This was the homepage for Cultural Ecology 2020. There were four required books:
- Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill, 2000.
- Hugh Brody, Maps and Dreams: Indians and the British Columbia Frontier, 1988.
- Carolyn Finney, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors, 2014.
- Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, 2017 (Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson, Elaine Gan, and Nils Bubandt, Editors).
This course shared two books with the previous Cultural Ecology 2017. As in the 2017 version, Tim Ingold’s Perception of the Environment formed the backbone and structure for the readings. In this 2020 version, I attempted to incorporate more material about race, as well as more material about how to live in these times. In 2020, this course became a mid-stream modified version adapted for the coronavirus outbreak.
For 2022, I used Ingold and Brody for a History of Anthropological Thought course:
Part 1. Nature and Culture: Who are we?
1. Life
- Ingold (part 1), “Culture, nature, environment” (13-20)
2. Revelation
- Ingold (part 2), “Culture, nature, environment” (20-26)
- Brody, 1-33
3. Rational
- Ingold, “The optimal forager and economic man” (27-39)
- Brody, 34-102
4. Wild
- Ingold, “Hunting and gathering as ways of perceiving the environment” (40-60)
- Brody, 103-135
5. Involvement
- Ingold, “From trust to domination” (61-76)
- Brody, 136-213
6. Domestic
- Ingold, “Making things, growing plants, raising animals, and bringing up children” (77-88)
- Brody, 214-255
7. Relational
- Ingold, “Ancestry, generation, substance, memory, land” (132-151)
- Brody, 256-283
- Film: Rabbit-Proof Fence
Part 2: Living in the World: What are we doing? (Race & Place)
8. Culture
- Ingold, “Culture, perception and cognition” (157-171)
- Finney, 1-31
9. Outdoors
- Ingold, “Building, dwelling, living” (172-188)
- Finney, 32-50
10. Ground
- Ingold, “The temporality of the landscape” (189-208)
- Finney, 51-91
11. Green
- Ingold, “Globes and spheres: the topology of environmentalism” (209-218)
- Finney, 92-115
12. Journey
- Ingold, “To journey along a way of life” (219-242)
- Finney, 116-138
Part 3: Damnation: What happened? (Ghosts)
13. Technology
- Ingold, “Tools, minds and machines” (294-311)
- Ghosts, G1-G29
14. Disasters
- Ingold, “Society, nature and the concept of technology” (312-322)
- Ghosts, G31-G63
15. Time
- Ingold, “Work, time and industry” (323-338)
- Ghosts, G65-G102
16. Shell
- Ingold, “On weaving a basket” (339-348)
- Bubandt, “Haunted Geologies” (G121-141)
17. Nests
- Ingold, “Of string bags and birds’ nests” (349-361)
- Ghosts, G143-G174
Part 4: Salvation? Where are we going? (Monsters)
18. Circumpolar
- Ingold, “A circumpolar night’s dream” (89-110)
- Monsters, M1-M21
19. Art
- Ingold, “Totemism, animism and the depiction of animals” (111-131)
- Monsters, M71-M106
20. Complexity
- Ingold, “The dynamics of technical change” (362-372)
- Monsters, M107-M139
21. Biology
- Ingold, “People like us” (373-391)
- Monsters, M23-M70
22. Writing
- Ingold, “Speech, writing and the modern origins of ‘language origins’” (392-405)
- Monsters, M141-M167
23. Dispatches
- Ingold, “The poetics of tool-use” (406-419)
- Monsters, M169-M174