IMPACT OF INGOLD’S REFLECTIONS ON ANTHROPOLOGICAL METHODOLOGY 1

A REFLECTION ON WHEN ANT MEETS SPIDER: SOCIAL THEORY OF ARTHROPODS

Ma. Carlota Pasion

University of Santo Tomas

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Process Over Product

The essay When Ant Meets Spider by Tim Ingold from his book Being Alive considers

how the organization of society can be seen from two different perspectives. And depending on

which perspective, ones view on life might depend. On the one hand, the Ant theory (Actor

Network Theory) of the individual ant acting (ant-act) on its own within a colony and on the

other, the Spider theory (Skilled Practice Involves Developmentally Embodied Responsiveness)

of the individual acting through a gamut of inter-related connections within its web. The chart

below illustrates the differences of perspectives:

Concept Spider Ant

Action Result of various convergence of
factors/environment
Individual Creates his own world by being
learned and developed
Environment Environment influences action
(although sometimes there are
uncontrollable forces)
Product of action Meshwork that benefits the self
Self I am master of my actions
World view Everything is connected to
meshwork that comes from self and
goes beyond self
One acts according to endowments
Unattached
Environment is created through
actions
Network that is created for one to
function
I have been made such
Each colony functions and survives
on its own

Tim Ingold veered away from the standard structure of looking at beings as a

composition of matter and form (hylomorphic) where distinction is made between living and

non-living beings. Instead, he introduced a more dynamic understanding of being by looking at

the “becoming/movement” of things that make them into beings. He is concerned about the

“process of movement” not the end product of movement. Referring to it as an “embodied

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process of enskillment” (Ingold, 2000), like learning how to do things such as fishing, cooking,

etc. which involve a meshwork of relationships between living and non-living. For him “life is

lived along lines, or paths, or ‘wayfaring,’ and that ‘to move, to know, and to describe are not

separate operations that follow one another in series, but rather parallel facets of the same

process — that of life itself’ ” (ibid., 2017). By following this line of thought, we get to

understand that this dynamic movement in beings brings about change which will necessarily

reflect on the state of things. According to the Spider theory, this change does not happen

passively but in an active manner. Freedom comes into play. In Ingold’s words, social life is not

something the person does but what the person undergoes: a process in which human beings both

grow and are grown, undergoing histories of development and maturation – from birth through

infancy and childhood into adulthood and old age – within fields of relationships established

through the presence and activities of others (Ivakhiv A., 2011).

Human Work as a Lens for Anthropology

Applying this in anthropology, the foregoing notions may also lead us to the concept of

man-acts of Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) who in his book the Acting Person offers fresh insights

on man’s experience of himself in his own actions. One can know man by observing his actions,

however, it is when he himself acts (man-acts) does he reveal himself. Among the range that

encompasses the concept man-acts, human work comes into focus. In work, man has a deliberate

intention to produce an effect and to sustain that effect; thereby he is made responsible for his

actions. Man is the subject of work and the object of work is that remote, transitory and external

effect produced by him. Yet man can also become the object of his experience. Whenever he

acts, he produces an effect in himself, which make somebody of him (haecceity: that which

makes a thing what it is). Ingold’s Spider is opposed to the concept of hybrid which tends to
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water down her “spider-ness” (haecceity) since she considers herself wholly spider. [The] Spider

model recognizes the essence of agency in a conscious and embodied process deeply interwoven

with the environment and the material world as “the close coupling of bodily movement and

perception” (Ingold, 2011, p. 94). Basing it on Ingold’s Spider theory, anthropology can focus its

aim of “studying man” on how he works in order to get a deeper glimpse of him, making human

work a cogent starting point of anthropology.

Anthropology and Education

Another area that Ingold has recently dealt with is the subject of educational freedom and

creativity. He was asked what anthropology can deliver in terms of results vis-à-vis

ethnography’s descriptive monographs. Basing his thoughts on several years of teaching the ‘4

As’ course of Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture, he tried to make anthropology

into an art of inquiry, which is both experimental and speculative.

And my answer was that such anthropology would be worthless if the

anthropologist, transformed by his or her field experience, did not also teach, thus

transforming others in their turn. Teaching is not an add-on to anthropological practice, I

argued, but an integral part of it. What anthropology produces, then, is a new generation.

It must therefore be a practice of education, not of ethnography; one in which research

and teaching are absolutely inseparable. (ibid., 15 April 2018)

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References

Ingold, T. (2000). The perception of the environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill.
London, England: Routledge.

———. (2011) Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge, and description. Abingdon:
Routledge.

______. (2011) The Liveliness of the Living

______. (2015). The life of lines. Abingdon, UK: Routledge

Campbell, C. (2018 April 15) Interview with Tim Ingold

Ivakhiv A. (14 June 2011). Tim Ingold & the liveliness of the living. Retrieved from
https://blog.uvm.edu/aivakhiv/2011/06/14/tim-ingold-the-liveliness-of-the-living/

Wojtyla, K. (1979). The Acting Person (A. Potocki, Trans.) Analecta Husserliana: (Original
work published 1969)