The misperception of the environment: A critical evaluation of the work of Tim Ingold and an alternative guide to the use of the senses in anthropological theory

• Published in: Anthropological theory Vol. 22; no. 4; pp. 443 - 466
• Main Author: Howes, David
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.12.2022; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Anthropology; Ethnography; Senses; Sensory perception; Phenomenology; ecological psychology; affordances; sensory ethnography; cultural contingency of perception; sociality of sensation
• ISSN: 1463-4996; 1741-2641
• DOI: 10.1177/14634996211067307

This article presents a critical evaluation of the work of Tim Ingold from the standpoint of social and sensory anthropology. It acknowledges the novelty of the emphasis on enskillment, movement, process, and growth in Ingold's work. However, it is critical of his abstraction of the senses, which are rendered ‘interchangeable’, and of persons, who are reduced to generic individuals. Ingold's anthropology is shown to be pre-cultural and post-social at once, with the result that it fails to address the sociality of sensation and cultural mediation of perception. Ingold's doctrine of ‘direct perception’ is exposed as particularly problematic. In place of his emphasis on ‘the life of lines’, this article foregrounds the life of the senses, and in lieu of his diminution of the social, it acknowledges the politics of perception that inform most every perceptual act. The article concludes with a series of reflections on how to go about sensualizing anthropological theory and practicing sensory ethnography (i.e. the methodology of participant sensation).