eTheses Repository - University of Birmingham

through time. This approach is an adaptation of Gibson’s (1979, ch.5) ‘affordances’ where
perception begins with the invariant optical ambient array that is directly ‘picked-up’ through
movement of a variant (an organism), not a representation in the mind as described in
conventional explanations. However, instead of picking up the invariants that are wholly
present, an organism is tuned to resonate to the invariants that are significant for it, as a result
of ‘hands-on’ training in everyday life, an “education of attention” (Gibson 1979, p.254).
Other elements may be there, but a person (or animal or other organism) moving through
what becomes their taskscape will not experience them all. Different aspects of landscape
will afford themselves at different times, depending on whether the organism is ‘fine-tuned’
to pick them up. A particular feature such as a river may have different physical
characteristics during the year, which will thus create, give or afford different significances to
those living with them, but other features that may be ‘static’ will also afford different
meanings at different times. Thus, a prominent geological feature may gain a particular
significance at one time in the year, through practices associated with community rituals, at
others it fades away, but acting as a latent reminder of the order of things that the yearly ritual
underlines.
Through studies of various ‘hunter-gatherer’ communities (e.g. Cree of northeastern Canada,
Mbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Forest, Pintupi of Western Australia), Ingold (e.g. 2000, ch.3) has
recognised a fundamentally different way of relating to the world. Humans are not separated
from the animal or physical world, i.e. culture as opposed to nature, but are part of a whole.
Animals, plants, and geology are not just imbued with, or have metaphors of humanity and
personhood inscribed upon them by humans; they are-in-the-world alongside and with
humans. This is best understood through a dwelling perspective, which taskscape envelops
(Ingold 2000, p.57). In this perspective, landscape and environment are negotiated by an
organism’s practices within it and exist through our engagement and relationship with it.
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