- According to Salzman and Attwood , Ecological anthropology focuses upon the complex relations between people and their environment. It investigates the ways that a population shapes its environment and the subsequent manners in which these relations form the population’s social, economic, and political life .
- Seymour-Smith , Ecological anthropology attempts to provide a materialist explanation of human society and culture as products of adaptation to given environmental conditions .
In The Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin streesed limited resources , and competition between individuals arises. Thomas R. Malthus arguing that human populations naturally tend to outstrip their food supply (Seymour-Smith 1986:87). This circumstance leads to disease and hunger which eventually put a limit on the growth of the population .
As a reaction to Darwin’s theory, some anthropologists eventually turned to environmental determinism as a mechanism for explanation. The earliest attempts at environmental determinism mapped cultural features of human populations according to environmental information (for example, correlations were drawn between natural features and human technologies) . The detailed ethnographic accounts of Boas, Malinowski, and others led to the realization that environmental determinism could not sufficiently account for observed realities, and a weaker form of determinism began to emerge . At this time, Julian Steward coined the term “Cultural Ecology” . He looked for the adaptive responses to similar environments that gave rise to cross-cultural similarities (Netting 1996:267). Steward’s theory centered around a culture core, which he defined as “the constellation of features which are most closely related to subsistence activities and economic arrangements” (Steward1955:37). By the 1960s and 1970s, cultural ecology and environmental determinism lost favor within anthropology.
Ecological anthropologists formed new schools of thought, including the ecosystem model, ethnoecology, and historical ecology (Barfield 1997:138). Researchers hoped that ecological anthropology and the study of adaptations would provide explanations of customs and institutions (Salzman and Attwood 1996:169). Ecological anthropologists believe that populations are not engaged with the total environment around them, but rather with a habitat consisting of certain selected aspects and local ecosystems (Kottak 1999:23-4). Furthermore, each population has its own adaptations institutionalized in the culture of the group, especially in their technologies (Salzman and Attwood 1996:169).
A field such as ecological anthropology is particularly relevant to contemporary concerns with the state of the general environment.
- Anthropological knowledge has the potential to inform and instruct humans about how to construct sustainable ways of life.
- demonstrates the importance of preserving cultural diversity.
- Biological diversity is necessary for the adaptation and survival of all species;
- Culture diversity may serve a similar role for the human species because it is clearly one of our most important mechanisms of adaptation.
Points of Reaction
In the 1950s, dissatisfaction with existing vague and rigid theories of cultural change stimulated the adoption of an ecological perspective. This new perspective considers the role of the physical environment in cultural change in a more sophisticated manner than environmental determinism.
Ecological anthropology is also a reaction to idealism, which is the idea that all objects in nature and experience are representations of the mind. Ecological anthropology inherently opposes the notion that ideas drive all human activities and existence. This particular field illustrates a turn toward the study of the material conditions of the environment, which have the potential to affect ideas. Furthermore, Steward was disillusioned with historical particularism and culture area approaches, and he subsequently emphasized environmental influences on culture and cultural evolution . Boas and his students (representing historical particularism) argued that cultures are unique and cannot be compared . In response, Steward’s methodological approach to multilinear evolution called for a detailed comparison of a small number of cultures that were at the same level of sociocultural integration and in similar environments, yet vastly separated geographically .
During the 1960s, a shift in focus occurred in ecological anthropology because of changing trends and interactions within the global system. According to Kottak (1999), localized groups were no longer localized and isolated from global influences (Kottak 1999:23-4). With increases in exchange, communication, and migration, it became increasingly difficult to apply the terms and concepts once developed under the study of ecological anthropology (Kottak 1999:23-4).
In the following decades there has been a gradual adaptation of the discipline to not only focusing on localized human/ecosystem interactions, but including global influences and how the global community is affecting how groups across the world interact with their ecosystems (Kottak 1999:25). Such global influences include aspects once associated with colonialism (i.e., the exploitation of foreign raw resources or misinterpretation of indigenous agricultural practices) (Kottak 1999:25-6). As a result of the changes occurring in the general outlook of ecological anthropology, subfields within the discipline have emerged. Researchers in the subfields are taking different approaches to studying the interaction of people and their ecosystems . For example, the study of paleoecology examines human interaction with the environment from an archaeological perspective. Other topics addressed include problem solving environmental issues, creating better understandings of native perceptions of their own ecosystem, and sustaining on available resources.
Leading Figures
Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) is the author of Essay on Population (1798), which greatly influenced Charles Darwin. Malthus argued that populations grow exponentially, while resources only grow geometrically. Eventually, populations deplete their resources to such a degree that competition for survival becomes inevitable. This assumes that a struggle for existence will ensue, and only a certain number of individuals will survive. Malthus’s ideas helped to form the ecological basis for Darwin’s theory of natural selection.
Julian Steward (1902-1972) developed the Cultural Ecology paradigm and introduced the idea of the culture core. He studied the Shoshone of the Great Basin in the 1930s and noted that they were hunter-gatherers heavily dependent on the pinon nut tree. Steward demonstrated that lower population densities exist in areas where the tree is sparsely distributed, thus illustrating the direct relationship between resource base and population density. He was also interested in the expression of this relationship in regards to water availability and management. His ideas on cultural ecology were also influenced by studies of South American indigenous groups. He edited a handbook on South American Indians, which was published after World War II. Steward’s theories are presently regarded as examples of specific and multilinear evolution, where cross-cultural regularities exist due to the presence of similar environments. Steward specified three steps in the investigation of the cultural ecology of a society: (1) describing the natural resources and the technology used to extract and process them; (2) outlining the social organization of work for these subsistence and economic activities; (3) tracing the influence of these two phenomena on other aspects of culture . Julian Steward often fluctuated between determinism and possiblism (Balée 1996). He was interested in the comparative method in order to discover the laws of cultural phenomena .
Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution(1955) Julian Steward advocates multilinear evolution in this seminalbook. Multilinear evolution “assumes that certain basic types of culture may develop in similar ways under similar conditions but that few concrete aspects of culture will appear among all groups of mankind in a regular sequence” . Steward sought the causes of cultural changes and attempted to devise a method for recognizing the ways in which culture change is induced by adaptation to the environment . This adaptation is called cultural ecology. According to Steward, “The cross-cultural regularities which arise from similar adaptive processes in similar environments are … synchronic in nature”. The fundamental problem of cultural ecology is to determine whether the adjustments of human societies to their environments require particular modes of behavior or whether they permit latitude for a certain range of possible behaviors . Steward also defines the culture core and discusses the method of cultural ecology, variation in ecological adaptation, development of complex societies, and various examples of the application of cultural ecology. This is apioneering work that influenced many ecological anthropologists and subsequently led to the formation of new, more holistic theories and methodologies.
Leslie White was preoccuppied with the process of general evolution or universal evolution , and he was best known for his strict materialist approach (Barfield 1997:491). He believed that the evolution of culture increases as does energy use per capita. Since the beginning of the hominid line, human being gradually increased their harnessing of energy from the environment. This results in cultural evolution. White described a process of universal evolution, in which all cultures evolve along a certain course i.e in measure of energy expenditure per capita. In comparison, Steward only claimed to see regularities cross-culturally. White described anthropology as “culturology” . He proposed to explain cultural evolution, C=E × T (where C=culture,E=energy, and T=technology). White also subscribed to a technological determinism with technology ultimately determining the way people think .
Marvin Harris completed fieldwork in Africa and Brazil, but he was best known for his development of Cultural Materialism. This school of thought centers on the notion that technological and economic features of a society have the primary role in shaping its particular characteristics. He assigned research priority to concepts of infrastructure over structure and superstructure . The infrastructure is composed of the mode of production and mating patterns. Structure refers to domestic and political economy, and superstructure consists of recreational and aesthetic products and services. Harris’s purpose was to demonstrate the adaptive, materialist rationality of all cultural features by relating them to their particular environment .
The Cultural Ecology of India’s Sacred Cattle (1992). This article is Harris’s best example of the application of cultural materialism, specifically to the Hindu taboo against eating beef. He demonstrates that this taboo makes sense in terms of the local environment, because cattle are important in several ways . Thus, the religious taboo is rational, in a materialist sense, because it ensures the conservation of resources provided by the cattle . Harris comments upon the classification of numerous cattle as “useless” . Ecologically, it is doubtful that any of the cattle are actually useless, especially when they are viewed as part of an ecosystem rather than as a sector of the price market . For example, cows provide dung, milk, and labor, and Harris explores all of these instances thoroughly in this article. He notes that dung is used as an energy source and fertilizer. Nearly 46.7% of India’s dairy products come from cow’s milk . Harris further states, “The principal positive ecological effect of India’s bovine cattle is in their contribution to production of grain crops, from which about 80% of the human calorie ration comes” . Cattle are the single most important means of traction for farmers. Furthermore, 25,000,000 cattle and buffalo die each year, and this provides the ecosystem with a substantial amount of protein . By studying the cattle of India from a holistic perspective, Harris provides a strong argument against the claim that these animals are useless and economically irrational.
Roy A. Rappaport was responsible for bringing ecology and structural functionalism together. Rappaport defined and was included in a paradigm called neofunctionalism . He saw culture as a function of the ecosystem. The carrying capacity and energy expenditure are central themes in Rappaport’s studies, conducted in New Guinea. He completed the first systematic study of ritual, religion, and ecology, and this study is characterized as synchronic and functionalist. The scientific revolution, functionalism in anthropology, and new ecology are the three main influences upon Rappaport. Furthermore, like Steward and Harris, he was more interested in the infrastructural aspects of society. Rappaport was the first scientist to successfully reconcile ecological sciences and cybernetics with functionalism in anthropology .
Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People (1968). This book examines the Tsembaga Maring in New Guinea. The actual study group consists of approximately 200 people who live in two relatively isolated valleys. The Tsembaga Maring practices are a form of animal husbandry with pigs as their primary resource. Rappaport found that pigs consume the same food as humans in this environment, so the Tsembaga must produce a surplus in order to maintain their pig populations. Pigs are slaughtered for bride-price and at the end of war. So, the pigs must be kept at exactly the right numbers. This is accomplished through a cycle of war, pig slaughter for ritual purposes, and regrowth of the pig populations. Such a cycle takes ten to eleven years to complete. Rappaport illustrates that “indigenous beliefs in the sacrifice of pigs for the ancestors were a cognized model that produced operational changes in physical factors, such as the size and spatial spread of human and animal populations”(Netting 1996:269). Thus, religion and the kaiko ritual are cybernetic factors that act as a gauge to assist in maintaining equilibrium within the ecosystem (Netting 1996:269).The kaiko is a ritual of the Tsembaga during which they slaughter their pigs and partake in feasting. The kaiko can be understood easily as “ritual pig slaughter.” The “biologization” of the ecological approach that this study represents within cultural anthropology led to the label ecological anthropology, replacing Steward’s cultural ecology (Barfield 1997:137).
Netting, Robert McC. 1977. Cultural Ecology. Reading, Massachusetts: Cummings Publishing Company. This book is a comprehensive review of ecological anthropology, highlighting its potential contributions to understanding humankind and its limitations. Netting uses his study of a Swiss alpine community to show relationships between land tenure and land use. He also discusses the future of shifting cultivation and the consequences of the Green Revolution (Netting1997:Preface). Cultural Ecology contains chapters that focus on ecological perspectives, hunter-gatherers, Northwest coast fishermen, East African pastoralists, cultivators, field methods ,and the limitations of ecology. This book provides numerous examples and applications of ecological anthropology and is an excellent outline and profile of the ecological movement inanthropology.
Harold Conklin is most noted within ecological anthropology for showing that slash-and-burn cultivation under conditions of abundant land and sparse population is not environmentally destructive. Furthermore, he gives complete descriptions of the wide and detailed knowledge of plant and animal species, climate, topography, and soils that makes up the ethnoscientific repertoire of indigenous food producers (Netting 1996:268). He sets the standards for ecological description with detailed maps of topography, land use, and village boundaries (Netting 1996:268). Conklin’s work focuses on integrating the ethnoecology and cultural ecology of the agro ecosystems of the Hanunoo and Ifugao in the Philippines .
Criticisms
- It has been argued that studies conducted within cultural ecology were limited to egalitarian societies. Furthermore, it is a theory and methodology used to explain how things stay the same, as opposed to how things can change . There is an obvious lack of concern for the historical perspective, as well.
- By the 1960s, many anthropologists turned away from Steward’s views and adopted the new idea that cultures could be involved in mutual activity with the environment. The term ecological anthropology was coined to label this new approach.
- The cultural materialism of Marvin Harris has also been criticized. According to Milton (1997), “his presentation of cultural features as adaptive effectively makes his approach deterministic” . In fact, some scholars claim that the cultural materialism is more deterministic than cultural ecology.
- Environmental determinism was largely discarded in the 1960s for the ecosystem approach. Moran criticizes the ecosystem approach for its tendency to endow the ecosystem with the properties of a biological organism, a tendency for models to ignore time and structural change, a tendency to neglect the role of individuals, and a tendency to overemphasize stability in ecosystems.
Extra Topic
Human ecology is the systematic application of ecological concepts, principles, theory and research methods to study the human populations and communities. Human ecology examines the way human-resource relationships affect the human adaptation to diverse type of ecosystem such as desert, arctic, forest and others (Abruzzi, 2003). It also scrutinises the role that resource requirements needed to withstand a population play in shaping local differences in behaviour, residential distribution, household composition and structure, community, social and political organisations, inter-population relationships and other social behaviour. Human ecology also examines contemporary ecological concerns that results from population growth and industrial development (Abruzzi, 2003).
It has been known for a long time that human survivability is determined by environment. But the idea of contemporary human ecology has been expressed since the 18th century by Adam Smith, Malthus, Darwin and Hoppes. It is believed that the term Human Ecology was first used in geography by Huntington (1916) and later it was adopted in Sociology (1921).In Sociology , t is the ecological analysis of social organisation. Since human ecology deals with the role of the environment in the origin and existence of man. Thus human ecology can be defined as the study of spatial and temporal relations of human beings affected by selective, distributive and accommodating forces of the environment.
The anthropological perspective of human ecology deals with the question “how man copes with his environment”. Culture cannot beunderstood in isolation from the environment in which it evolved. Contemporarily , social anthropology concern with the issues related to the exploitation of the environment, utilisation of resources and energy transformation in a cultural setting.
It was on the basis of Malthus’s concept that Darwin thought of ‘struggle for existence’ which result into balance between the environmental state and social activity of humans. It emphasizes on the importance of exchange system among individuals, populations and species.
Human ecology in the beginning had a monodisciplinary approach. A review of the trends in human ecology defines the scope of ecological concepts which includes basic processes like the kind of interaction between living organisms, levels of integration and functional relationship. Human ecology distinctly focuses on the interactions because organisms cannot live in isolation. Such interactions have its own dynamic structural and functional dimension. It determines the role of Homo sapiens with his own and other species. Thus the subject matter of human ecology includes systems of interactions among individuals and interrelations with the environment, niche, habitat and the ecosystem. Environment may act at three level of biological organisation: individual, population and community. Population refers to group of individuals of same species living in a given territory and is integrated by common culture. In other words human ecology deals with the matrix of nature in which each object has its own place and function.
Principal Concepts
- Diachronic Study: A diachronic study is one that includes an historical or evolutionary time dimension (Moran 1979:328). Steward used a diachronic approach in his studies (Moran1979:42).
- Synchronic Study: Rappaport conducted synchronic studies. These are short-term investigations that occur at one point intime and do not consider historical processes.
- Ecosystem Approach/Model: This is an approach used by some ecological anthropologists that focuses on physical (abiotic) components. Moran (1990:3) claims that this view uses the physical environment as the basis around which evolving species and adaptive responses are examined. The ecosystem approach had played a central role within ecological anthropology (seeMethodologies for more details).
- Environmental Determinism: A deterministic approach assigns one factor as the dominant influence in explanations. Environmental determinism is based on the assumption that cultural and natural areas are coterminous, because culture represents an adaptation to the particular environment (Steward 1955:35). Therefore, environmental factors determine human social and cultural behaviors (Milton 1997).
- Ethnoecology: Ethnoecology is the paradigm that investigates native thought about environmental phenomena . Studies in ethnoecology often focus on indigenous classification hierarchies referring to particular aspects of the environment (for example, soil types, plants, and animals).
- Ethnobotany: Ethnobotany is an ethnoscientific study of the relationship between human beings and plant life. During the 1960’s ethnobotanical units were used in ecological comparisons (Kottak 1999:24).
- Historical Ecology: Historical ecology examines how culture and environment mutually influence each other over time . These studies have diachronic dimensions. Historical ecology is holistic and affirms that life is not independent from culture. This is an ecological perspective adhering to the idea that the relationship between a human population and its physical environment can be examined holistically, rather than deterministically. Landscapes can be understood historically, as well as ecologically. Historical ecology attempts to study land as an artifact of human activity .
- Latent Function: A latent function of a behavior is not explicitly stated, recognized, or intended by the people involved. Thus,they are identified by observers. Latent functions are associated with etic and operational models. For example, in Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People (2000),the latent function of the sacrifice is the elimination of too many pigs, while its manifest function is the sacrifice of pigs to ancestors (Balée 1996).
- Limiting Factor: In the 1960s cultural ecology focused on showing how resources could be limiting factors. A limiting factor is a variable in a region that, despite the limits or settings of anyother variable, will limit the carrying capacity of that region to acertain number.
- Manifest Function: A manifest function is explicitly stated and understood by the participants in the relevant action. The manifest function of a rain dance is to produce rain, and this outcome is intended and desired by people participating in the ritual. This could also be defined as emic with cognized models.
- Neofunctionalism: This term represents a productive but short-lived 1960s revision of structural-functionalism. Neofunctionalism attends explicitly to the modeling of systems-level interactions especially negative feedback, and assigns primary importance to techno-environmental forces, especially environment, ecology, and population (Bettinger 1996:851). Within neofunctionalism, culture is reduced to an adaptation, and functional behaviors are homeostatic and deviation counteracting, serving to maintain the system at large (Bettinger 1996:851). Neofunctional well-being is measured in tangible currencies, such as population density, that relate to fitness (as in evolutionary biology) (Bettinger1996:852).
- Optimal Forging Theory: This theoretical perspective examines foraging methods from the cost/benefit angle (Dove and Carpenter 2008:36). Analysis of this sort allows for researchers to determine the choices and logic behind changes in forging methods.
Model Questions :
- Discuss the evolution of role of ecology in study of human societies and cultures
- Discuss the various methodological apporaches followed in Ecological anthropology
- Human Ecology