kinesophics.ca

Ingold is an anthropologist serious about taking "the material" seriously. He was thinking about feet and walking for a spell; his article 'Culture on the ground: the world perceived through the feet' (Journal of Material Culture, 9(3) (2004) : 315-340) strongly relates to themes we explore in Feldenkrais, supporting some things we commonly say in teaching ATMs and challenging others. The way shoes and paved ground make our feet and legs "dumb" is explored historically, anthropologically, and archaeologically. In Feldenkrais we're often in very practical ways reminding the nervous system that hands can function for support and feet for manipulation, and playing with the levels of cortical control involved in each function.

But Ingold connects this "division of labour" to the privileging of the "stride" (vs. lifting the knees) as the "civilized" form of walking, and we do no small amount of privileging the stride in Feldenkrais, it seems to me.

Is it a question of who's "right"? Parts of the article are useful reading for us in challenging the idea of the "natural" in human movement. We're always material bodies; always moving in cultural contexts. Culture is part of nature. What's more or less natural about each form of walking? When does it make sense to use your knees, when to stride? I'll go out jogging, head down the newly paved Terence Bay Road and then out onto Shipley Head barrens, newly disturbed with the winds and waves of post-tropical storm Noel, and get back to you on that.

I can't find a public copy of the article to link to, unfortunately.

I was surprised that people still write, and journals still publish, articles about "man" in 2004.