The Perception of the Environment

Summary

Anthropologist Tim Ingold’s essays on how people perceive and inhabit their surroundings. He treats what we call cultural variation as, first of all, variation in skill: capacities grown through practice in an environment, not inborn or simply picked up, and so biological and cultural at once. Its twenty-three essays take in livelihood, dwelling and skill.

Rationale

Ingold sets ‘enskilment’ against enculturation, a term we lean on. We take the point, and its hope: if culture passes on as an ‘education of attention’, attention can be re-educated.