Key Debates in Anthropology

by Tim Ingold (Editor)

Every year, leading anthropologists meet to debate a motion at the heart of current theoretical developments in their subject, and this book includes the first six of these debates, from 1988 to 1993.

Genres: Anthropology

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Tim Ingold (born 1948) is a British social anthropologist, currently Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. He was educated at Leighton Park School and Cambridge University. He is a fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His bibliography includes The Perception of the Environment: Essays in Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, Routledge, 2000, which is a collection of essays, some of which had been published earlier.

Reviews

[Shane Wallis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This had been on my to read list for nearly a decade now. I read Tim Ingold's presentation against the motion that human worlds are culturally constructed when Social Anthropology was still incredibly new to me. I still know very little about it, but oh well. Nonetheless it was with great excitement that I purchased the book. Considering how epic my back catalogue of reading material is, it speaks volumes that I read this book immediately after acquiring it. After finishing it, I can say that I enjoyed it.

Due to the nature of the material, live discussions with minimal prep time, there can be some inconsistency regarding the quality of arguments. At times I found presentations and discussions to be underwhelming. At times arguments were quite circular and shallow, with people speaking past each other. I, of course, have my own biases regarding how these topics should be explored. This no doubt factored in. Not to mention the recent emergence of subfields such as neuroanthropology making some of their musings seem too simplistic. However I do think that even by a late 80s and early 90s framework, they could be too simple in their explorations. Again, most likely due to the format and time restrictions.

That being said the highlights were amazing. There were several times while reading it, that they introduced doubt and complexity to topics I thought I had definitive opinions on. The easiest examples being Society being an obsolete concept and human worlds being culturally constructed. I was damn sure before reading that the answer to those two were no and yes. Now, I am not so certain. The presentations and following discussions were amazing. They added nuance and complexity in ways I had not considered. Still love Ingold's dwelling vs construction argument. Their arguments on constructionist arguments were a bit knee jerky. But I especially loved those two debates.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book. Based on my own personal interests there were times when I found it simplistic, times when it went way over my head and moments where it struck the perfect balance and challenged me in a way that had me questioning my own stances. It gave me lots to think about and even more anthropologists to add to my never ending back catalogue of material I need to read.

[Kimberley · Rating 3 out of 5]

i read this book to prepare for debates that i was going to be participating in for class last year. though i found that the writing was at times, needlessly complex (the point trying to be made possibly becoming muddled as a result), this book was really interesting, with incredibly important topics in the field of anthropology. it made me feel really prepared to go into classes last year, which was nice :)