About the Book

Tim Ingold’s Lines has been widely acclaimed in its groundbreaking analysis of the anthropology of the line. In its successor, The Life of Lines, he explores the relationship between the ways along which living beings move and grow, and the fluxes of the medium through which this growth occurs, or in short, between lines and the weather. Ecology, Ingold argues, is the study not of relations between organisms and their environments but of the paths along which their growth and movement is conducted.

In four short chapters Ingold revolutionises our understanding of the lines of our being: ‘On the ground’, envisages the earth’s surface as the most active of surfaces; the site of those reactions on which all life depends. ‘Along the path’ explores the nature of paths, which only become paths by virtue of collective movement. ‘In the wind’ looks at the ways in which walking is an experience at once of the ground and of wind and weather. The last chapter, ‘Know as you go’ considers the implications of the previous chapters and reaches a startling but illuminating conclusion: our paths of movement in the weather-world lead to social knowledge.