History and Development of

UNIT 1 HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF Environmental

Anthropology
ENVIRONMENTAL
ANTHROPOLOGY

Contents
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Development of Ecological Perspective in Anthropology
1.2.1 Defining Ecological Anthropology
1.2.2 Environmental Determinism versus Cultural Determinism
1.2.3 The Ecosystem Approach, Human Ecology and Processual Human Ecology
1.3 Development of Environmentalism Perspective in Anthropology
1.3.1 Anthropological Engagement with Environmentalism
1.3.2 Emergence and Development of Environmental Anthropology
1.3.3 Definition and Scope of Environmental Anthropology
1.4 Summary
1.5 References
Suggested Reading
Sample Questions

Learning Objectives
&
By the end of this unit, you will be able to:
• gain understanding of the ecological relationships between humans and the
environment;
• learn the aims and scope of ecological and environmental anthropology;
• know the key authors and theoretical perspectives in environmental anthropology;
• be familiar with the emergence and development of environmental
anthropology; and
• discover how ecological and environmental anthropology is shaping new
ways of thinking about current local, national and global environmental
problems.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
Since its inception, the discipline of Anthropology has broadly dealt with
“environmental” questions, including human perceptions of the natural world
and the relationship between “Nature” and “Culture,” as well as the ways human
populations use culture as an adaptive strategy to cope up with their habitats and
ecosystems. Late in the 19th century and early in the 20th studies of humans and
their environment moved from the “environmental determinism” of the
anthropogeographers, to the “environmental possibilism” of the ethnographers,
and to the “cultural ecology” of Julian Steward (for detail see block 2, unit 1).
More recently, “Environmental Anthropology” has grown as a specialisation
within Anthropology, focusing broadly on the study of environmental issues,
problems, and solutions from an anthropological perspective.Assuming that the
5
Introduction to learner has no prior knowledge of the subject or Environmental Anthropology,
Environmental
Anthropology
the unit tries to build an understanding from the ground up introduction to
ecological anthropology, to scientific inquiry, and endswith an overview of growth
and development of Environmental Anthropology.

Ecology is the study of the interaction between living things and their
environment. Human ecology is the study of the relationships and interactions
among humans, their biology, their cultures, and their physical environments.
Before going to know the meaning, definition and scope of Environmental
Anthropology, it is important to first understand what Ecological Anthropology
is historically and philosophically speaking, the roots of Western notions of the
interrelations between man and environment are very old. Since the 1950s
Anthropology has developed approaches to human-environment interactions and
developed the concept Ecological Anthropology. Ecological Anthropology is the
study of how people interact with their social and biophysical environments.
Mostly we try to understand why people behave or think the way that they do. It
represents the link between the sciences of ecology and human culture. The core
ideas – human adaptation, ecosystems, and environmental change – are similar
to those of traditional ecology, but the anthropological notion of culture is added
as an additional level of complexity.

1.2 DEVELOPMENT OF ECOLOGICAL

PERSPECTIVE IN ANTHROPOLOGY
Interest in the study between people and the environment around them has a
long history in anthropology. Since the beginnings of the discipline in the 19th
century, scholars have been concerned with the ways in which societies interact
with their environment and utilise natural resources, as with the ways in which
natural processes are conceptualised and classified (Rival, 1998). Much of this
interest centered on the study of subsistence patterns by which populations adapted
to particular biophysical conditions. Precisely for this, according to E. F. Moran
(1996) environmental researchin Anthropology has been a part of the discipline
from its very beginning. It is often referred to as the ecological approach in
Anthropology. Ecological or environmental approach in Anthropology includes
topics as diverse as Primate Ecology, Human Ecology, Ethno-ecology, Historical
Ecology, Political Ecology, Ecofeminism, Environmentalism, Environmental
Justice, Evolutionary ecology, Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK),
Conservation, Environmental Risk, Liberation Ecology, and a number of other
areas, many of them interdisciplinary in scope and methodology.

1.2.1 Defining Ecological Anthropology

Ecological Anthropology is broadly concerned with people’s perceptions of and
interactions with their physical and biological surroundings, and the various
linkages between biological, cultural, and linguistic diversity. In Ecological
Anthropology topics to be explored from simple to complex and general to
specific which include subsistence strategies, the ecology of ethnic foodways,
human alteration of the environment, traditional knowledge of wild plants,
ethnobiological classification, natural resource sustainability, intellectual property
rights among indigenous peoples, the Anthropology of tourism, environmental
racism, and conservation policies in both simple and complex societies. It can
6 involve skills like analyzing tape recordings of conversations to find out what
environmental themes are important to people, following people and recording History and Development of
Environmental
their behaviour, or archeology. Ecological anthropology tries to explore the Anthropology
multilevel ways in which humans adjust to their surrounding by both biological
and socio-cultural processes.
Salzman and Attwood (1996 ) defined Ecological Anthropology is a subfield of
anthropology that deals with complex relationships between humans and their
environment, or between nature and culture, over time and space. It investigates
the ways that a population shapes its environment and may be shaped by it, and
the subsequent manners in which these relations form the population’s social,
economic, and political life. In a general sense Seymour-Smith (1986) describe
show Ecological Anthropology attempts to provide a materialist explanation of
human society and culture as products of adaptation to given environmental
conditions.According to Ellen (1982) Ecological Anthropology applies a systems
approach to the study of the interrelationship between culture and environment.
At the heart of contemporary ecological anthropology is an at the heart of
contemporary ecological anthropology is an “understanding that proceeds from
a notion of the mutualism of person and environment” (Ingold, 1992) and the
reciprocity between nature and culture (Harvey, 1996). As such, ecological
anthropology is itself closely related to human behavioural ecology and
environmental anthropology (Stacy McGrath).

Activity
What is the difference between Ecology and Ecological Anthropology?

1.2.2 Environmental Determinism Vs. Cultural Determinism

There have been several attempts to structure and organize the area of man-
environment relations in anthropology over roughly hundred from now. In the
era before the turn of the century, when anthropology was evolving as a distinct
discipline, anthropologists and geographers were concerned about the man-
environment relationships.Development of basic conceptsin ecological
anthropology was not as a smooth accumulation of information and insights, but
as a series of stages.Every stage was a reaction to the previous one rather than
merely an addition to it. “The first stage, is characterised by the work of Julian
Steward and Leslie White, the second is termed neo-functionalism and neo-
evolutionism, and the third one is called processual ecological anthropology.The
attempts to address the similarities and differences of Steward and White mark
the second stage of Ecological Anthropology. Boldly oversimplifying, one could
argue that there are two main trends in this second stage: the neoevolutionists,
who claimed that Steward and White were both correct, and the neofunctionalists,
who argued that they were both wrong”. (see Orlove, 1980).
During thue late 19th and early the 20th centuries a number of comprehensive
treatment of environmental thinking in Anthropology and the environment vs
culture controversy have been complied by socio-cultural anthropologists who
have found that an ecological approach is fruitful both in research and teaching.
The framework of these theoretical perspectives reviews has been provided by
some contrasting major schools of thoughts or conceptual approaches, viz,
environmental determinism, environmental possibilsm, functionalism, culture-
area approaches, cultural ecology, racism, evolutionism, historicismand current
approaches in ecological Anthropology including actor-based model, eco-system
based model, ethno-ecology and systems-ecology model etc.
7
Introduction to The above conceptual and theoretical perspectives you will learn in detail in the
Environmental
Anthropology
block 2, unit 1, 2, and 3.In this unit, I will briefly discuss development stages of
basic theoretical Concepts in Ecological Anthropology and history of development
of an environmental perspective in Anthropology.

The concept of cultural evolution and the series of ideas on the relationship
between culture and environment were developed in early Greek view. This idea
was widely accepted throughout the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century
ecological anthropology has proposed, or drawn on, several useful and innovative
theories. Smith, along with Thomas Malthus (1977), developed the ideas of
competition in nature and in human affairs that later fed into contemporary
ecological theories.

Ecological Anthropology was named as such during the 1960s, but it has many
ancestors, including Daryll Forde, Alfred Kroeber, and, especially, Julian Steward.
Columbia University can be identified as the birthplace of Ecological
Anthropology. Early studies of humans and their environment moved from the
“environmental determinism” of the anthropogeographers, to the “Environmental
Possibilism” of the ethnographers, and to the “cultural ecology” of Julian Steward
(Michael A. Little, 2007). The first major theory regarding the interaction between
culture and environment, one that has been in circulation since the time of classical
Greece, is Environmental Determinism (ED), or Environmentalism.In this concept
the idea basically states that environment mechanically “dictates” how a culture
adapts(for detail see block 2, unit 1).For example, the Polynesians must fish and
live in grass huts because they live on tropical islands.

The general orientation of explanations of man-environment interrelations in

the United States shifted towards what came to be called “possibilism”/
environmental possibilism (EP) in the late 1920s and the 1930s. In possibilism,
the environment is seen as a limiting or enabling factor rather than a determining
factor. Possibilism is really an interactive process between culture and the
environment.Daryll Forde, Boas, Wissler and Kroeber are the believers of this
thought (for detail see block 2, unit 1)The common features of the above themes
ED and EP are that they conceptualised the interaction between the human and
their environment as mainly unidirectional, rather than systematic. They
emphasised stages rather than the process.

During the 1920s-30s the time was ripe for a reassessment of the prevalent views
on the relation between man, culture, and environment; as well as the evolution
of cultures. The inadequacy in explaining cultural diversity, however, remained
an issue and in a search for a more precise understanding of the effect of the
environment on cultures Steward (1955) developed a methodology called Cultural
Ecology.Due to contact with noted geographer Carl Sauer, Steward’s work in
cultural ecology led him to examine the effect of environment on culture. In the
1950s-60s significant progress came from the development of what came to be
known as “Cultural Ecology,” engaged with the analysis of cultural adaptation
to natural environments.He conducted pioneering field research on the interaction
of a particular human society and its natural environment in the Western United
States working with Shoshone, Paiute, and other Native Americans. He moved
cultural ecology a step forward by rejecting the “fruitless assumption that culture
comes from culture” (Steward, 1955). Steward searched for the adaptive responses
of various cultures to similar environments (Orlove, 1980). He examined the
8
available resources and distribution in relation to the technology, economic History and Development of
Environmental
arrangements, social organisation and demography of a certain place. As a result, Anthropology
he identified a ‘culture core’ consisting of the elements of a culture influenced
by the environment, i.e. the features most closely related to subsistence activities
and economic arrangements. Yet, cultural ecology could neither provide a model
for explaining the origin and persistence of cultural features, nor for determining
the extent of environmental influence in the evolution of specific cultures (Netting
1977; Orlove, 1980).

As a reaction, in the 1960s and 1970s new schools of thought were formed based
on cultural determinism, i.e. the idea that culture influences the environment.
One of those schools, ethno-ecology, describes the conceptual models that people
have of their environment (see details in the block 2, unit 3). Researchers like
Brent Berlin, Harold Conklin, Charles Frake, and others pioneered the
development of ethno-ecology. It distinguished, for example, ‘folk nature’ or the
perceptions that people have on nature, from ‘real nature’ on which these
perceptions are based. The approach used classifications and shared its methods
and underlying premises with cognitive Anthropology. In the end, however, neither
environmental nor cultural determinism formed a satisfactory basis to describe
human-environment relationships. Alternatively, instead of shaping or being
shaped by environmental factors, human beings were understood to interact with
their environments in mutually constructive ways (Milton, 1996).

1.2.3 The Ecosystem Approach, Human Ecology and Processual

Human Ecology
Other approaches followed Cultural Ecology that expanded the scope of
environmental research inAnthropology. In the 1960s and 1970s, the field became
influenced by new concepts developed by anthropologists who largely structured
their data based on ecological models. Roy A. Rappaport, and Andrew P. Vayda
(1968), developed an ecosystem approach that treated human populations as one
of a number of interacting species and physical components and transformed
Cultural Ecology into Ecological Anthropology.While Steward tied culture with
the environment, a new approach, called the “new ecology,” tied culture with the
emerging science of systems ecology (e.g.,Vayda and Rappaport, 1968). The
ecosystem approach, brought into play by anthropologists like Rappaport (1968)
and Vayda (1969), conceptualised human populations as participants in
ecosystems. It was a first attempt to reconcile ecological sciences with
functionalismin Anthropology. Research focused, amongst others, on the material
outcomes of economic activities and the efficiency of subsistence systems. Yet,
the approach was limited with its focus on ‘units’ and ‘populations’ rather than
cultures and its preference for small-scale (Island) societies (Rappaport,
1969).They suggested that instead of studying how cultures are adapted to the
environment, attention should be focused on the relationship of specific human
population to specific ecosystem. In their view, human beings constitute simply
another population among the many populations of plants and animals species
that interact with each other with the non-living components (climate, soil, water
etc) of their local ecosystem. Thus, the ecosystem rather that culture, constitutes
the fundamental unit of analysis in their conceptual framework for human ecology.
The analytic unit shifted from “culture” to the ecological population, which was
seen as using culture as a means (the primary means) of adaptation to
environments. It was argued that human cultures were not unique but formed
9
Introduction to only one of the population units interacting “to form food webs, biotic
Environmental
Anthropology
communities, and ecosystems” (Vayda and Rappaport, 1968). A broader focus
was presented by Human Ecology which was concerned with the ways human
populations interact with their environment. Yet, even though it acknowledged
the importance of knowledge, information, and people’s understanding of the
world (Ellen, 1982), the ecosystem approach excluded the unobservable
components of culture.

In the mid 1970s, in contrast to Cultural Ecology, neo-evolutionism and

neofunctionalism, another approach emerged: Processual Ecological
Anthropology. The use of the term “process” refers to the importance of diachronic
studies in Ecological Anthropology and to the need to examine mechanisms of
change. However, the term “ProcessualEcological Anthropology” signifying
current developments in the field does appear to be new. It focused on the
processual relationship between the local population and their immediate
environment conditioned by the intervention of external political, legal, and
economic factors. Important research trends were, amongst others, the relation
between demographic variables and production systems, the response of
populations to environmental stress, and the formation and consolidation of
adaptive strategies (Orlove, 1980). ProcessualEcological Anthropology examined
shifts and changes in individual and group activities and focused on the
mechanisms by which behaviour and external constraints influenced each other.
It stimulated the importance of decision-making models in Ecological
Anthropology.

Two additional theoretical and methodological frameworks were developed

mainly in the 1980s and 1990s to try to render Ecological Anthropology more
scientific. The Neomaterialist, Marvin Harris, developed the approach of Cultural
Materialism. It is a practical, rather straightforward, functionalist approach to
Anthropology with a focus on the specific hows and whys of culture.Marvin
Harris vigorously pursued explicitly and systematically the development of
cultural materialism as a research strategy to reveal and explain the ecological
rationale underlying various aspects of culture. He divided the cultural system
into three components infrastructure,structure, and superstructure. Harris argued
that the infrastructure is most basic and most influential because it functions as
the ultimate adaptive mechanism for the very survival and maintenance of
individuals and society as a whole (see details in the block 2, unit 2).

Human behavioural or evolutionary ecology is the second innovative framework

pioneered by Eric Alden Smith and Bruce Winterhalder. It shifts attention to
individuals as the locus of adaptation with an emphasis on decision making in
the use of natural resources ranked according to their relative costs and benefits
(optimal foraging theory). This connects human ecology more directly with natural
selection and other evolutionary theories. Both of these special frameworks,
cultural materialism and human behavioural ecology, have been criticized as
simplistic and reductionistic. Nevertheless, both have proven to have some validity
and utility in advancing the anthropological understanding of human-environment
interactions.

In the following years, anthropologist who had borrowed analytic concepts from
other disciplines used them to critique then-prevailing understandings of human-
environment relations, including the view that indigenous landuse systems were
10
inferior to modern scientific models. Numerous research experiences by History and Development of
Environmental
ecological anthropologists demonstrated the intimate associations between local Anthropology
communities and their environments and the extensive knowledge generated
through these associations. The insights acquired into such resource use systems
contributed to undermining orthodoxy in natural sciences. Of particular
importance was that they showed that these systems were not always destructive
for the environment. This was critical for the late-modern move away from a
dichotomised conception of nature and culture (Dove, 2001).

Previous research had been largely synchronic, examining a particular society as

if it wereisolated, traditional, static, and timeless, and also as if the society had
no lasting cumulative impact on its environment and the latter was static as well.
Ecological anthropology diversified further in 1990s by adding research variously
focused on historical, political, or spiritual aspects of human ecology and
adaptation. William Balee, John Bennett, and Carole Crumley, among others,
developed a diachronic approach to examining the interactions between the
sociocultural and environmental systems over extended periods of time as they
transformed one another within a regional landscape. Since the 1990s substantial
diversification of approaches within ecological anthropology involves a growing
emphasis on applied rather than basic research, although certainly the two are
often interdependent. However, with the worsening ecocrisis and other factors,
increasingly research has concentrated on identifying and solving practical
environmental questions, problems, and issues. This is the arena of environmental
anthropology per se. Researchers in this arena still pursue various approaches
within Ecological Anthropology to investigate matters of survival, adaptation,
and change with an emphasis on culture, communities, and fieldwork.

Activity
Explain how analytic unit shifted from culture to the ecological population?

1.3 DEVELOPMENT OF ENVIRONMENTALISM

PERSPECTIVE IN ANTHROPOLOGY
Anthropology traditionally has strong links to the study of the environment
through its focus on human interaction in environmental context. This basic
connection is depicted by Milton, who says: ‘If one accepts the anthropological
cliche´ that culture is the mechanism through which human beings interact with
(or, more controversially, adapt to) their environment (Ingold, 1992), then the
whole field of cultural anthropology can be characterised as human ecology’.

Since the 1980s, anthropological research on environmental issues has been part
of a broad public sphere that has witnessed a sharp increase in environmental
concerns and activism throughout the world. That has, in turn, been accompanied
by significant interrelational changes between humans and their environment,
resulting from the use of new communication and biological technologies. Given
the breadth and complexity of environmental issues, academic disciplinary
boundaries are easily crossed and new sites of transdisciplinary research have
emerged that combine natural and social-scientific approaches in unique ways.
Anthropology, however, has specific contributions to make to the wider
environmental research field (Paul Little, 1999).
11
Introduction to 1.3.1 Anthropological Engagement with Environmentalism
Environmental
Anthropology In common usage, the term environment is often used as a synonym for Nature
(i.e. the biophysical or nonhuman environment), but this usage creates great
conceptual confusion because the environment of a particular human group
includes both cultural and biophysical elements. By extension, the organism/
environment dynamic, which is relational and perspectivist, is often incorrectly
fused with the nature/cultured dualism, which is essentialist and substantive.
The concept of environment as a research tool allows for the delimitation of a
wide range of socio-natural units of analysis that transect the nature/culture
division orthogonally (see Paul Little, 1999).

In this context, Paul Little and other anthropologists preferthe term

environmentalism to an explicit, active concern with the relationship between
human groups and their respective environments. Although “environmentalist”
usually refersto political activists, the termcan reasonablyinclude persons and
groups that are directly involved with understandingand/or mediating
thisrelationship. Thus, anthropologists and other social scientistswho are involved
in environmental research can be considered as representingthe environmental
wing of their respective disciplines.

Current environmental research in Anthropology falls into two major areas that
have distinct methodologies and objects of study. The first, called Ecological
Anthropology, uses ecological methodologies to study the interrelations between
human groups and their environment. The second, called Environmental
Anthropology involve policy and value orientation, application,analytic unit,
scale, and method to study environmentalism as a type of human action.

The sub field Environmental Anthropology holisticallyunderstands the importance

of cultural perceptions when dealing with environmental issues. There are number
of anthropologists who are concerned to engage with the discourse of
environmentalism. Initially, let us consider Brosius’ (1999) statement that
environmentalism refers broadly to the field of ‘discursive constructions of nature
and human agency’. He makes the point that the study of environmentalism
should encompass much more than an analysis of the different social movements
involved and their various trajectories over time and space. As stated above, he
feels that at the crux of environmentalism is the ongoing discourse about human
beings and their place within nature. As a postmodernist thinker and an
anthropologist, Brosius declares that the relevance of Anthropology in this field
of investigation is due to its unique concentration upon the phenomenon of culture.
He urges anthropologists to see environmentalism as a ‘rich site of cultural
production’ (ibid:277) and stresses that ‘a whole new discursive regime is
emerging and giving shape to the relationships between and among natures,
nations, movements, individuals, and institutions’ (ibid).

Similarly, Milton depictsenvironmentalism as a trans-cultural discourse that, not

being rooted in any specific culture, spans the local through to the global and
now has become a specific cultural discourse existing within, although not
bounded by, other cultural systems. Thus, environmentalism is perceived by her
to transcend many traditional geographical and conceptual boundaries such as
east/west, north/south, first world/third world and left/right. As Milton describes
it, environmentalism incorporates ‘all culturally defined environmental
12
responsibilities, whether they are innovative or conventional, radical or History and Development of
Environmental
conservative’.Obviously, these responsibilities vary between cultural settings but, Anthropology
as Milton observes, they originate from the recognition that environmental
problems are caused by human interaction with the environment. She feels that
the key to a viable future lies in a better understanding of human activity (ibid:11).
Furthermore, in her view environ-mental discourse does not merely articulate
perceptions of the environment, it contributes to their formulation. In this way,
the whole spectrum of thought is included in Milton’s analysis because a pro-
environmentalist stance is not required for discourse to be considered
environmental (ibid:8). If we also take into account Brosius’ description of
environmentalism provided earlier, we see that anthropologists have begun to
discern environmentalism as being expressed through a myriad of social and
cultural relationships and situations. Milton explains this well when she writes:

“In this framework, social movements and political ideologies become specific
cultural forms through which environmental responsibilities might be expressed
and communicated. Instead of environmentalism being seen as a category of
social movement or ideology, these forms of cultural expression become types
of environmentalism”. (ibid: 8).

Many environmental problems that have emerged from the multiplicity of

interrelations between humans and their environments have been accompanied
by a concomitant surge in environmentalisms, each with their respective
environmentalists. The ethnographic analysis of and political involvement in
these many environmentalisms on the part of anthropologists and other social
scientists have generated, during the past two decades, a field of study in its own
right.

In recent past there has been much discussion about the relevance of the discipline
of Anthropology to the various emergent discourses on the environment. Kay
Milton has made a number of important contributions to this area of
anthropological investigation over recent years. In 1993 she edited a work, entitled
Environmentalism: The View from Anthropology, which attempted to position
anthropology more centrally with in the multi-disciplinary study of
environmentalism (see Milton, 1993).Eeva Berglund is another anthropologist
who wishes to establish Anthropology as a legitimate participant in the study of
environmentalism. In her book, Knowing Nature, Knowing Science: An
Ethnography of Environmental Activism, she explores the role of what she terms
‘techno-science’ in environmental discourse (see Berglund, 1998).

Brosius in his article in Current Anthropology (1999) provides an overview of

the engagement by anthropologists in the field of environmentalism, which
includes aspects of the past, present and future. He says the recent trend toward
anthropological engagement with environmentalism was not at all inevitable.
Rather, it is the result of a series of particular historical contingencies, both
practical and theoretical. He addressed this by noting significant differences
between ‘the Ecological Anthropology of the 1960s and early 1970s and what
some are calling the ‘‘Environmental Anthropology’’ of the present. Drawing its
insights primarily from the field of ecology, the former is characterised by a
persistent interest in localised adaptations to specific ecosystems and by an abiding
scientism: to the extent that cultural or ideational factors enter into analyses of
this sort, they are viewed primarily with respect to their adaptive significance.
13
Introduction to The latter draws its insights from a range of sources: poststructuralist social and
Environmental
Anthropology
cultural theory, political economy, and recent explorations of transnationalism
and globalisation, among others.

Brosius’ (1999: 278) assertion that environmentalism refers broadly to the field
of ‘discursive constructions of nature and human agency’. He makes the point
that the study of environmentalism should encompass much more than an analysis
of the different social movements involved and their various trajectories over
time and space. As stated above, he feels that at the crux of environmentalism is
the ongoing discourse about human beings and their place within nature. As a
postmodernist thinker and an anthropologist, Brosius declares that the relevance
of Anthropology in this field of investigation is due to its unique concentration
upon the phenomenon of culture. He urges anthropologists to see
environmentalism as a ‘rich site of cultural production’ (ibid: 277) and stresses
that ‘a whole new discursive regime is emerging and giving shape to the
relationships between and among natures, nations, movements, individuals, and
institutions’ (ibid).

In assessing what lies behind the rather striking growth in interest in

environmentalism among anthropologists,Brosiuscites three factors. The first is
simplythe more general trajectory of growth in environmentalscholarship across
a wide range of disciplines, a processwhich accelerated in the late 1980s. Indeed,
the past decadehas witnessed a remarkable florescence in environmental scholarship
and the emergence or growth ofa host of new subdisciplines: environmental
history, environmental ethics, environmental economics, environmentallaw,
environmental security, and politicalecology, to name just a few. To the extent
that anthropologistshave developed an interest in environmentalism,then, we
are participating in a larger, transdisciplinaryprocess. One of the things that makes
thecurrent moment so promising is the degree to whichscholars from a range of
disciplines—geography, politicalscience, history, legal studies, science and
technologystudies, media studies, and others—are engaged inprojects that
converge on an interest in environmentalism.

This a period with great potential for buildingrich transdisciplinaryintersections,

and many anthropologistsappear to be doing that. One might go so faras to claim
that, in the study of environmentalism atleast, the boundaries between disciplines
are eroding toa degree not seen before.

A second factor leading to the present anthropological interest in environmentalism

is the simple fact that so many of us have witnessed the emergence (or arrival) of
environmental movements at our field sites. According to Brosius, Fisher and
Turner environmental NGOs have become highly visible players in the terrain
that we once thought we could claim as our own—the rural/remote community.
As this has occurred, we have seen local communities mobilise or adopt elements
of transnational environmental discourse in ways we had not witnessed before
(see Brosius, 1999).

A third element that has engendered an interest in environmentalism among

anthropologists has been a series of recent theoretical trends both within our
discipline and beyond. This is a rather complicated scenario, with a considerable
degree of overlap between various areas of theoretical and empirical focus. Most
notable, perhaps, has been the trend since the mid-1980s toward what Marcus
14
and Fischer refer to as ‘‘the repatriation of anthropology as cultural critique’’ History and Development of
Environmental
(1986). Uncomfortable with the way we see otherness essentialised in indigenous Anthropology
rights campaigns, acculturative processes elided in an effort to stress the
authenticity of indigenous peoples, and concepts such as ‘‘wilderness’’ deployed
in environmentalist campaigns, we have taken it as our task to provide critical
commentary (see Brosius, 1999).

The study of social movements with environmental concerns has expanded the
notion of environmentalism in Anthropology to include not only explicitly
environmentalist nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) in the northern
hemisphere, but also a large number of movements in the industrializing nations
of poor or marginalised peoples that are struggling with such environmentally
based issues as control over and access to natural resources, encroachment on
their lands and livelihood, and protests against environmentally destructive
development projects. Martinez-Alier developed the concept of the
environmentalism of the poor and it has been applied to India by Guha, who
mentions situations that have “pitted rich against poor: logging companies against
hill villagers, dam builders against forest tribals, multinational corporations
deploying trawlers against artisanal fisherfolk rowing country-boats (see Paul
Little, 1999).

In the meantime, women’s environmental movements tend to arise when gender

is a determining factor in issues involving the division of labor, access to natural
resources, and property relations in ways that are disadvantageous to women
(Carney, 1996). In efforts to maintain existing rights or to resist new policies that
seek to extinguish them, the emergence of women’s resistance movements that
are directly related to environmental issues has generated the new fields of feminist
political ecology and ecofeminism.The ways in which these insights have been
refracted into other concerns is an important part of the Anthropology engagement
with environmentalism (see Paul Little, 1999).

According to Miller (1993) the complex domain of environmental rights refers

to those cases where the claims and rights of peoples to territories, natural
resources, knowledge systems, and even their bodies are being ignored or abused.
The rights of “indigenous or tribal peoplesto the lands and natural resources they
have historically occupied and continue to use have been a central focus of
anthropologists working with these groups. Anthropological research on various
environmental rights issues has been ethnographically well documented by
anthropologists.Studies of other environmental issues like biodiversity
conservation, displacement, ecodevelopment, and planning are explored by
anthropologists within the framework of the concept of resident peoples, which
defines highly diverse societies in relation to their presence in protected areas
that are taken for granted as an existing good.Importance in contributing
anthropologists’ interest in environmentalism has been the work of a series of
writers interested in critical examinations of contemporary discourses of
development. Anthropologists interventions and efforts to understand the
phenomenon of globalisation and the forms of articulation between ‘‘the local’’
and globalizing processes of environmentalism have also been of significance in
the field of Environmental Anthropology(see Paul Little, 1999).

Activity
What is environmentalism according to anthropologists?
15
Introduction to 1.3.2 Emergence and Development of Environmental
Environmental
Anthropology Anthropology
Although the discipline of Anthropology has its origin in the study of small-
scale societies, anthropologists began to consider human entities and their
environments as located in complex social processes. Greater appreciation of
the complexity of social and ecological systems developed alongside a growing
interest in interpreting the dynamics of ecological systems in terms of the dynamics
of larger political systems. Beyond the study of subsistence communities, scholars
enlarged their frame of reference to encompass global structures and situated the
cultures they studied within the broader international political economy. The
changes in Ecological Anthropology reflect a more general shift in anthropological
research drawing attention towards the intersection of global, national, regional
and local systems. New approaches emerged mainly in the 1990s concerned
with the impact of markets, social inequalities, and political conflicts to analyse
forms of social and cultural disintegration associated with the incorporation of
local communities into a modern world system (Paulson et al., 2005). It became
a challenge for anthropology to study local environmental and social changes
associated with global trends. Thereby, anthropologists have shown an extensive
interest in questions of nationalism and identity, of focusing on the hybrid
relationships between local integration and global politics, places-in-between,
and on what has come to be termed modernity (Lovell, 1999). While looking at
the mutual processes of definition and appropriation that take place between
what has been termed local and global settings, conceptual, spatial, and cultural
scales expanded in academic discourse.

A major difficulty in analysing the complexity of human-nature relationship is

that no single social theory of environmental phenomena in human experience
has been developed, just as there is a lack of methods and basic categories to
study them (Arizpe et al., 1996). Finding an appropriate methodology to shed
light on amalgamations between nature and culture is the prime challenge in
cross-cultural investigation. The understanding of how nature is constructed and
resource management is conceived in different cultural settings is not an easy
task, for the questions raised and the answers sought lie along the margins of
several disciplines. Referring to recent theoretical trends, Brosius writes of a
rather complicated scenario that is informed by a considerable degree of overlap
between various areas of theoretical and empirical focus (1999). To address both
the dynamics of culture and natural resources requires not only transcending
disciplinary lines but also that natural and social sciences be brought together.
The result, it has been suggested by Nakashima (1998), may be compared to a
labyrinth through which one must navigate with caution. This challenge has
been taken up by a number of anthropologists with different scopes and research
traditions. Out of the multi-layered engagement an environmental anthropology
emerged (see Townsend, 2000; Haenn and Wilk, 2006). While the Ecological
Anthropology of the 1960s and 1970s was characterised by an interest in localised
adaptations to specific ecosystems and by an ethnoscientific gaze, contemporary
environmental anthropology is more attentive to issues of power and inequality,
the contingency of cultural and historical formations, the significance of regimes
of knowledge production, and the acceleration of translocal processes (Brosius,
1999).The primary approaches within contemporary Ecological Anthropology
are cultural ecology, historical ecology, political ecology, and spiritual ecology.
Environmental anthropology builds on the above past experience of
16
anthropologists work. Environmental anthropology blends theory and analysis History and Development of
Environmental
with political awareness and policy concerns. Accordingly, new subfields have Anthropology
emerged, such as applied ecological anthropology and political ecology
(Greenberg and Park, 1994).

As it is threaded through all subfields of the discipline, environmental

anthropology combines a multitude of prevailing perspectives and conceptual
approaches in multi-sited contexts. Focusing on the interactions of local and
global patterns of resource management, a growing body of contributions has
appeared examining the dynamic linkages of human societies with their natural
environments. The implication of pluralist genres of research involves a wide
range of orientations in the emergence of new disciplinary factions. The scale
ranges from site-specific studies focused on local economies to perspectives
aimed at questions of global scope. At the same time, accounts on
environmentalism itself (Argyrou, 2005) and environmental bureaucracies and
agencies (Little, 1995) appeared as objects of recent study.

Environmental Anthropology, as you will learn, is a general term that can be

applied to many ways of studying humans as integral components of the
environment. Environmental Anthropology may be viewed as the study of applied
action and/or advocacy research to address practical environmental questions,
problems, and concerns. Often, new policy is the outcome of such applied action
or research. In most cases, such study centers upon the dynamic interaction
between human beings and their ecosystems or natural environments. Although
Environmental Anthropology only emerged in the 1980s, it has flourished since
the 1990s.

1.3.3 Definition and Scope of Environmental Anthropology

Environmental Anthropology is a more recent outgrowth of Ecological
Anthropology, which can be characterised as the study of the interrelationship
between human groups, cultures, and societies and the ecosystems in which they
are embedded in all times and all places across planet earth. Scholars have
delineated Environmental Anthropology as becoming more prominent in the
1980s and typically focusing on analysis and application of anthropological
knowledge to contemporary environmental issues. Ecological and Environmental
anthropology can most productively be viewed as a single interrelated discipline,
with Ecological Anthropology focusing more on basic academic research and
Environmental Anthropology being more focused on contemporary environmental
issues and having more of an applied, practicing, critical, and/or advocacy
approach.

According to Peter Brosius (1999) Environmental Anthropology provides a broad

disciplinary framework.He describes Environmental Anthropology as
investigating discourse, power, knowledge, resistance, development, cultural
studies, and political ecology through transdisciplinary work, and he identifies
three major current trends: a critique of essentialised images, an emphasis on
contestation and consideration of stakeholders, and an interest in globalisation.

Environment anthropology studies the way communities and social groups

identify and solve environmental problems by examining culturally diverse
perceptions, values and behaviours. Environmental anthropology contributes to
policy formulation and planning by improving and facilitating the communication
17
Introduction to process among diverse stakeholder groups. Environmental Anthropology helps
Environmental
Anthropology
bridge the gaps between scientists, resource managers and resource users and
the public (Society for Applied Anthropology, 2002).

Kottak (1999) describe Environmental Anthropology is a new approach linking

global to local systems, blends theoretical and applied research, focuses on
political aspects, and recognizes culture as mediating in ecological processes
rather than as merely an adaptive tool.In Environmental Anthropology, everything
is on a larger scale. The focus is no longer mainly the local ecosystem. The
“outsiders” who impinge on local and regional ecosystems become key players
in the analysis, as contact with external agents and agencies (for example,
migrants, refugees, warriors, tourists, developers) has become commonplace.
Concerned with proposing and evaluating policy, Environmental Anthropology
attempts not only to understand but also to devise culturally informed and
appropriate solutions to such problems and issues as environmental degradation,
environmental racism, and the role of the media, NGOs, and various kinds of
hazards in triggering ecological awareness, action, and sustainability.
Environmental anthropologists focus on new units of analysis—national and
international, in addition to the local and regional, as these levels vary and link
in time and space. Entering into a dialogue with schools of natural resources and
the environment, anthropology’s comparative perspective adds an international
dimension to the understanding of issues like environmental justice and
ecosystems management, which natural resource specialists have been studying
for decades.

Environmental Anthropology increasingly contributing research of broader

relevance to the local, national, international, and global communities in coping
with natural resources, hazards, and other environmental problems and issues.
In various ways anthropologists have addressed pivotal environmental issues
including the population explosion, natural resource depletion such as soil erosion,
unsustainable economic development and consumption levels, habitat destruction
like deforestation, biodiversity loss, environmental mismanagement, pollution,
hazards, environmental problems, conflict zones, climate change and
environmental justice. Environmental anthropology have developed the
foundation, maturity, momentum, and achievements to continue to contribute to
our understanding and advancement of human ecology and adaptation from the
local to the global levels as long as humanity has a future.

Increasing interest in environmentalism in recent years has shaped anthropology’s

role in analyzing these efforts. Brosius (1999) believes the goal is not simply to
understand human impact on the environment, but also to investigate how the
environment is constructed, represented, and contested, recognizing the power
of discourse in creating reality, especially in the perpetuation of structures of
domination. He discusses the recent growth of environmental NGOs, national
agencies, and transnational institutions concerned with the environment as well
as the resulting theoretical trends in Anthropology that critique environmental
movements, rhetoric, and representations of indigenous people. He also describes
eco-politics, community-based conservation, and environmental racism as other
current topics of interest in environmental anthropology.

As Thin (1996) writes, Environmental Anthropology enhances the understanding

not only of natural resources, human needs and uses of those resources, but also
18
of the spatial arrangements by which resources are appropriated and managed. History and Development of
Environmental
Cross-cultural comparison based on evidence from long-term studies of such Anthropology
locally adapted arrangements may promote better global understanding of the
conditions under which resource management remains sustainable or else results
in deterioration. Multidisciplinary research teams incorporating high tech
resources such as geographical information systems, remote sensing, and satellite
data imaging etc.

Activity
What is environmental anthropology and how did it emerge?

1.4 SUMMARY
Anthropology has a long history of exploring many facets of human-environment
interaction. Since the beginnings of the discipline in the 19th century and early
in the 20th century, scholars have been concerned with the ways in which societies
interact with their environment and utilise natural resources, as with the ways in
which natural processes are conceptualised and classified. Since, the 1950s and
60s Anthropology has developed approaches to human-environment interactions
in Ecological Anthropology. Ecological Anthropology is the study of how people
interact with their social and biophysical environments.

Ecological Anthropology was named as such during the 1960s, but it has many
ancestors, including Daryll Forde, Alfred Kroeber, and, especially, Julian Steward.
Columbia University can be identified as the birthplace of Ecological
Anthropology. Early studies of humans and their environment moved from the
“Environmental Determinism” of the anthropogeographers, to the “environmental
possibilism” of the ethnographers, and to the “Cultural Ecology” of Julian Steward
(Michael A. Little, 2009). Steward’s cultural ecology influenced the ecological
anthropology of Roy Rappaport and Andrew P.Vayda, but the analytic unit shifted
from “culture” to the ecological population, which was seen as using culture as
a means (the primary means) of adaptation to environments.

The Ecological Anthropology of the 1960s and 70swas known for its
functionalism, and systems theory.The studies in the in Ecological Anthropology
pointed out that natives did a reasonable job of managing their resources and
preserving their ecosystems but those studies, relying on the norm of cultural
relativism, generally aimed at being value-neutral. Anthropologists examined
the role of cultural practices and beliefs in enabling human populations to optimize
their adaptations to their environments and in maintaining undegraded local and
regional ecosystems.

By contrast, the new ecological, or environmental, Anthropology blends theory

and analysis with political awareness and policy concerns. Accordingly, new
subfields have emerged, such as applied Ecological Anthropology and Political
ecology (Greenberg and Park,1994).

Environmental Anthropology is a more recent outgrowth of Ecological

Anthropology, which can be characterised as the study of the interrelationship
between human groups, cultures, and societies and the ecosystems in which they
are embedded in all times and all places across planet earth. Scholars have
19
Introduction to delineated Environmental Anthropology as becoming more prominent in the
Environmental
Anthropology
1980s and typically focusing on analysis and application of anthropological
knowledge to contemporary environmental issues. Ecological and Environmental
Anthropology can most productively be viewed as a single interrelated discipline,
with Ecological Anthropology focusing more on basic academic research and
Environmental Anthropology being more focused on contemporary environmental
issues, problems and having more of an applied, practicing, critical, and/or
advocacy approach.

Environmental Anthropology increasingly contributing research of broader

relevance to the local, national, international, and global communities in coping
with natural resources, hazards, and other environmental problems and issues.
In various ways anthropologists have addressed pivotal environmental issues
including the population explosion, natural resource depletion such as soil erosion,
unsustainable economic development and consumption levels, habitat destruction
like deforestation, biodiversity loss, environmental mismanagement, pollution,
hazards, environmental problems, conflict zones, and climate change.
Environmental Anthropology have developed the foundation, maturity,
momentum, and achievements to continue to contribute to our understanding
and advancement of human ecology and adaptation from the local to the global
levels as long as humanity has a future.

1.5 REFERENCES
Argyrou, Vassos. 2005.The Logic of Environmentalism. Anthropology, Ecology
and Postcoloniality. New York [u.a.]: Berghahn Books (Studies in Environmental
Anthropology and Ethnobiology, 1).

Arizpe L., Fernanda P., Margarita V. 1996.Culture and Global Change: Social
Perceptions of Deforestation in the Lacandona Rain Forest in Mexico. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.

Berlin, B. 1992.Etbnobiological Classification.Princeton: Princeton University

Press.

Berglund, E. 1998.Knowing Nature, knowing science: An Ethnography of

environmental activism. Cambridge, UK:White Horse Press.

Brosius, Peter J. 1999.Analyses and Interventions: Anthropological Engagements

with Environmentalism. Current Anthropology40 (3), 277-309.

Dove, M. 2001.Interdisciplinary Borrowing in Environmental Anthropology and

the Critique of Modern Science. In: C. L. Crumley (ed.), New Directions in
Anthropology and Environment. Intersections, 90-110. Walnut Creek: Altamira
Press.

Ellen, R. 1982.Environment, Subsistence and System: The Ecology of Small-

scale Social Formations. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Greenberg, James B., and Thomas K. Park. 1994.Political Ecology. Political

Ecology 1:1-12.

20
Haenn, Nora & Richard Wilk (eds.) 2006.The Environment in Anthropology: A History and Development of
Environmental
Reader in Ecology, Culture, and Sustainable Living. New York [u.a.]: New York Anthropology
University Press.

Harney, Dawid. 1996 Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. London
Blackwell.

Ingold, T.1992.Culture and the perception of the environment.In: E.Croll&

D.Parkin (Eds), Bush base: Forest farm: Culture, environment and development.
London: Routledge.

Kottak, Conrad P. 1999.“The New Ecological Anthropology.”American

Anthropologist, 101(1): 23-35.

Little, P.E. 1999.Environments and Environmentalisms in Anthropological

Research: Facing a New Millennium. Annual Review of Anthropology.28:253-
284.

Lovell, Nadia 1999.Introduction. Belonging in Need of Emplacement? In N.

Lovell (ed.), Locality and Belonging, 1-24. London [u.a]: Routledge.

Milton, K., ed. 1993.Environmentalism: The view from anthropology. London:

Routledge.

Milton, K. 1996.Environmentalism and Cultural Theory: Exploring the Role of

Anthropology in Environmental Discourse. Routledge, London/New York.

Moran, E. F. 1979.Human Adaptability.North Scituate, Mass: Duxbury Press.

Moran, E. F. 1996.Environmental Anthropology: In Encyclopedia of Cultural

Anthropology Vol. 2. D. Levinsion, M. Ember (eds.). Henry Holt and company,
New York.

Nakashima, Douglas. 1998.Conceptualizing Nature. The Cultural Context of

ResourceManagement.Nature & Resources.34 (2), 8-22.

Netting, R. McC. 1977.Cultural Ecology.Cummings Publishing Company,

Reading, Massachusetts.

Orlove, Benjamin S. 1980.Ecological Anthropology, Annual Review of

Anthropology Vol 9: 235-273.

Paulson, S., Lisa L. Gezon., Michael Watts. 2005.Politics, Ecologies,

Genealogies. In : S. Paulson & L. Gezon (eds.), Political Ecology Across Spaces,
Scales, and Social Groups, 17-37. New Brunswick [u.a.]: Rutgers University
Press.

Rappaport, R.A. 1968.Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New
Guinea People. Yale University Press, New haven.

Rappaport, R.A. 1969.Some Suggestions Concerning Concept and Method in

Ecological Anthropology. In: D. Damas, Ed. Contributions to Anthropology:
Ecological Essays. National Museum of Canada, Bulletin 230. Queens Printers
for Canada, Ottawa.
21
Introduction to Rival, Laura (ed.) 1998.The Social Life of Trees.Anthropological Perspectives
Environmental
Anthropology
on Tree Symbolism. Oxford: Berg.

Salzman, Phillip Carl and Donald W. Attwood.1996.Ecological Anthropology

In Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. Alan Barnard and Jonathan
Spencer, eds. Pp. 169-172. London: Routledge.

Smith, Thomas. 1977.Nakahara: Family Farming and Population in a Japanese

Village, 1717–1830, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Society for Applied Anthropology. 2003. Retrieved May 3, 2002 from: http://
www.sfaa.net/eap/ea.html.

Steward, J. 1955.“The Concept and Method of Cultural Ecology.” In Theory of

Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution, Urbana: University
of Illinois Press.

Thin, Neil.1996.Environment In: A. Barnard & J. Spencer (eds.), Encyclopedia

of Social and Cultural Anthropology, 185-188. London [u.a.]: Routledge.

Townsend, Patricia K. 2000.Environmental Anthropology:From Pigs to Policies.

Prospect Heights: Waveland Press.

Vayda, Andrew P., and Roy A. Rappaport.1968.Ecology, Cultural and

Noncultural. In: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology: Essays in the Scope and
Methods of the Science of Man. James A. Clifton, ed., pp. 477–497. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin.

Vayda, A.P., Ed. 1969.Environment and Cultural Behaviour. The Natural History
Press, New York.

Suggested Reading
Peace, A. 1996. Loggers are environmentalists too: towards an ethnography of
environmental discourse. The Australian Journal of Anthropology.7(1): 43-66.

Michael R. Dove and Carol Carpenter.2007.Environmental Anthropology: A

Historical Reader.Blackwell publishing.

Sample Questions
1) Distinguish between Ecological and Environmental anthropology?
2) Describe briefly about theoretical perspectives and current approaches in
Ecological Anthropology?
3) Define EnvironmentalAnthropology and its scope?
4) Discussthe aspects of anthropological engagements with environmental
discourse?
5) How did environmental anthropology emergence explain?

22