Making

Making involves the creation of knowledge, the building of environments and the transformation of lives. In this exciting book, Tim Ingold ties the four related disciplines of anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture together by considering them all as ways of making, dedicated to exploring the conditions and potentials of human life. In a radical departure from conventional studies that treat art and architecture as compendia of objects for anthropological or archaeological analysis, Ingold proposes a study not of but with art and architecture. His entirely new approach advocates a way of thinking through making in which sentient practitioners and active materials continually answer to, or ‘correspond’, with one another in the generation of form.

Making offers a series of profound reflections on what it means to create things, on materials and form, the meaning of design, landscape perception, animate life, personal knowledge and the work of the hand. It draws on examples and experiments ranging from prehistoric stone tool-making to the building of medieval cathedrals, from round mounds to monuments, from flying kites to winding string, from drawing to writing. The book will appeal to students and scholars with interests in social and cultural anthropology, archaeology, architecture, art and design, visual studies and material culture.