One World Anthropology A masterclass beyond disciplinary boundaries with Tim Ingold

This masterclass will enable discussions with Tim Ingold about his ideas and contributions across several themes. It will be of interest to participants from a wide range of disciplines. Each session will consist of an initial overview paper by Tim Ingold, which is followed by participant contributions and discussions. Two additional sessions by the course organisers allow a critical engagement with the application of some of Tim Ingold’s ideas in anthropological, archaeological and philosophical case studies.
Participants must present a 15-minute paper that critically discusses one of the themes and/or questions of the masterclass. Engagement with current research questions and issues are particularly welcome as well as connections with current PhD projects.

Application
This masterclass is open to doctoral students from all disciplines (applications of master students will be considered in exceptional cases). Participants must present a 15-minute paper that critically engages with one of the themes of the masterclass. Engagement with current research questions and issues are particularly welcome as well as connections with current PhD projects.
Applicants should supply the following documents:
– Application form (available here: htpp://www.forum-scientiarum.uni-tuebingen.de)
– CV (2 pages max)
– 300-word expression of interest
– paper title and 300-word abstract (please indicate preferred session)

Applications should be sent until May 19th the latest to info@fsci.uni-tuebingen.de

There is no program fee. The Forum Scientiarum will assist participants in finding inexpensive accommodation. For more information please see our website (http://www.forum-scientiarum.uni-tuebingen.de).

Over the last decades, Tim Ingold has become one of the most influential, innovative and prolific writers in anthropology. His work has been transcending established academic and disciplinary boundaries, particularly between social and biological anthropology. Related to this theme is his critical long-term exploration of the relationships between human beings, organisms and their environment. Overall, Tim Ingold’s work is truly transdisciplinary and his thinking is impacting more and more areas of research and other intellectual and artistic fields in profound ways. He is both deeply engaged in debates about latest developments in anthropology, archaeology, education and social theory, but at the same time does not engage in a fashionable proliferation of theoretical concepts and terminologies.

The masterclass will be structured in six sessions:

1. Science, life and lines
Tim Ingold has developed a view of life that concentrates on dynamic movement, engagement, perception and exploration. In the context of the social sciences and humanities, Tim Ingold has for a long time argued against the division between a biological and a social domain, or, more specifically, social and biological anthropology. He regards this separation (which seems to have been gaining momentum recently) as detrimental to the understanding of human lifeways and their rich innovative potentials.

2. Anthropology, history and evolution
The critical considerations about a separation of biological and social anthropology have profound consequences for the understanding of the deep past of humanity and human evolution. Against this view, Ingold has proposed a relational understanding of developing and emerging organisms to break down the division between history and evolution.

3. Understanding dwelling, growing and making
Skill is different from knowledge because it relates to the bodily and phenomenological attunement to the environment. It involves the constant coordination of perception and action. On a larger scale, these considerations have been framed by Tim Ingold within a dwelling perspective that focusses on the temporal rhythms that create human buildings and landscapes.

4. Anthropology as/and Education: Learning and the University
Engagement with processes of learning are central to Tim Ingold’s view of an integrative anthropology that focusses on the dynamics of life processes. The acquisition of skilled practice is understood as a movement along a way of life. This process does not involve absorbing a corpus of rules and principles that were created by previous generations. Rather, learning is always an active practice.

5. The political ontology of art, archaeology and knowledge in Australia (Martin Porr)
The Aboriginal artistic and cultural traditions of Australia, their histories, philosophies and characteristics, have been a key subject of interest for European observers and scholars for a very long time. This session will provide the opportunity to engage with and discuss several case studies from Australia that draw on Tim Ingold’s work, a relational ontological orientation and the notion of political ontology in the context of archaeological and anthropological research.

6. Intercultural philosophy and phenomenology: Its place in the present world (Niels Weidtmann)
In the era of intercultural encounter the philosophical understanding of the human is challenged. It is the experiences which constitute the way humans act, think (philosophise) and form their own life-world; experiences even constitute the specific shape of human rationality. In an intercultural context this is the reason for the plurality of different cultural life-worlds and ways of being human. However, experience is not simply human-made but results from the creative and continuously changing interaction of human beings and world. This is the reason why the notion of experience may even challenge the dichotomy of nature/culture.