Dialogue with Tim Ingold. Different contributions in the field of phenomenological anthropology

Abstract

The paper highlights Tim Ingold’s contribution to an ecological
anthropology and to the human sciences, particularly discussing
the concepts of perception, body, flesh and landscape, developed
in the book “The perception of environment” (1990). We consider Ingold’s later book, Being Alive (2011) as well as Ingold’s
own observations on the first version of this paper, presented
and discussed at the Culture, Perception and Environment Seminar
(2011), where Ingold personally debated articles written
in dialogue with his work. In this article, following Tim Ingold,
we start from a phenomenological posture and an interdisciplinary
dialogue with biology and psychology, to understand
the experience common to all living beings, constituted as
organisms that, in turn, do not enclose themselves in envelopes
specific identities. From these propositions, the possibilities
of being in the world are opened and education is evidenced
as mobilization of attention, putting in check the theories on the
transmission of culture and the human formation based on oppositions
such as mind and body, nature and culture. In this
way, we are faced with a radical ecological perspective that
symmetrically thinks of the place and status of organisms and
their agency in the world.