Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, Fellow of the British Academy and the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
“Anthropology, in my definition, is philosophy with the people in.”
Following 25 years at the University of Manchester, where I was appointed Max Gluckman Professor of Social Anthropology in 1995, I moved in 1999 to Aberdeen, where I established the UK’s newest Department of Anthropology, as well as directing the University’s strategic research theme on ‘The North’ (2011-17). I have carried out ethnographic fieldwork among Saami and Finnish people in Lapland, and have written on comparative questions of environment, technology and social organisation in the circumpolar North, as well as on the role of animals in human society, on issues in human ecology, and on evolutionary theory in anthropology, biology and history. From there, I went on to explore the links between environmental perception and skilled practice, with a view to replacing traditional models of genetic and cultural transmission with a relational approach focusing on the growth of embodied skills of perception and action within social and environmental contexts of development. In my more recent research, I have pursued three lines of inquiry that emerged from my earlier work, concerning the dynamics of pedestrian movement, the creativity of practice, and the linearity of writing. These all came together in a project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (2005-08), entitled ‘Explorations in the comparative anthropology of the line’. I have subsequently taught and written on a series of issues on the interface between anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. From 2013 to 2018 I directed the project ‘Knowing From the Inside: Anthropology, Art, Architecture and Design’ (2013-18), with funding from the European Research Council. I retired from the University in 2018, but continue to research and write as an independent scholar.
Publications
Books
2022 Imagining for real: essays on creation, attention and correspondence. Abingdon: Routledge, xix, 417 pp.
2021 Machiavel chez les babouins: pour une anthropologie au-delà de l’humain (a collection of7 papers, previously published in English, translated by C. Degoutin and L.Perez, and introduced by L. Balice), Asinamali, 287 pp.
2020 Correspondences. Cambridge: Polity, viii, 230 pp.
2018 Splatać otwarty świat: architektura, antropologia, design (a collection of 5 papers, previously published in English, translated and introduced by E. Klekot), Krakow: Instytut Architektury, 185 pp.
2018 Anthropology: why it matters, Cambridge: Polity, 145 pp. Translations into Spanish (Alianza Editorial 2020), Portuguese (Editora Vozes 2019), German (Peter Hammer Verlag, 2019), Chinese (Peking University Press, 2020), Italian (Meltemi, 2020).
2018 Anthropology and/as Education. Abingdon: Routledge, xi, 94 pp. Translations into French (L’anthropologie comme education, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2018), Italian (La Linea 2019), Portuguese (Editora Vozes 2020).
2015 The Life of Lines. Abingdon: Routledge, xi, 172pp. Translation into Spanish (Ediciones Universidad Alberto Hurtado 2018), Japanese (Film Art 2018), Italian (Treccani 2020).
2014 (with P. Descola) Être au monde : quelle expérience commune? (Débat présenté par M. Lussault), Lyon : Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 75 pp.
2013 Marcher avec les dragons, trans. P. Madelin (a collection of 14 papers, previously published in English). Brussels : Zones Sensibles, 379 pp.
2013 Making: anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. Abingdon: Routledge, xii,163pp. Translations into French (Dehors 2017), Italian (Rafaella Cortina Editore 2019), Japanese (Sayusha 2017).
2012 Ambientes para la vida: conversaciones sobre humanided, conocimiento y antropología (a series of papers and conversations edited and translated by J. Taks). Montevideo: Ediciones Trilcea and UDELAR.
2011 Being alive: essays on movement, knowledge and description. Abingdon: Routledge, xviii, 270pp. (new edition 2022). Translation into Portuguese (Editora Vozes 2015).
2007 Lines: a brief history. London: Routledge, xii, 186 pp. (reissued in Routledge Classics series, with a new Preface, 2016). Translations into French (Une brève histoire des lignes, Zones Sensibles 2011), Spanish (Gedisa 2015), Japanese (Sayusha 2014).
2001 Ecologia della cultura, trans. C. Grasseni and F. Ronzon (a collection of 6 papers, previously published in English). Rome: Meltemi, 237 pp.
2000 The perception of the environment: essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. London: Routledge, xiv, 465 pp. (new editions 2011, 2022).
1986 The appropriation of nature: essays on human ecology and social relations, Manchester: Manchester University Press, ix, 287 pp. (paperback reprint 1989).
1986 Evolution and social life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, xv, 431 pp. (reissued in the series ‘Classic Texts in Anthropology’, and with a new Preface, by Routledge, 2016, xxiv, 355pp.). Translations into Spanish (Editorial Grijalbo 1991) and Portuguese (Editora Vozes 2019).
1980 Hunters, pastoralists and ranchers: reindeer economies and their transformations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, xv, 326 pp, Paperback reprint 1988.
1976 The Skolt Lapps Today, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, xi, 276pp.
Edited and
co-edited books
2022 Knowing From the Inside: Cross-Disciplinary Experiments with Matters of Pedagogy. London: Bloomsbury, xiv, 267 pp.
2014 (with E. Hallam) Making and growing: anthropological studies of organisms and artefacts. Farnham: Ashgate, xiv, 244 pp. (reissued by Routledge 2016)
2013 (with G. Palsson) Biosocial becomings: integrating social and biological anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, viii, 281pp.
2012 (with M. Janowski) Imagining landscapes: past, present and future. Farnham: Ashgate, xiii, 169pp. (reissued by Routledge 2016)
2011 Redrawing anthropology: materials, movements, lines. Farnham: Ashgate, xvi, 199 pp. (reissued by Routledge 2016)
2008 (with J. Lee Vergunst) Ways of walking: ethnography and practice on foot. Aldershot: Ashgate, xi, 200pp. (reissued by Routledge 2016)
2007 (with E. Hallam) Creativity and cultural improvisation. Oxford: Berg, xx, 327 pp. (reissued by Routledge 2008).
1996 Key debates in anthropology, 1988-1993. London: Routledge, xiii, 302 pp.
1994 Companion Encyclopaedia of Anthropology: Humanity, Culture and Social Life, London: Routledge, xxxiv, 1127 pp. (reprinted 1995, paperback 1997)
1993 (with K. R. Gibson) Tools, language and cognition in human evolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, xii, 483 pp. Paperback reprint, 1994.
1991 Evolutionary models in the social sciences (special issue of Cultural Dynamics, Vol.4 no.3). Leiden: E J Brill.
1988 (with D. Riches and J. Woodburn) Hunters and gatherers, Vol I: History, evolution and social change, and Vol II: Property, power and ideology, Berg Publishers and St Martin's Press, x, 329 pp. and x, 323 pp.
1988 The social implications of agrarian change in northern and eastern Finland, Helsinki: Anthropological Society of Finland, 156 pp.
1988 What is an animal? London: Unwin Hyman, xviii, 189 pp. Paperback reprint with new preface, London: Routledge, 1994.
A selection of recent journal articles
2021 In praise of amateurs. Ethnos 86: 153-172.
2021 (with C. Simonetti) Introducing solid fluids. Theory, Culture and Society (special issue: Solid Fluids: New Approaches to Materials and Meaning).
2020 On building a university for the common good. Philosophy and Theory in Higher Education 2: 45-68.
2019 ‘Art and anthropology for a sustainable world’. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
2018 From science to art and back again: the pendulum of an anthropologist. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 43: 213-227.
2017 On human correspondence. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 23(1): 9–27.
2014 The creativity of undergoing. Pragmatics & Cognition 22(1): 124-139.
2014 That’s enough about ethnography! Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4 (1): 383–395.
2012 Toward an ecology of materials. Annual Review of Anthropology 41: 427-42.
“At the very same moment when the whole world is at our fingertips, it also seems completely out of our hands.”
— Making (2013), page 122