Introduction: Anthropology and/ as education

The idea of objectified knowledge fundamentally contradicts the concerns of anthropology. In various contexts, Tim Ingold has argued that anthropology must abandon the standpoint of a pure and detached observer and must, instead, seek to participate in people’s lives. Anthropological or ethnographic research has, of course, made much of the notion of ‘participant observation’. Ingold’s anthropological understanding of participatory learning and knowledge is also reflected in his characterization of the scientist. Ingold understands participatory science as a way of continuing life. This idea of science strives not for a timeless understanding but to correspond with lived experience. The differences between peoples reflect the different experiences they have had and continue to have with ever-varying environments. These experiences do not divide but invite re-enactment and co-enactment. Ingold therefore speaks of people as undergoing differentiation within a common world, instead of existing irreconcilably side by side.