Ingold’s Animism and European Science

Abstract Anthropologist Tim Ingold promotes Indigenous animism as a salve for perceived failures in modern science; failures he claims also hobbled his own early work. In fact, both Ingold’s early and later work rely on modern scientific ideas and images. His turn to animism marks not an exit from the history of European science, but an entrance into, and imaginative elaboration of, distinctly Neoplatonic themes within that history. This turn marks, too, a clear but unacknowledged departure from systematic social analysis. By re-embracing social analysis, Ingold would overcome the obscurity that now hobbles his later work.