Biosocial Becomings: Integrating Social and Biological Anthropology

Tim Ingold · Gisli Palsson

jun 2013 · Cambridge University Press

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All human life unfolds within a matrix of relations, which are at once social and biological. Yet the study of humanity has long been divided between often incompatible 'social' and 'biological' approaches. Reaching beyond the dualisms of nature and society and of biology and culture, this volume proposes a unique and integrated view of anthropology and the life sciences. Featuring contributions from leading anthropologists, it explores human life as a process of 'becoming' rather than 'being', and demonstrates that humanity is neither given in the nature of our species nor acquired through culture but forged in the process of life itself. Combining wide-ranging theoretical argument with in-depth discussion of material from recent or ongoing field research, the chapters demonstrate how contemporary anthropology can move forward in tandem with groundbreaking discoveries in the biological sciences.

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Tim Ingold is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. His research is wide-ranging and interdisciplinary, spanning environment, technology and social organisation in the circumpolar North, evolutionary theory, human-animal relations, language and tool use, environmental perception and skilled practice. He has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the 2004 Anders Retzius Gold Medal of the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography.

Gisli Palsson is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Iceland, Reykjavik. He has conducted fieldwork in Iceland, the Republic of Cape Verde and the Canadian Arctic, and has written on a variety of issues including biomedicine, genomics, genetic history, human-animal relations, fishing, arctic exploration, environmental discourse and the history of slavery.