ISS 310 03 Environmental Anthropology 1 27 2014 Roots of Environmental Anthropology o Developed from cultural ecology Drawn from three traditions Imperialist Arcadian Scientific Imperialistic Tradition o Humans conquer nature Arcadian Tradition o Humans in harmony with nature Scientific Tradition o Theorizing the relationship between humans and nature Early Scientific Theories in cultural ecology Environmental determinism ED o Environment dictates what a culture must do or how it must adapt o For example Cultural Areas and ED Problems with ED If you are in a desert how do you live o o o o Culture is diverse There is more than one way to provide for basic needs Environments are not static Culture areas often encompass diverse ecologies Early Theories Possibilism o A variety of solutions are present in any environment and a culture chooses a solution or o o solutions best suited to them The environment is seen as limiting not dictating human cultural decisions Culture is seen as a limiting factor including technology cultural beliefs and extra cultural relations Limits of Possibilism o o Possibilism is more of an observation than a theory It lacks the ability to explain how cultures work or to predict human behaviors one of the goals of anthropology Early Theories Cultural Evolution o Unilinear cultural evolution UCE Cultures evolve upward on a single line o Multilinear Cultural Evolution MCE The evolution of cultures along many lines o NeoEvolution UCE o o Assumes that all cultures are striving to progress o Predates ED by nearly 100 years Lewis Henry Morgan 1851 Two forms one looking at energy consumption and one on social complexity MCE o o NeoEvolution o Two ways o o o o Bands Tribes Chiefdoms States Cultural Ecology ISS 310 03 Environmental Anthropology 1 27 2014 3 stages of human development Savagery no social order Barbarism constantly oppressing others to be on top Civilization o UCE in early 20th Century Anthropology Hunter gatherers Pastoralists Horticulturalists Agriculturalists Recognizes cultures progress at different rates and in different directions For example plains Indians during the 1800s Introduction of horses went back to Nomadic culture Leslie White 1949 cultures are constantly developing to use increasing amounts of energy more efficiently Not Popular Julian Steward 1955 As populations increase societies become increasingly socially complex Steward s Four Levels o o o o o o Steward proposed Based on work in the Great Basin of the US hypothesized the following Cultures in similar Environments MAY have similar adaptations All adaptations are short lived and are constantly adjusting and changing environments Change in culture can elaborate existing culture or result in entirely new ones Cultural Adaptation o Definition the cultural methods employed by human communities to survive in the PE NE and SCE This is not the same thing as biological adaptation Being predisposed towards storage of adipose tissue fat in cold climates is a biological physical adaptation to the PE and NE Cultural Ecology and Technology o Technology seen as being the critical adaptive factor that separated humans from the natural world Technology the knowledge and methods humans use to exploit the NE and PE o o A note Technology tools Digging by hand is a form of technology Limits of Cultural Ecology Because culture is holistic and a change in one part of a culture typically affects all others Steward was wrong in assuming only technology and subsistence were closely related to NE and PE Religion for example is often very closely related to the NE and PE since it defines how humans view the world ISS 310 03 Environmental Anthropology 1 27 2014 The New Ecologies o After Steward Cultural Ecology splits in two directions Ecological Anthropology Ethno Ecology Etic vs Emic o o Etic describing a culture from the perspective of an outsider E T Emic Describing a culture from the perspective of someone inside the society culture under study Ecological anthropology o Human environmental interactions as a system o Humans are organisms that are components within a larger series of interrelated parts o o Studies model these interactions at single points in time This is an ETIC approach Limits of Ecological Anthropology Critics note that it is difficult to model all variables in such studies o o Models are limited by three factors Number of variables chosen to model Boundaries of the ecosystem studied Ability to address cultural change Later Developments in Ecological Anthropology o Movement away from attempting to model whole societies o o Focus on explaining component relationships In other words how human choice in one area affects one or more other components either in the immediate or the long term Hazard and Risk o What is risk In Ecological Anthropology risk is the taking of action based on an assessment of gain versus potential losses Putting all your eggs in one basket o Is this a good thing or a bad thing BAD Spreading Risk o All societies spread risk out using a variety of different strategies o The fewer the strategies a society applies or the options it has the greater the risk of failure Townsend Hazard and Risk o What is the hazard and how is risk dealt with in the following situations Ariad Pasteralists in Kenya Bangladesh Populations Ethnoecology Population is one of the most important research components in cultural ecology o o Why 200 magic to prevent gene overlap o Began with ethnobiology ethnozoology and ethnobotany o Traditionally looked at the language categories other cultures used to describe things o Goal was to document alternative knowledge categories of plants animals weather etc o This is an emic research approach Later Developments o Ethnoecology has expanded beyond language to document ISS 310 03 Environmental Anthropology 1 27 2014 Environmental perception and cultural practice Intersection between religious belief and nature Creation and understanding of social and cultural landscapes Material Remains and Traces o Wherever humans have been they generally leave some material trace of their existence on the land May be small fire pit May be large pyramids These material remains and traces may be accidental or intentional in their placement Intentionally placed material remains and traces are done so to create some form of order or meaning o When such intentional acts are the result of a culture or society then they serve to identify and construct a social or cultural