{"id":509,"date":"2025-10-17T04:34:51","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T11:34:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/?p=509"},"modified":"2025-11-22T03:01:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T10:01:19","slug":"dwelling-roots-of-life-in-ingolds-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/archives\/509","title":{"rendered":"Dwelling: Roots of Life in Ingold’s Making"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Growing <\/em>Downward<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A plant never rushes. It waits for the right moment \u2014 sunlight shifting through the air, a brief touch of rain \u2014 and then begins, quietly, to grow. Its roots grow downward, not to dominate the soil, but to become part of it. Above the ground, its leaves unfold to meet the wind, trembling but certain, aware that to stand upright one must first hold fast below. Observing a plant\u2019s growth made us question what it really means to exist. Perhaps living isn\u2019t about striving to move forward or reach higher, but learning how to maintain\u2014with the ground, with others, and with the conditions that make life possible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A plant doesn\u2019t stand apart from the world\u2014it lives through it, shaped by what it touches and what touches it. Heidegger might call this \u201cdwelling\u201d: living in care and attention to what sustained us, being between earth and sky rather than above them. Ingold builds on this idea\u2014he turns Heidegger\u2019s notion of dwelling into something lived and practiced. In Making,<\/em> Ingold writes about how knowing and creating are not detached acts of control but ongoing relationships with materials. We learn and make from the space between the earth and sky, where we actually live. Instead of being distant observers, we are part of the world\u2019s unfolding. As he describes, when the traveller\u2019s body merges with the \u201cshimmering luminosity of the sky\u201d and the \u201cembrace of the damp earth,\u201d earth and sky are no longer divided by the horizon but unified at the very center of being (Ingold 137). To \u201cgrow downward\u201d is to understand this form of relationship\u2014to see that we exist not by hovering above, but by rooting ourselves within.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sorge<\/em><\/strong>: Turning Towards the World<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher whose work reshaped how we think about being itself. Raised in a Catholic family in Messkrich, he began studying theology before turning to philosophy under the influence of Edmund Husserl\u2019s phenomenology (Wrathall). Yet Heidegger soon moved beyond Husserl\u2019s focus on consciousness. His work \u201cBeing and Time\u201d marked this shift: rather than asking what beings are<\/em>, Heidegger asked what it means to be<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the center of Heidegger\u2019s \u201cBeing and Time\u201d lies the idea of the term \u201cDasein\u201d, which is his preliminary explanation of human existence as constituted by our relationships to the practical and social contexts that give meaning to our actions (Wrathall). Yet this is never purely individual. Most of the time, we exist as part of the one, absorbed in everyday routines and social habits that pull us away from authentic awareness of our existence. Heidegger calls this withdrawal not an absence, but a reminder that being is never fully available; it always withholds itself, keeping us in a state of searching and care. From this tension comes sorge<\/em>, or care\u2014a way of being that turns us toward the world and others, responding to what continually reveals itself and then slips away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mound<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ingold extensively utilizes the mound as a metaphor for his concept of the continuation of life. He resists the idea that life, like edifices, is built from the ground up. Instead, like the fluid accumulation of the mound, matter does not have a clear boundary of beginning and end\u2014its very process of becoming is its reason for becoming. And human life, even though one may argue, ends at the decay of flesh, does not truly end as it transforms into layering, sedimentation, and decay (Ingold 77). Humans, as a \u201cthing\u201d and not an \u201cobject\u201d, adhere to this principle. Ingold directly cites Heidgger to distinguish between \u201cthings\u201d and \u201cobjects\u201d, thus as to why \u201cthings\u201d require unique interventions: \u201cThe object, he argued, is complete in itself, define by its confrontational \u2018over-againstness\u2019 -face to face or surface to surface- in relation to the setting in which it is placed\u201d (85). Participation is key to the ongoing process of \u201cthings\u201d on earth\u2019s surface. Similar to the nature of the mound, Ingold\u2019s experiment with the village houses demonstrated how dwelling required involvement and movement. Heidegger\u2019s presumption enhances Ingold\u2019s idea of dwelling as performance, \u201cThe spaces of dwelling are not already given, in the layout of the building, but are created in movement\u201d (85). The moment of movement is the moment of gathering, and is the act of joining the mound rather than terminating the worlding of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Thing <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In \u201cThe Thing\u201d, Heidegger describes a \u201cthing\u201d not as a functional object but an instrument of gathering the fourfolds\u2014a place where earth, sky, divinities, and mortals come into relation. A \u201cthing\u201d, for him, is not merely a tool or container. Instead it holds the world together through this act of gathering. Ingold picks on the earth and mortal aspects of this idea by inviting instances of lived experience. In his critique of the monument versus the the mound, Ingold claims that, \u201cA cairn, for example, is just a pile of stones that grows as every traveller, passing by a particular place, adds a stone picked up along the way as a memento of the trip\u201d (83). Essentially, the cairn embodies the earth (stones) and the mortal (humans adding stones), justifying Ingold\u2019s belief that a \u201cthing\u201d exists beyond to be looked at. It exists by being in the moment of contact between movement and matter. It emerges in the very act of relation, in the meeting of weight, texture, and gesture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heidegger\u2019s concept of the \u201cthing\u201d is vital because it shapes our understanding of Ingold\u2019s theory of correspondence<\/em>. Ingold doesn\u2019t merely cite Heidegger\u2013he reworks Heidegger\u2019s thinking of the \u201cthing\u201d to a more sensory and material appraoch. He frames gathering into a process of mutual formation in which he coined as correspondence. As Ingold writes, \u201cTo touch it, or to observe it, is to bring the movements of our own being into close and affective correspondence with those of its constituent materials\u201d (85). In this reimagining, correspondence is all established on the basis of the material and our movement, forming a dynamic flow of transduction\u2013a continual exchange of forces that mutually transforms the maker and the material. In this sense, Ingold preserves Heidegger\u2019s insight that being is relational but makes it tangible, where life itself is sustained through the harmony of making and response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Thought to Touch<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heidegger\u2019s concept of dwelling is largely metaphysical, unlike the lived and sensory approach that Ingold pursued. Although Ingold inherits from Heidegger the belief that humans do not stand apart from the world but dwell within it (Heidegger 1971; Ingold 3), the poetics of the fourfolds cannot be fully defined but can only be evoked. Hence, to situate this Ingold turns dwelling into a lived process. For this reason, he doesn\u2019t always cite Heidegger directly, and that absence is intentional. Ingold had already acknowledged Heidegger explicitly in earlier chapters, such as \u201cThe Materials of Life,\u201d where he draws on The Thing<\/em> to describe how touching and observing bring our being into correspondence with materials (21). Transitioning to the chapter \u201cRound Mound and Earth Sky”, Heidegger\u2019s influence has already been absorbed into the fabric of Ingold\u2019s prose, as seen in his description of the earth as \u201cnot the solid and pre-existing substrate that the edifice builder takes it to be\u201d but \u201crather the source of all life and growth\u201d (77). That said, Ingold departs from Heidegger\u2019s abstract meditation to ground dwelling in the immediacy of sensory experience. In the case where \u201cbuildings are part of the world, and the world will not stop still but ceaselessly unfolds along its innumerable paths of growth, decay and regeneration, regardless of the most concerted of human attempts to nail it down, or to cast it in fixed and final forms\u201d (48), Heidegger would reflect the human impulse as an interruption of gathering, but Ingold would rather stress the ceaseless unfolding as the flow of material and life that is necessary of becoming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it\u201d (Genesis 2:15) expresses a perennial truth about human life that it is rooted in care, not command. Modernity, however, teaches us that to live is to rise\u2014to build higher, reach farther, and transcend. Cities embody this logic in glass and steel, lifting us above the very earth that sustains us. Ingold offers a resolute reversal: to live is to grow downward, to take root, to correspond. A plant\u2019s growth is not an escape from the soil but a deepening within it, an act of grounding rather than ascent. He translates Heidegger\u2019s metaphysics into lived experience: the sky is what allows things to breathe, and the earth is what lets them grow. To \u201cgrow downward,\u201d then, is not to retreat but to recognize our place within the flow of life\u2014to live with the world, not above it. Anthropology, in this sense, becomes the practice of rooting knowledge. To understand, then, is to return to the ground: not to possess it, but to dwell within it\u2014to let thought take root where life already grows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works Cited<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture<\/em>. Routledge, 2013. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wrathall, Mark. \u201cMartin Heidegger.\u201d Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy<\/em>, Stanford University, 31 Jan. 2025, plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/heidegger\/#:~:text=Martin%20Heidegger%20was%20born%20on,at%20the%20University%20of%20Freiburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Holy Bible: New International Version. Zondervan, 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cover art: \u201cAntonio Mora on Instagram: \u2018Plant Fashion\u2019 En 2025: Arte, Estatuas, Disenos de Unas.\u201d Pinterest<\/em>, 8 Aug. 2025, www.pinterest.com\/pin\/26247610323734509\/. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Gina Chang and Nicole Jiao<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Growing Downward A plant never rushes. It waits for the right moment \u2014 sunlight shifting through the air, a brief touch of rain \u2014 and then begins, quietly, to grow. Its roots grow downward, not to dominate the soil, but to become part of it. Above the ground, its leaves unfold to meet the wind, … Continue reading Dwelling: Roots of Life in Ingold’s Making<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103710,"featured_media":514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[88,71,87],"class_list":["post-509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-other","tag-ingold","tag-making","tag-source-traceback"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/103710"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=509"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":522,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509\/revisions\/522"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/mdia300\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}