“Cultural ecology,” Steward wrote, “is the study of the processes by which a society adapts to its environment. Its principal problem is to determine whether these adaptations initiate internal social transformations of evolutionary change” (1968:337). Cultural ecology is a view of “man in the web of life” . That web consisted of both natural and cultural realities: Cultural ecology distinguishes different kinds of sociocultural systems and institutions, it recognizes both cooperation and competition as processes of interaction, and it postulates that environmental adaptations depend on the technology, needs and structure of the society and on the nature of the environment. It includes analysis of adaptation to the social environment. The web of life of a human group “may extend far beyond the immediate physical environment and biotic assemblage. In states, nations, and empires, the nature of the local group may be determined by these larger institutions no less than by its local adaptation” (Steward 1973b:32). Steward argued that the links between environment and culture were particularly clear in societies like the Shoshone where the margins of survival were slim. In contrast, in societies that “have adequately solved subsistence problems, the effect of ecology becomes more difficult to ascertain. In complex societies certain components of the social superstructure rather than ecology seem increasingly to be determinants of further developments. With greater cultural complexity analysis becomes increasingly difficult” (Steward 1938:262).
That interest in causes distinguished cultural ecology from the historical particularism of Boas and his students. Relying on mechanisms of diffusion, innovation, and migration, culturalhistorical “explanations,” Steward argued, were not really explanations since they relied on the inexplicable tendency “of societies to develop in unlike ways” (1973b:35). The explanations of historical particularism were actually reconstructed accounts of the “divergences in culture history,” with the cause of diversity remaining mysterious.
Further, Steward wrote, in cultural-historical explanations, the environment was relegated to a secondary role in explaining cultural differences (1973b:35). Ironically, cultural-historical explanations relied on the “culture area” concept, a scheme used by Clark Wissler and Alfred Kroeber to subdivide culture patterns—such as the American Southwest or the Great Plains—based on shared cultural traits exhibited in similar environments. If, Steward asked, there were such clear patterns between environment and culture, how could environment be ignored?
Steward outlined three basic steps for a cultural-ecological investigation.
- “First, the interrelationship of exploitative or productive technology and environment must be analyzed,” that is, the relationship between material culture and natural resources.
- “Second, the behavior patterns involved in the exploitation of a particular area by means of a particular technology must be analyzed” (Steward 1973b:40–42). For example, certain animals are best stalked by individual hunters while other game can be captured in communal hunts; different social behaviors are involved in the exploitation of different resources.
- The third step in the analysis is to determine how “behavior patterns entailed in exploiting the environment affect other aspects of culture”.
This three-step empirical analysis identifies the cultural core, “the constellation of features which are most closely related to subsistence activities and economic arrangements” (Steward 1973b:37). Cultural ecology was not a form of unilineal evolution, but an attempt “to explain the origin of particular cultural features and patterns which characterize different areas rather than to derive general principles applicable to any cultural-environmental area” (Steward 1973b:36). Although it differed from the nineteenth century unilineal evolutionary theories of Tylor (chapter 1), Morgan (chapter 2), or Marx and Engels, and lacked the broad, generalizing character of the twentieth-century theories of Leslie White (chapter 13) and Marvin Harris (chapter 15), cultural ecology was, nevertheless, a clear materialist strategy. Marvin Harris wrote, The essence of cultural materialism is that it directs attention to the interaction between behavior and environment as mediated by the human organism and its cultural apparatus. It does so as an order of priority with the prediction that group structure and ideology are responsive to these classes of material
conditions. Turning to Steward’s statement of the research strategy of cultural ecology [as summarized above], we find all of these attributes of cultural materialism clearly delineated.(1968:659)
By emphasizing human adaptation and the varying relationships between human societies and natural resources, cultural ecology provided both the analytical focus and the empirical bases for Steward’s theory of culture change—multilinear evolution.