do things and objects be brought back in, not just as a residue, but as
‘mix’ with human beings to form the configu- the fundamental conditions for life—including,
rations we call society and history?” (Olsen 2010, but not exclusive to, human life. After all, the
p. 2, emphases in original). To pose the question ways in which human lives are bound up
in this way is, ipso facto, to exclude animals and in processes of production with the lives of
plants—which exist “alongside” (Olsen 2010, animals and plants, weather, and the land is
p. 9) but, by the same token, are not part of what ecological anthropology is largely about.
“material culture”—from the processes of so- To those with a background in the study
cial and historical life. Society and history are of human ecology, the claim by material
rendered as exclusively human achievements, culture theorists that the “nonhuman” has
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2012.41:427-442. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
brought about by way of the enrollment of ob- been marginalized in the social sciences seems
jects and things. It is precisely because of this frankly preposterous. It is to turn a blind eye
asymmetry that the ostensibly exhaustive divi- to the wealth of anthropological studies of the
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sion between the human and the nonhuman ways hunters, herders, gatherers, and farmers
practically omits the entire gamut of organic in various parts of the world have shared their
life-forms, along with the sunlight, moisture, lives with animals and plants. Under the guise
air, and soil on which all life depends. Included of the restoration of nonhumans, what these
in the category of the nonhuman are only those theorists have really done is substitute one set
material objects and artifacts thanks to which of nonhumans for another: artifacts for life-
some humans are able to assert their wholly ex- forms. It is, as we have seen, the claim to human
ceptional way of being in the world. If animals exceptionalism that is invoked to justify this
and plants are included in this process of his- substitution, the result of which is to set mate-
tory making at all, it is as either quasi-humans rial culture studies and ecological anthropology
or pseudo-objects. on divergent paths. The way to bring them
Schiffer at least acknowledges the problem, together again is to reverse the assimilation of
for having initially equated “material” with living nonhuman organisms to pseudoartifacts,
“artifacts,” he admits that this hardly covers by raising artifacts to the status of things that,
the full range of human beings’ involvement similarly to organisms, both grow and are
with the world around them. Accordingly, grown. To do this, however, requires a change
he expands his definition of material to en- of focus, from the “objectness” of things to the
compass “any form of matter or energy,” of material flows and formative processes wherein
which—apart from people—he posits two they come into being. It means to think of
kinds. One comprises artifacts (things shaped making as a process of growth, or ontogenesis.
or modified by human activity, including It is to this that I now turn.
domesticated plants and animals); the other
comprises externs—a blanket category that cov-
ers everything else that is given independently MATERIALS AND MATERIALITY
of people, including “sunlight and clouds, wild When analysts speak of the “material world” or,
plants and animals, rocks and minerals, and more abstractly, of “materiality,” what do they
landforms.” Yet Schiffer promptly dismisses mean (Ingold 2011a, pp. 19–32)? Put the ques-
externs as a “residual category,” linking it to a tion to students of material culture and you get
theory of human cognitive evolution according contradictory answers. Thus a stone, accord-
to which the environment of externs was grad- ing to Christopher Tilley (2007, p. 17), can
ually left behind as humans found themselves be regarded in its “brute materiality” simply
interacting increasingly with artifacts (Schiffer as a formless lump of matter. Yet we need a
offers possibilities for the human agent.” Intro- explicitly formulated by Aristotle. Any thing,
ducing a collection of essays on the theme of Aristotle had reasoned, is a compound of
materiality, Paul Graves-Brown (2000a, p. 1) matter (hyle) and form (morphe), which are
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asserts that their common focus is on the ques- brought together in the act of its creation.
tion of “how the very material character of the Accordingly, making begins with a form in
world around us is appropriated by humanity” mind and a formless lump of “raw material,”
(compare Pollard 2004, p. 48). and it ends when form and matter are united in
In every case, there seem to be two sides to the complete artifact. In the history of modern
materiality. On one side is the brute materiality thought, this hylomorphic model of creation
or “hard physicality” (Olsen 2003, p. 88) of the was both further entrenched and increasingly
world’s “material character”; on the other side unbalanced. Form came to be seen as actively
is the socially and historically situated agency imposed, whereas matter—thus rendered
of human beings who, in appropriating this passive and inert—became that which was im-
physicality for their purposes, project on it both posed upon. When, in the late 1960s, biological
design and meaning in the conversion of natu- anthropologist Ralph Holloway (1969, p. 395),
rally given raw material into the finished forms following a long line of predecessors, once
of artifacts. This duplicity in the comprehen- more reclaimed culture as a distinctively human
sion of the material world mirrors that found in domain, defined by “the imposition of arbitrary
much older debates surrounding the concept of form upon the environment,” we can clearly
human nature, which could refer at once to the see this modern version of hylomorphism at
raw substrate of basic instinct that humans were work. Culture furnishes the forms, nature the
alleged to share with the “brutes” and to a suite materials; in the superimposition of the one
of characters—including language, intelli- upon the other, human beings create the ma-
gence, and the capacity for symbolic thought— terial culture with which, to an ever-increasing
by which they were said to be elevated to a level extent, they surround themselves.
of being over and above all other creatures. The Unbeknownst to Holloway, however, and
appeal in these debates to the “human nature of probably to most anthropologists and archae-
human nature” (Eisenberg 1972, emphasis in ologists at that time, the philosopher Gilbert
original; cf. Ingold 1994, pp. 19–25) did nothing Simondon had just produced a trenchant cri-
to resolve this duplicity, but instead served only tique of hylomorphism. The first part of his
to reproduce it. In just the same way, in the no- thesis was published in 1964, but the second not
tion of materiality, the world is presented both until 1989; only in 2005 was the work published
as the bedrock of existence and as an externality in its entirety (Simondon 1964, 1989, 2005).
that is open to comprehension and appropria- Against the doctrine of hylomorphism, with
tion by a transcendent humanity. The notion its assumption that the origination of things is
432 Ingold
AN41CH26-Ingold ARI 16 August 2012 19:7
reducible to the imposition of preconceived ab- The hylomorphic model, Simondon con-
stract form on inert matter, Simondon’s central cludes, corresponds to the perspective of a man
postulate of individuation holds that the gener- who stands outside the works and sees what goes
ation of things should be understood as a pro- in and what comes out but nothing of what hap-
cess of ontogenesis in which form is ever emer- pens in between, of the actual processes wherein
gent rather than given in advance. Against the materials of diverse kinds come to take on the
form-receiving passivity of matter, as posited forms they do (Simondon 2005, p. 46). It is as
in the hylomorphic model, Simondon took the though, in form and matter, he could grasp only
essence of matter, or the material, to lie in form- the ends of the two half-chains but not what
taking activity (Massumi 2009, p. 43). brings them together—only a simple relation of
To underline his argument, Simondon de- molding rather than the “perpetually variable,
liberately chose to analyze a branch of manu- continuous modulation” that goes on in the
facture that, at first glance, could hardly better midst of form-taking activity, in the becoming
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exemplify hylomorphism at work. This exam- of things (Deleuze & Guattari 2004, p. 451). In
ple was making bricks. In forming the brick, their “treatise on nomadology,” Gilles Deleuze
prior to firing, soft clay is pressed into a prepre- and Félix Guattari have taken up Simondon’s
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pared, rectangular mold. The mold, it seems, crusade against hylomorphism, and thanks to
prescribes the form, whereas the material—the their influence, the issues it raises are begin-
clay—is initially formless. Surely, as the clay is ning to percolate through to anthropology.
pressed into the mold, ideal form is imposed The trouble with the matter-form model, argue
on raw material, just as the logic of hylomor- Deleuze & Guattari (2004, pp. 451–52), is that
phism requires. But Simondon shows that this in assuming “a fixed form and a matter deemed
is not so. For one thing, the mold is no geo- homogeneous” it fails to acknowledge, on the
metric abstraction but a solid construction that one hand, the variability of matter—its tensions
has first to be carpentered from hardwood. For and elasticities, lines of flow and resistances—
another thing, the clay is not raw. Having been and, on the other hand, the conformations and
dug out from beneath the topsoil, it has first deformations to which these modulations give
to be ground, sieved, and kneaded before it rise. Whenever we encounter matter, Deleuze
is ready for use. In the molding of a brick, & Guattari (2004, pp. 451–52, emphasis in orig-
then, form is not united with substance. Rather, inal) insist, “it is matter in movement, in flux,
there is a convergence of two “transformational in variation,” with the consequence that “this
half-chains” (demi-chaı̂nes de transformations)— matter-flow can only be followed.” Artisans or
respectively, constructing the mold and prepar- practitioners who follow the flow are, in ef-
ing the clay—to a point at which they reach a fect, itinerants, guided by “intuition in action”
certain compatibility: The clay can take to the (Ingold 2011a, p. 211).
mold and the mold the clay (Simondon 2005, But where Simondon took his key example
pp. 41–42). At the moment of encounter, when from brickmaking, Deleuze and Guattari appeal
the brickmaker “dashes” a clot of clay into the to metallurgy. For them, metallurgy highlights
mold, the expressive force of the maker’s ges- a particular insufficiency of the hylomorphic
ture, imparted to the clay, comes up against the model, namely that it can conceive of technical
compressive resistance of the hard wood of the operations only as sequences of discrete steps,
mold’s walls. Thus the brick, with its character- with a clear threshold marking the termination
istic rectangular outline, results not from the of each step and the commencement of the
imposition of form onto matter but from the next. This is how technical operations are
contraposition of equal and opposed forces im- normatively depicted according to the classic
manent in both the clay and the mold. In this model of the chaı̂ne opératoire, introduced into
field of forces, the form emerges as a more or anthropology by André Leroi-Gourhan (1993)
less transitory equilibration. and subsequently central to the comparative
study of techniques, especially among Franco- materials by comparing two definitions of gold.
phone scholars (Naji & Douny 2009). But in One comes from a chemistry textbook, the
metallurgy, these thresholds are precisely other from an eighth-century Persian philoso-
where the key operations take place. Thus, pher alchemist. For the chemist, gold is one of
even as he beats out the form with hammer on the elements in the periodic table, and as such,
anvil, the smith has periodically to return his it has an essential constitution that is given
iron to the fire: Material variation spills over quite independently of the manifold forms and
into the formative process and, indeed, con- circumstances of its appearance or of human
tinues beyond it, since only after forging is the encounters with it. But for the alchemist, gold
iron finally quenched. “Matter and form have was yellowing and gleaming, and anything that
never seemed more rigid than in metallurgy,” yellowed and gleamed, and that would also
write Deleuze & Guattari (2004, p. 453), “yet shine ever brighter under water and could be
the succession of forms tends to be replaced by hammered into thin leaf, would count as gold
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2012.41:427-442. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
the form of a continuous development, and the (Conneller 2011, p. 4). One way to accommo-
variability of matters tends to be replaced by date these divergent understandings of what
the matter of a continuous variation.” Instead is ostensibly the “same” material would be to
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of the concatenation of the chaı̂ne opératoire, argue, with the design theorist David Pye, for a
where both techniques and forms go from distinction between the properties and qualities of
point to point, we have here an unbroken, materials. Properties, for Pye (1968, p. 47), are
contrapuntal coupling of a gestural dance with objective and scientifically measurable; qualities
a modulation of the material. Even iron flows, are subjective—they are ideas in people’s heads
and the smith has to follow it. which they project onto the material in ques-
What, then, is matter? What do we mean tion. But this would only reproduce the duplic-
when we speak of materials? To understand ity in our understanding of the material world—
the meaning of materials for those who work between its given physicality and its valorization
with them we need, as art historian James Elkins within human projects of making—that we
(2000, pp. 9–39) advises, to take a “short course have sought to resolve (Ingold 2011a, p. 30).
in forgetting chemistry.” More precisely, we The experienced practitioner’s knowledge of
have to remember how materials were under- the properties of materials, like that of the
stood in the days of alchemy. Elkins’s point alchemist, is not projected onto them but grows
is that prior to the introduction of synthetic out of a lifetime of close engagement in a par-
pigments, the painter’s knowledge of his ma- ticular craft or trade. As Conneller (2011, p. 5)
terials was fundamentally alchemical. To paint contends, “different understandings of materi-
was to bring together, into a single movement, als are not simply ‘concepts’ set apart from ‘real’
a certain material mixture, loaded onto the properties; they are realised in terms of dif-
brush, with a certain bodily gesture enacted ferent practices that themselves have material
through the hand that held it. But the science of effects.”
chemistry can no more define the mixture than We should not thus think of the properties
can the science of anatomy define the gesture of materials as attributes. Rather, they are histo-
(Elkins 2000, p. 18). The chemist thinks of mat- ries (Ingold 2011a, p. 32). To understand ma-
ter in terms of its invariant atomic or molecular terials is to be able to tell their histories—of
constitution. For the alchemist, by contrast, a what they do and what happens to them when
material is known not by what it is but by what treated in particular ways—in the very prac-
it does, specifically when mixed with other ma- tice of working with them. Materials do not ex-
terials, treated in particular ways, or placed in ist as static entities with diagnostic attributes;
particular situations (Conneller 2011, p. 19). they are not “little bits of nature,” as science
Chantal Conneller (2011) introduces studies scholar Karen Barad (2003, p. 821)
her recent discussion of the archaeology of puts it, awaiting the mark of an external force
434 Ingold
AN41CH26-Ingold ARI 16 August 2012 19:7
or categories. To describe any material is to the social lives of human beings, has long been
pose a riddle, whose answer can be discovered associated with what has come to be known
only through observation and engagement as consumption studies (Miller 1987, 1995; see
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with what is there. To know materials, we have Olsen 2010, p. 32). To view the same thing
to follow them—to “follow the matter-flow as a sample of material, by contrast, is to see
as pure productivity”—as artisans have always it as a potential—for further making, growth,
done (Deleuze & Guattari 2004, p. 454). Their and transformation. In a world of materials,
every technical gesture is a question, to which nothing is ever finished: “everything may be
the material responds according to its bent. something, but being something is always on
In following their materials, practitioners do the way to becoming something else” (Ingold
not so much interact as co-respond with them 2011b, p. 3). Materials, as noted above, are
(Ingold 2011b, p. 10). Production, then, is a substances-in-becoming (Barad 2003, p. 822):
process of correspondence: not the imposition of They carry on, overtaking the formal destina-
preconceived form on raw material substance, tions that, at one time or another, have been
but the drawing out or bringing forth of assigned to them. From an object-centered
potentials immanent in a world of becoming perspective, this carrying on is commonly
(Ingold 2011a, p. 6). In the act of production, rendered as recycling (Pollard 2004; Bunn
the artisan couples his own movements and 2011, pp. 26–27). From a materials-centered
gestures—indeed, his very life—with the perspective, however, it is part of life. And to
becoming of his materials, joining with and focus on the life of materials is to prioritize the
following the forces and flows that bring his processes of production, in the sense outlined
work to fruition. Crucially, these paths of above, over those of consumption.
movement and lines of flow do not connect: For Daniel Miller (1987, pp. 19–33), who
They are not between one pre-existing entity has consistently led the way in establishing ma-
and another but perpetually on the threshold terial culture studies as a distinct field, human
of emergence. They are the lines along which history has fundamentally to be understood as
materials flow and bodies move. Together, an ongoing process of objectification. In this, peo-
these entangled lines, of bodily movement and ple create a material world that, in turn, pro-
material flow, compose what I have elsewhere vides a mirror in the reflection of which they
called the meshwork, as opposed to the network and their successors fashion themselves. “We
of connected entities (Ingold 2007, pp. 80–84; cannot know who we are, or become what we
Knappett 2011). And this meshwork—to which are,” Miller (2005, p. 8) writes, “except by look-
I return below—is nothing other than the web ing in a material mirror, which is the histori-
of life itself. To study its lines, in short, is to cal world created by those who lived before us.
adumbrate an ecology of materials. This world confronts us as material culture and
continues to evolve through us.” It is of course The object, for Heidegger, is closed in
true, as Karl Marx (1963, p. 15) famously as- upon itself and stands before us complete and
serted in the Eighteenth Brumaire of 1869, that ready-made. It is defined by its confrontational
human beings do not make their history just as “overagainstness”—face-to-face or surface-to-
they please, “but under circumstances directly surface—in relation to the setting in which it
encountered, given and transmitted from the is placed (Heidegger 1971, p. 167). We may
past.” But is the past a mirror in which they look at it or even touch it, but this look or
see their own reflection, or is it the matrix of touch, however metrically close, remains affec-
their ongoing lives? To suppose that the past is tively distant. We may interact with objects, but
mirror rather than matrix—that it is held up be- we cannot correspond with them. As the design
fore us in its final, objectified forms rather than philosopher Vilém Flusser (1999, p. 58) puts it,
carried with us as a bundle of potentials into “an ‘object’ is what gets in the way, a problem
our own processes of growth and maturation— thrown in your path like a projectile.” But if
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2012.41:427-442. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
seems to reflect the same duplicity that we have objects are against us, things are with us. Every
already encountered in the definitions of both thing, for Heidegger, is a gathering of materials
humanity and materiality bequeathed to us by in movement—a particular knotting together
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436 Ingold
AN41CH26-Ingold ARI 16 August 2012 19:7
materials. He has nothing to say about them. In the spirit of SPIDER, we could say
This is precisely what distinguishes the that sentient awareness and responsiveness are
“network” of Latourian Actor Network The- embodied, but only if the concept of embodi-
ory (ANT) from the “meshwork” of my own ment is treated with some caution. As with the
account, and which I have introduced under the concepts of humanity and materiality, that of
contrasting acronym of SPIDER—standing embodiment often seems to conceal a duality
for Skilled Practice Involves Developmentally between a knowing mind and an existing
Embodied Responsiveness (Ingold 2011a, world under the pretense of having brought
pp. 89–94). The emphasis in SPIDER is not about their unification. In the view of dance
on the interactive convocation of existing philosopher Maxine Sheets-Johnstone (1998,
entities but on the co-responsive movement p. 359), for example, the notion of embodiment
of occurrent things along their manifold lines is nothing better than a “lexical band-aid,”
of becoming. And in this we find common which allows the division between knowing
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2012.41:427-442. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
cause with the phenomenology of Maurice and being to persist simply by covering it up
Merleau-Ponty. (Sheets-Johnstone 2011). Indeed, the division
For Merleau-Ponty, every living thing, our will persist, Sheets-Johnstone argues, so long
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human selves included, is irrevocably stitched as we fail to recognize that the key to both
into the fabric of the world. This stitching both self-knowledge and organic life is movement.
composes the thingly aspect of being and es- It is not just that bodies, as living organisms,
tablishes the possibility of sentient life. It is not move. They are their movements. Therefore,
possible, as Merleau-Ponty (1968) showed, to the knowledge they can have of themselves is
be sentient in an insentient world: In such a inseparable from the sense they have of their
world, light, sound, and feeling could figure own movements, or in a word, from kinesthesia.
only as vectors of projection in the conversion Animate beings, Sheets-Johnstone insists, do
of objects into images, rather than as qualities of not experience themselves and one another as
experience in themselves. Forever shut out from “packaged” but as moving and moved, in ongo-
the world of which it seeks knowledge, the mind ing response—that is in correspondence—with
could grasp its contents only by way of inter- the things around them (Ingold 2011b, p. 10).
nal representations, constructed—as the logic This is to think of the body not as a sink into
of hylomorphism requires—through a unifica- which practices settle like sediment in a ditch,
tion of the “raw material” of sensation with but rather as a dynamic center of unfolding
the ideational forms of cultural signification. activity. Or as Brenda Farnell (2000, p. 413)
In a sentient world, by contrast, things open argues, it is to think from, rather than about, the
up to the perceiver even as perceivers open up body. The change of perspective entailed here
to them, becoming mutually entangled in that precisely parallels our earlier injunction, taken
skein of movement and affect which Merleau- from Deleuze and Guattari, to “follow the
Ponty (1968, pp. 138–39) famously called “the materials” (Ingold 2011b, pp. 2–6). It is to think
flesh,” but which I have characterized, more ac- from materials, not about them: to find “the
curately I think, as the meshwork. In the mesh- consciousness or thought of the matter-flow”
work, the “flesh” of phenomenology is unified (Deleuze & Guattari 2004, p. 454). As the
with the “web of life” of ecology. Thanks to dancer thinks from the body, so the artisan
their entanglement in the meshwork, my see- thinks from materials.
ing things is the way things see through me, my In the living, dynamically centered body,
hearing them is the way they hear through me, person and organism are one. The body is the
my feeling them is the way they feel through organism-person. As a gathering together of
me. By way of perception, the world “coils over” materials in movement, the body is moreover
(Merleau-Ponty 1968, p. 140) upon itself: The a thing. Thus we should no longer speak of
sensible becomes sentient, and vice versa. relations between people and things, because
people are things too. Or as the title of a recent from Bateson, cognitive theorist Andy Clark
article by Timothy Webmoor and Christo- (1997, 2001, 2010; Clark & Chalmers 1998)
pher Witmore declares, “Things are us!” has charted just such a way forward in his
(Webmoor & Witmore 2008). As the things theory of the “extended mind.” In a nutshell,
they are, people are also “processes, brought the theory postulates that the mind, far from
into being through production, embroiled in being coextensive with the brain, routinely
ongoing social projects, and requiring attentive spills out into the environment, enlisting all
engagement” (Pollard 2004, p. 60). In this manner of extrasomatic objects and artifacts in
regard, they are just like pots. In a study of ce- the conduct of its operations. It, too, is a “leaky
ramics from Northwest Argentina dating from organ” (Clark 1997, p. 53) that mingles with the
the first millennium AD, Benjamin Alberti world in the conduct of its operations. Thanks
(2007, p. 211) argues that it would be a mistake to this leakage, the world becomes a kind of
to assume that the pot is a fixed and stable “distributed mind” ( Jones 2007, p. 225).
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2012.41:427-442. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
object, bearing the imprint of cultural form For many archaeologists, the theory was a
upon the “obdurate” matter of the physical godsend, because it implied that in their studies
world. On the contrary, evidence suggests that of material culture researchers could contribute
by University of Aberdeen on 09/27/12. For personal use only.
pots were treated like bodies and with the same directly to understanding the cognitive pro-
concern: namely, to compensate for chronic cesses of people in the past (Malafouris &
instability and to shore up vessels for life against Renfrew 2010). As Lambros Malafouris (2004,
the ever-present susceptibility to discharge that p. 58, original emphasis) argues, if we acknowl-
threatens their dissolution or metamorphosis. edge (with Clark 1997, p. 98) that cognition
The living body, likewise, is sustained thanks is fundamentally a means of engaging with the
only to the continual taking in of materials from world—if, in that sense, cognition is indisso-
its surroundings and, in turn, the discharge ciable from action—“then material culture is
into them, in the processes of respiration and consubstantial with mind.” But why should peo-
metabolism. Things can exist and persist only ple think with the artifacts of material culture
because they leak: that is, because of the inter- alone? Why not also with the air, the ground,
change of materials across the ever-emergent mountains and streams, and other living be-
surfaces by which they differentiate themselves ings? Why not with materials? And if cognition
from the surrounding medium. The bodies of is indeed enacted, as Malafouris (2004, p. 59)
organisms and other things leak continually; claims, then how does it differ from life itself?
indeed, their lives depend on it. Precisely this Does thought lie in the interactions between
shift of perspective from stopped-up objects brains, bodies, and objects in the world, or
to leaky things distinguishes the ecology of in the correspondences of material flows and
materials from mainstream studies of material sensory awareness by which, as Deleuze &
culture. Guattari (2004, p. 454) put it, consciousness is
the “thought of the matter-flow” and material
“the correlate of this consciousness”?
MINDING MATERIALS Yet we might still suppose that a funda-
Where, then, does such an ecology leave the mental difference exists between things and
mind? Should we, as Chris Gosden (2010) thought. The difference comes down to the
urges, do away with the concept of mind question of durability. Olsen (2010, p. 158)
altogether? Or can we retain an ecology of offers the following as simple statements of
mind, as Gregory Bateson (1973) thought, fact: “Things are more persistent than thought.
alongside and complementing an ecology of They evidently last longer than speech or ges-
substance, the first dealing with information, tures. Things are concrete and offer stability.”
the second with the exchange and circulations Every one of these statements, however, could
of energy and materials? Drawing inspiration be challenged. What lasts longer: a thought,
438 Ingold
AN41CH26-Ingold ARI 16 August 2012 19:7
example, the strength of a work lies in the “artifacts”; nonhumans should also include living organisms of
“energies” emanating from materials in their all kinds
movement, growth, and decay and in the Objects: completed forms that stand over and against the
by University of Aberdeen on 09/27/12. For personal use only.
fleeting moments when they come together as perceiver and block further movement
one (quoted in Friedman 1996, p. 10). My aim Things: gatherings of materials in movement, as distinct from
in this review, like Goldsworthy’s in his art, objects
has been to bring the materials back in. With
Barad (2003, p. 803), it has been to give “matter
its due as an active participant in the world’s are the cast-offs of history, but materials, to re-
becoming.” What perdure are the materials call Barad’s (2003, p. 821) summation, are “on-
of life, not the more or less solid and inertial going historicity.” Materials are not in time;
forms they throw up. Artifacts and monuments they are the stuff of time itself.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
The author is not aware of any affiliations, memberships, funding, or financial holding that might
be perceived as affecting the objectivity of this review.
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Annual Review of
Anthropology
Prefatory Chapter
Ancient Mesopotamian Urbanism and Blurred Disciplinary Boundaries
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2012.41:427-442. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
Archaeology
by University of Aberdeen on 09/27/12. For personal use only.
Biological Anthropology
Energetics, Locomotion, and Female Reproduction:
Implications for Human Evolution
Cara M. Wall-Scheffler p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p71
vii
AN41-FrontMatter ARI 23 August 2012 12:10
viii Contents
AN41-FrontMatter ARI 23 August 2012 12:10
Sociocultural Anthropology
Lives With Others: Climate Change and Human-Animal Relations
Rebecca Cassidy p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p21
Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2012.41:427-442. Downloaded from www.annualreviews.org
Theme I: Materiality
Objects of Affect: Photography Beyond the Image
Elizabeth Edwards p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 221
The Archaeology of Money
Colin Haselgrove and Stefan Krmnicek p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 235
Documents and Bureaucracy
Matthew S. Hull p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 251
Phenomenological Approaches in Landscape Archaeology
Matthew H. Johnson p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p p 269
Contents ix
AN41-FrontMatter ARI 23 August 2012 12:10
Indexes
Errata
x Contents