The Life of Lines

by Tim Ingold

To live, every being must put out a line, and in life these lines tangle with one another. This book is a study of the life of lines. Following on from Tim Ingold's groundbreaking work Lines: A Brief History, it offers a wholly original series of meditations on life, ground, weather, walking, imagination and what it means to be human.

In the first part, Ingold argues that a world of life is woven from knots, and not built from blocks as commonly thought. He shows how the principle of knotting underwrites both the way things join with one another, in walls, buildings and bodies, and the composition of the ground and the knowledge we find there.

In the second part, Ingold argues that to study living lines, we must also study the weather. To complement a linealogy that asks what is common to walking, weaving, observing, singing, storytelling and writing, he develops a meteorology that seeks the common denominator of breath, time, mood, sound, memory, colour and the sky. This denominator is the atmosphere.

In the third part, Ingold carries the line into the domain of human life. He shows that for life to continue, the things we do must be framed within the lives we undergo. In continually answering to one another, these lives enact a principle of correspondence that is fundamentally social.

This compelling volume brings our thinking about the material world refreshingly back to life. While anchored in anthropology, the book ranges widely over an interdisciplinary terrain that includes philosophy, geography, sociology, art and architecture.

Genres: Philosophy, Anthropology, Nonfiction, Theory

186 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 27, 2015

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

[Camila Ausente · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hermoso e incomprensible. En mi cabeza, constantemente un: ¿Qué es esto que estoy leyendo? / inclasificable, libre. Súper abstracto. Pero algo ahí se queda sobre observar y conectar (líneas, ¡líneas!) y pensar el mundo “con” (a diferencia de un “desde”). Lo pongo en el cajón de los que van más allá de la forma, o buscan la forma propia de lo que escriben-piensan.
Bello.

[Stephanie Crawford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this book really helped me understand what is going on out there, really. It's about the nature of reality. We are growing up out of the earth, mingling with the atmosphere and connected to everything in ways the author describes quite clearly.

[Ingrid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply love that way of thinking. Mindblowing. Must-read for anybody willing to think outside the usual boxes.

[Hernán Damián]

Es un libro importantísimo para entender el panorama de la antropología contemporánea