Lines: A Brief History
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Product Description
Product Description
This is the first book to explore the production and significance of lines. As walking, talking, gesticulating creatures, human beings generate lines wherever they go: here, Tim Ingold lays the foundations for an anthropological archaeology of the line. He investigates:
- speech and song in the cultures of Papua New Guinea, the Navaho and Meso America
- paths, trails and maps
- drawing, writing and calligraphy
- the modern and postmodern world.
Written by a leading expert in the field and including over seventy illustrations, this text offers a radically different approach to anthropological and archaeological studies, taking us on a journey which will change the way we look at the world and how we move within it.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Ingold's book is a curious hybrid. It's not as informal as its introduction suggests, yet its no academic treatise, there's no tightly argued point here (which, as Ingold notes at the end, may in fact BE the point), instead, it is an exploration.
The chapters overlap only slightly and range wildly through various academic disciplines, with sometimes only very tenuous connections, yet each one is an incredible journey through ideas and concepts never before considered. Some are stronger than others, but the vague overarching concept never ceases to be compelling. And the final chapter, 'How the line became straight' is, while not a conclusion, an appropriate and wonderful culmination of the exploration.
It will definitely make you look differently, at something, for me it's traveling, and story telling, others may be inspired by other aspects, but I cannot imagine anyone who wouldn't be changed in some way by the journey of this book. And I can't imagine Ingold would have wanted anything more.
The chapters overlap only slightly and range wildly through various academic disciplines, with sometimes only very tenuous connections, yet each one is an incredible journey through ideas and concepts never before considered. Some are stronger than others, but the vague overarching concept never ceases to be compelling. And the final chapter, 'How the line became straight' is, while not a conclusion, an appropriate and wonderful culmination of the exploration.
It will definitely make you look differently, at something, for me it's traveling, and story telling, others may be inspired by other aspects, but I cannot imagine anyone who wouldn't be changed in some way by the journey of this book. And I can't imagine Ingold would have wanted anything more.
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In `Lines' Tim Ingold retraces the contours of a momentous techno-cultural evolution by investigating the status and role of an element that is so pervasive in our lifeworld that it becomes invisible: lines and surfaces. This evolution can be described as a movement from a topian, place-making `line of wayfaring' to the utopian, straight line of modernity to the dystopian, fragmented line of postmodernity (quoting K. Olwig). From this central premise, Ingold spins an argument that goes in different directions, connecting practices as diverse as writing, reading, singing, drawing, weaving, building, dwelling, mapping and travelling. His anthropological lens draws in examples from cultures and ethnicities around the world. Ingold observes, hypotheses, connects. Although it is clear that the author deplores our dwindling capacity for establishing life-giving connections with places that give us sustenance - in favour of a more opportunistic, functional way of being in the world - he is careful not too take a too strong position. The purpose of the argument is not make a point, but to establish a contingent, evolving meshwork of ideas. Ingold: "Lines are open-ended, and it is this open-endedness - of lives, relationships, histories, and processes of thought - that I wanted to celebrate." Even so, Ingold's way of building an argument is careful, sober and scholarly. A more spiritual side to the discussion shines through in his accessible and humane style of writing. In the themes and concepts surveyed, particularly also in the pivotal role assigned to technology (the printing press, the typewriter, the computer), Ingold's `Lines' connects to the (arguably more polemic) work of media theorist Vilem Flusser. There are also obvious connections to the work of Deleuze and De Landa. This is a book that by its very nature could connect to a wide range of interdisciplinary research efforts. It is also recommended to a more casual reader in search of unusual and inspiring ideas.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
What kind of connections!
21 Sep 2008
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
A refreshingly different way to view the history and the tapestry of the world especially some transitional features to modernity. Copious lines of argument carry a bold thesis that is wonderfully and diversely illustrated. The contrast is on the change in the quality of lines and how the wayfarer's threading through the world is being replaced by transport across it, how storytelling is being replaced by assemblies of plot elements, how life as lived pathways is being superseded by jumping between points on cognitive maps. Evolution too is brought under the lines-viewpoint in a contrast between life's many continuities and the discontinuity of Darwinian descent lines connecting isolated gene sets. The point of inquiry begins on how song and language became separated which passes through a history of writing's traces and music's scoring. Tim Ingold's intellectual pluck keeps getting better. His subtle teasing apart of our lines enriches the current fascination with networks. Reads easily with all the rich, above-praised illustrations and with many wide-ranging examples that only a few times becomes mired in a few too many cross-cultural examples. But then his challenge comes to the back of my mind to pay attention to the voyager when temptation is to too quickly connect the dots. Bravo. And thank you.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Exciting meshwork of ideas
6 Aug 2010
Format:Paperback
In `Lines' Tim Ingold retraces the contours of a momentous techno-cultural evolution by investigating the status and role of an element that is so pervasive in our lifeworld that it becomes invisible: lines and surfaces. This evolution can be described as a movement from a topian, circuitous `line of wayfaring' to the utopian, straight line of modernity to the dystopian, fragmented line of postmodernity (quoting K. Olwig). From this central premise, Ingold spins an argument that goes in different directions, connecting practices as diverse as writing, reading, singing, drawing, weaving, building, dwelling, mapping and travelling. His anthropological lens draws in examples from cultures and ethnicities around the world. Ingold observes, hypotheses, connects. Although it is clear that the author deplores our dwindling capacity for establishing life-giving connections with places that give us sustenance - in favour of a more opportunistic, functional way of being in the world - he is careful not too take a too strong position. The purpose of the argument is not make a point, but to establish a contingent, evolving meshwork of ideas. Ingold: "Lines are open-ended, and it is this open-endedness - of lives, relationships, histories, and processes of thought - that I wanted to celebrate." Even so, Ingold's way of building an argument is careful, sober and scholarly. A more spiritual side to the discussion shines through in his accessible and humane style of writing. In the themes and concepts surveyed, particularly also in the pivotal role assigned to technology (the printing press, the typewriter, the computer), Ingold's `Lines' connects to the (arguably more polemic) work of media theorist Vilem Flusser. There are also obvious connections to the work of Deleuze and De Landa. This is a book that by its very nature could connect to a wide range of interdisciplinary research efforts. It is also recommended to a more casual reader in search of unusual and inspiring ideas.
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