Redrawing Anthropology: Materials, Movements, Lines

216 Pages·2011·2.47 MB·English

by  Tim Ingold (Editor)

RedRawing anthRopology
anthropological Studies of
Creativity and perception
Series Editor: tim ingold, University of aberdeen, UK
the books in this series explore the relations, in human social and cultural life,
between perception, creativity and skill. their common aim is to move beyond
established approaches in anthropology and material culture studies that treat the
inhabited world as a repository of complete objects, already present and available for
analysis. instead these works focus on the creative processes that continually bring
these objects into being, along with the persons in whose lives they are entangled.
all creative activities entail movement or gesture, and the books in this series
are particularly concerned to understand the relations between these creative
movements and the inscriptions they yield. likewise in considering the histories
of artefacts, these studies foreground the skills of their makers-cum-users, and
the transformations that ensue, rather than tracking their incorporation as finished
objects within networks of interpersonal relations.
the books in this series will be interdisciplinary in orientation, their
concern being always with the practice of interdisciplinarity: on ways of doing
anthropology with other disciplines, rather than doing an anthropology of these
subjects. through this anthropology with, they aim to achieve an understanding
that is at once holistic and processual, dedicated not so much to the achievement
of a final synthesis as to opening up lines of inquiry.
Other titles in the series:
Conversations with landscape
Edited by Karl Benediktsson and Katrín Anna Lund
ways of walking
ethnography and practice on Foot
Edited by Tim Ingold and Jo Lee Vergunst
Redrawing anthropology
Materials, Movements, lines
Edited by
tiM ingold
University of Aberdeen, UK
© tim ingold 2011
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
tim ingold has asserted his right under the Copyright, designs and patents act, 1988, to be
identified as the editor of this work.
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Redrawing anthropology : materials, movements, lines. --
(anthropological studies of creativity and perception)
1. art and anthropology--Congresses. 2. Material culture--
Congresses.
i. Series ii. ingold, tim, 1948-
701'.03-dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ingold, tim, 1948-
Redrawing anthropology : materials, movements, lines / by tim ingold.
p. cm. -- (anthropological studies of creativity and perception)
includes bibliographical references and index.
iSBn 978-1-4094-1774-3 (hardback) -- iSBn 978-1-4094-1775-0
(ebook) 1. anthropology--philosophy. 2. art and anthropology. 3. graphic arts. 4.
Creative ability. i. title.
gn33.i49 2011
301--dc23
2011017214
iSBn 9781409417743 (hbk)
iSBn 9781409417750 (ebk)
V
printed and bound in great Britain by the
Mpg Books group, UK.
Contents
List of Figures vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Preface and Acknowledgements xv
1 Introduction 1
Tim Ingold
2 Materials in Making 21
Stephanie Bunn
3 Practice Drawing Writing Object 33
Lesley McFadyen
4 Networks of Objects, Meshworks of Things 45
Carl Knappett
5 Thinking through Movement:
Practising Martial Arts and Writing Ethnography 65
Rupert Cox
6 Learning the ‘Banana-Tree’:
Self Modification through Movement 77
Greg Downey
7 Performing Precision and the Limits of Observation 91
Brenda Farnell and Robert N. Wood
8 The Imaginative Consciousness of Movement:
Linear Quality, Kinaesthesia, Language and Life 115
Maxine Sheets-Johnstone
9 Beyond A to B 129
Griet Scheldeman
vi Redrawing Anthropology
10 Drawing with Our Feet (and Trampling the Maps):
Walking with Video as a Graphic Anthropology 143
Sarah Pink
11 ‘Both Created and Discovered’:
The Case for Reverie and Play in a Redrawn Anthropology 157
Amanda Ravetz
12 Expanded Visions: Rethinking Anthropological Research
and Representation through Experimental Film 177
Arnd Schneider
Index 195
List of Figures
2.1 JCB Cow by Sally Matthews 27
2.2 Mr Imagination’s bottle cap throne 28
2.3 Details of eye-shades 29
2.4 Step-by-step process of making a flat ‘Turk’s Head Knot’ 29
2.5 Kenjé Toktosunova’s felt shyrdak carpet 30
2.6 Cuna man making a basket in Arqía, Colombia 31
3.1 Plan of Bronze Age ring-ditch 34
3.2 Site drawing of ring-ditch section 35
3.3 Photograph of Bronze Age ring-ditch, fully excavated 35
3.4 Ring-ditch under excavation 37
3.5 Detail of section 41
4.1 Maori meeting house network 48
4.2 Chaîne opératoire diagram 50
4.3 Chronological chart for palatial Crete 53
4.4 Space syntax analysis showing agglutinative
and articulated layouts in Minoan buildings 55
4.5 Neopalatial conical cups 57
4.6 Neopalatial bridge-spouted jars with tortoiseshell ripple decoration 57
4.7 Neopalatial rounded cup with dark-on-light decoration
of stylised fish motif 58
4.8 A Kamares cup from Knossos 59
5.1 The self observed: the author learning the tea ceremony,
watched by his teacher 71
7.1 Still image illustrating an open choreographic procedure 95
7.2 ‘As work matures it is more suggestive than literal,
more intimation than symbol’ (Robert Wood) 101
7.3 Here we see Kelly exploring a heightened state of viscerality:
‘a person dancing’, not someone ‘in the role of ‘dancer’ 103
7.4 Luca’s whole body emanates dimensions of his personal being
in time and space, beyond any theatrical dramatisation 104
7.5 Three different ‘action signs’ that look identical to an observer 106
7.6 The five formal possibilities for locomotion on two legs 108
viii Redrawing Anthropology
7.7 Transcriptions of variations that can occur in mundane
forms of walking 109
7.8 Transcriptions of styles of walking that occur in four idioms
of dancing 110
10.1 The natural line 150
10.2 The new path 152
11.1 Examples of a cup and saucer made by Cj during
the residency in Dhal ni Pol 171
11.2 People and activities around the door set up in Fadiya chok 173
12.1 The Flicker, 1966, by Tony Conrad 182
12.2 Malcolm Le Grice, After Manet – le dejeuner sur l’herb, 1975 184
12.3 The Ambassadors (Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve),
1533, by Hans Holbein the Younger 191
12.4 Detail from The Ambassadors 191
Notes on Contributors
Stephanie Bunn lectures in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews,
and is also a craftsperson specialising in felt and willow work. Bunn has carried
out ethnographic fieldwork among nomadic pastoralists in Kyrgyzstan, focusing
on human-environment relations, domestic textiles and the use of space in the
tent. During her early research she participated in the UNESCO Steppe Route
Expedition as the textile expert on their scientific team, was apprenticed to two
Kyrgyz feltmakers, and studied the collections of early nomads at the Hermitage
and the Ethnographic Museums in St Petersburg. She has collected and curated
several exhibitions, from Striking Tents at the British Museum (1999) to From
Quilts to Couture in Kyrgyzstan at the Collins Gallery, University of Strathclyde
(2011). Research projects have included working with artist Eduardo Paolozzi
on the artist’s relationship with materials, research on sacred sites and material
culture among Kyrgyz nomads in Tajikistan, an interdisciplinary project on
Sound and Anthropology, and recent work on the dynamics of change in Kyrgyz
material culture. Her book, Nomadic Felts, was published by the British Museum
Press in 2010.
Rupert Cox is Lecturer in Visual Anthropology and Director of the Granada
Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester. He has conducted
fieldwork in Japan on practices such as the tea ceremony and the martial arts,
resulting in his book The Zen Arts (Routledge Curzon 2002). He is currently
completing another multi-sited fieldwork study which investigates the history and
practices associated with the idea of Japan as a ‘copying culture’. As co-director
of an independent documentary film company, Native Voice Films, Cox has
developed broad interests in visual culture. These interests extend to the impact of
new media technologies, in particular photography, on philosophies and practices
of representation in Japanese Zen. In a new project that aims to develop soundscape
studies and the use of sound recording within anthropology, he is investigating the
perception and significance of silent places in Japan.
Greg Downey is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Macquarie University,
Australia. For his doctoral thesis, Downey studied the Afro-Brazilian dance and
martial art, capoeira, in which he became an apprentice and off-and-on instructor.
This led to his first book Learning Capoeira (Oxford University Press 2005).
Drawing on recent research in the neurosciences, the psychology of perception,
sports physiology, and dynamic systems theory, the book examines how cultural
patterns of training and behaviour affect the body’s and brain’s development