Anthropology is a generous, open-ended, comparative and yet critical inquiry into the conditions and possibilities of life in the one world we all inhabit. This book is premised on the claim that these principles – of generosity, open-endedness, comparison and criticality – are also cornerstones of the discipline of education. Thus it goes beyond an exploration of the interface between the disciplines of anthropology and education to argue for their more fundamental identity. This argument, however, calls for a reassessment on both sides. On the side of anthropology, we have to depart from the established view that it is about making studies of different peoples and their worlds, and recognise that it is about going to study with them: it is, in that sense, to undergo an education. On the side of education, it is necessary to overturn the traditional view of teaching and learning as the transmission of authorised knowledge from one generation to the next. We argue instead for a view of education as a ‘leading out’ (from the Latin, ex-ducere) of novices into the world that opens up paths of intellectual growth and discovery, without predetermined outcomes or fixed end-points. I conclude that by joining forces, and by recognising their common purpose, anthropology and education have the power to transform the world.

Tim Ingold is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, UK. His books for Routledge include Lines: A Brief History (2007), Evolution and Social Life (reissued 2016), The Perception of the Environment (reissued 2011), Making: An Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture (2013), and The Life of Lines (2015).