num_pages: 482
description: In this work Tim Ingold offers a persuasive approach to understanding how human beings perceive their surroundings. He argues that what we are used to calling cultural variation consists in the first place of variations in skill. Neither innate nor acquired skills are grown incorporated into the human organism through practice and training in an environment. They are thus as much biological as cultural. The twenty-three essays comprising this book focus in turn on the procurement of livelihood on what it means to 'dwell' and on the nature of skill weaving together approaches from social anthropology ecological psychology developmental biology and phenomenology in a way that has never been attempted before. The book is set to revolutionise the way we think about what is 'biological' and 'cultural' in humans about evolution and history and indeed about what it means for human beings - at once organisms and persons - to inhabit an environment. The Perception of the Environment will be essential reading not only for anthropologists but also for biologists psychologists archaeologists geographers and philosophers.
language: English
title: The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill
publisher: Routledge