Preface

Summary

This book was written at Manchester between March 1977 and July 1978. I am not sure exactly when the idea for it first entered my mind, but it was already firmly rooted by autumn 1975, when I completed my doctoral dissertation and first book on the Skolt Lapps (Ingold 1976). I kicked off with a seminar paper, grandiosely entitled ‘Reindeer economies and the advent of pastoralism’, which I delivered first at Manchester and later, on the day after my thesis viva, at Cambridge. My colleagues at Manchester rightly dismissed the whole enterprise. One should begin, they said, with hard data, not with empty speculations. I had no data, so there was nothing the seminar could do. At Cambridge, the response was more favourable: perhaps I was not alone among the speculators there. At any rate, the next step was to acquire some facts; so I proceeded to immerse myself in what literature I could find on reindeer hunting and pastoral societies, in languages that I could understand (I must here admit to an inability to read Russian, a major handicap that I hope soon to remedy). Before long, most of my original arguments lay in ruins – an encouraging indication that I was, after all, making some progress.

But like it or not, this is an ‘ideas’ book, not a ‘facts’ book. All the data that I adduce, including my own, are from previously published sources.