THE HUXLEY MEMORIAL LECTURE

will be given by

Professor Tim Ingold, Chair of Social Anthropology, University of Aberdeen

On Human Correspondence

Friday 7 November 2014 at 5.30pm, in the Stevenson Lecture Theatre, Clore Education Centre, the British Museum, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3DG.

I wish to propose a new theory of social life. Its premises are the following: (1) every living creature, if it is to make its way in the world, must put out a line; (2) each such line describes a path of growth and movement; (3) these ontogenetic movements are not so much intentional as attentional; (4) they are impelled by an imaginative longing that always overflows expectations; (5) lines of longing do not connect things up but run forever in between, and (6) each line is continually answerable to others. Lines that answer to one another co-respond. Social life, then, is lived in correspondence. I shall spell out the implications of a theory of correspondence for the way we approach classic themes of anthropological inquiry, including kinship and affinity, ecology and economy, ritual and religion, and politics and law. I shall show, too, how it can also help to take us beyond the divisions between human biology and culture, and between human evolution and history, that up to now have impeded our thinking. Finally, I will argue that it can change the ways we value and purpose anthropological work, and the responsibilities that attach to it. For in seeking ways to answer to the world, rather than to describe or represent it, anthropology too is a practice not of ethnography but of correspondence.   

The event is free, but places must be booked. Please book your place at https://ingold.eventbrite.co.uk

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