Ways of Walking: Ethnography and Practice on Foot

by Vergunst,Jo Lee; Ingold,Tim

• ISBN13: 9780754673743
• ISBN10: 075467374X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-07-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

For much of the twentieth century, French intellectual life was dominated by theoreticians and historians of mentalité. Traditionally, the study of the mind and of its limits and capabilities was the domain of philosophy, however in the first decades of the twentieth century practitioners of the emergent human and social sciences were increasingly competing with philosophers in this field: ethnologists, sociologists, psychologists and historians of science were all claiming to study 'how people think'. Scholars, including Gaston Bachelard, Georges Canguilhem, Léon Brunschvicg, Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien Febvre, Abel Rey, Alexandre Koyré and Hélène Metzger were all investigating the mind historically and participating in shared research projects. Yet, as they have since been appropriated by the different disciplines, literature on their findings has so far failed to recognise the connections between their research and their importance in intellectual history. In this exemplary book, Cristina Chimisso reconstructs the world of these intellectuals and the key debates in the philosophy of mind, particularly between those who studied specific mentalities by employing prevalently historical and philological methods, and those who thought it possible to write a history of the mind, outlining the evolution of ways of thinking that had produced the modern mentality. Dr Chimisso situates the key French scholars in their historical context and shows how their ideas and agendas were indissolubly linked with their social and institutional positions, such as their political and religious allegiances, their status in academia, and their familial situation. The author employs a vast range of original research, using philosophical and scientific texts as well as archive documents, correspondence and seminar minutes from the period covered, to recreate the milieu in which these relatively neglected scholars made advances in the history of philosophy and science, and produced ideas that would greatly influence later intellectuals such as Foucault, Derrida and Bourdieu. This book will appeal to historians of science and philosophy, particularly Continental philosophy, and those with interest in the history of ideas and the historiography of the disciplines of the social sciences. Contents: Introduction; History of philosophy in the first decades of the 20th century: the spaces and the students; History of philosophy in the first decades of the 20th century: theory and objectives; The meaning and uses of history: challenges to the history of philosophy; Approaches to the history of the mind: history of science between philosophy and history; Approaches to the history of the mind: history of science and history of thought; From the laboratory to the tribunal: historical epistemology; Conclusion; List of references; Index. About the Author: Dr Cristina Chimisso is a senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at The Open University, UK.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction

Before a step too far: walking with Batek hunter-gatherers in the forests of Pahang, Malaysia

Walking stories: leaving footprints

The dilemmas of walking: a comparative view

Feet following hooves

Performing on the landscape versus doing landscape: perambulatory practice, sight and the sense of belonging

Listen to the sound of time: walking with saints in an Andalusian village

Taking a trip and taking care in everyday life

Walking through ruins

Walking out of the classroom: learning on the streets of Aberdeen

Enchantment engineering and pedestrian empowerment: the Geneva case

'Taking a line for a walk': walking as an aesthetic practice

A collectable topography: walking, remembering and recording mountains

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.