Towards integrative anthropology again and again: disorderly becomings of a (biological) anthropologist

Any study of the world, including that of the human, is a move toward and into complexity not away from it. Human action and perception are as evolutionarily relevant as are human genes, bones, and muscles. As an anthropologist interested in behaviour and evolution my focus is the interface of biological histories and systems with the social and cultural lives of humans and the other animals we share close relations with. In this essay influenced by, and following from, Tim Ingold’s ‘From Science to Art and Back Again: The Pendulum of an anthropologist’ I chart my history as a scholar via the patterns and changes in the anthropological, primatological, and evolutionary approaches that I have witnessed and have taken part in. I conclude with a call for an integrative anthropology that draws from contemporary evolutionary theory and biology along with a deep connection with the humanities and the arts.