ABSTRACT
In the Life of Lines Ingold develops a philosophical and ecological anthropology that is at once expansive, integrative, and inclusive. His poetic narrative interlaces bodies, minds, landscapes, topographies, and perceptions in a correspondence of lines. Like all living beings humans undergo a process of ontogenesis. They grow themselves and, since their growth is conditioned by the presence and actions of others, they grow one another. Materials that were food for living, growing human bodies such as bread, butter and honey also fed their work, and vice versa, the materials of craft spilled into medicinal and other prescriptions for bodies. This chapter explains that islanders themselves compare the metamorphosis of the tree into a canoe to that of the caterpillar into a butterfly. It also explains in recent anthropological literature, however, the concept of anthropomorphism has gained currency in another sense, under the rubric of 'perspectivism'.
