The Ecological Transition

Cultural Anthropology and Human Adaptation

John W. Bennett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351304702
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Ecology
• Index: Biological Sciences

Written during the height of the ecology movement, The Ecological Transition is a stunning interdisciplinary work. It combines anthropology, ecology, and sociology to formulate an understanding of cultural-environmental relationships. While anthropologists have been studying relationships between humans and the physical environment for a very long time, only in the last thirty years have questions inherent in these relationships broadened beyond description and classification. For example, the concept of environment has been extended beyond the physical into the social.

Although anthropologists have adopted many of the concepts that Bennett develops in the book, he also feels that the central issues have never been addressed, either by anthropologists or by people in related disciplines. The most important of these, in Bennett's opinion, is the failure to incorporate a respect for the environmental in contemporary culture, which would allow making exceptions in certain human practices in order to protect the environment. His point in The Ecological Transition is that a basic cultural change in modern civilization is necessary to achieve this end.

Both a theoretical and a practical work, The Ecological Transition emphasizes the relationships between human culture, the physical environment, technology, and social policy. The Ecological Transition is a challenging volume that makes us face the consequences of human behavior in the modern world: its effect on pollution, natural resources, agriculture, the economy, and population, to name just a few areas. The book remains a significant contribution to the discourse on social, economic, and environmental problems. While the book was first published in 1976, it still reads as a contemporary tract.

CHAPTER 1

Prologue: Images of Man and Nature

Anthropologists and their associates in geography have been studying relationships between humans and the physical environment for a very long time, and some of the history of that effort will be discussed later in the book. For most of this period, the topic was handled mainly in terms of description and classification: what kinds of cultures inhabited what kinds of environment? When explanation was desired, it took the form of attempts to measure the amount of influence a particular environment may have had in shaping particular cultural patterns. This task was approached from either an environmental bias, in which case the presence of considerable influence from Nature was assumed; or from a cultural bias, in which case environmental influence was assumed to be minimal, with humans in full control of Nature.

Only recently has the problem of relationships between humans and the physical environment broadened to include quite different questions. For one, the concept of environment has been extended beyond the physical into the social. That is, “other people” are seen as a milieu which influences human behavior and with which humans must cope; hence, the social environment must be given a weight equal to the physical in our ecological theory. For another, the question of causation or influence has become more complex, emphasizing the concept of system, in which both behavioral (or cultural) and environmental (either/or physical and social) factors are seen to be in a reciprocal process of interaction.

The use of the word ecology is recent in environmental studies in anthropology. This word, now almost done to death by its attachment to the environmental movement of our own time, originated in biology, where it continues to connote the work done by researchers on plants and animals living in natural milieux. In anthropology, cultural-environmental research was not considered ecological until Julian Steward used the term “cultural ecology” in the late 1940s. However, there are many ecologies in anthropology, if we use the word as a general referent for studies of organism-environmental interrelations.

As we hope to show later, the “ecological” problems associated with the human species are very large in number and, at this juncture, probably impossible of synthesis in a general theory or subdiscipline. There is some question as to whether the term “ecology” should be used at all to describe these many interests and topics inside of anthropology and in other disciplines as well. The social sciences have a special problem here: since they include social phenomena as part of the environment with which humans cope, their central problem becomes one of distinguishing the relative influences or functions of social and physical environmental factors in human behavior and institutions. This problem, in one sense the central topic of anthropologist Julian Steward’s cultural ecology, is not even close to some general solution, if indeed there is one.

At this time, two tasks need to be performed in this field of study. First, the work of cultural anthropologists on how social factors are implicated in human-Nature interrelationships or systems need to be reviewed, and its accomplishments assessed. This, in essence, is what I attempt to do in this book, although from a special point of view. The second task consists of a critique of some converging approaches in cultural anthropology, including cultural ecology, economic anthropology, social exchange, and behavioral adaptation. While this second task is not my major objective, it obtrudes, and many of the concepts and approaches discussed and proposed in the book are heading in this direction. I have no name for my approach: I call it simply “human adaptation,” or “adaptive dynamics.” Similarly, for want of a rubric for the many approaches concerned with culture-environment questions, I continue to use the term “ecology”—and, in the social context, “cultural ecology.”

NATURE INTO CULTURE

The central thesis of this book is that the best case for the existence of something called cultural ecology can be made on the grounds of public policy. Research data that has significance for shaping environmental policies (mostly physical, but always including some social) can be obtained from something less than a comprehensive human ecological science or theory, which does not yet exist in any event. In formulating a policy-relevant cultural ecology, one also faces up to the need to bring anthropology as a discipline into somewhat closer contact with the historical present. This is necessary because of the “ecological transition”—the progressive incorporation of Nature into human frames of purpose and action—which is rapidly eliminating the cases of distinctive, isolated tribal adaptations to natural phenomena that have been a specialty of the anthropologists. The historical trend is now toward much larger systems, in which the behavior of tribal people or peasants toward natural resources is determined as much or more by social forces beyond their control as it is by internal concepts and needs. In its bare essence, our definition of cultural ecology is therefore a study of how and why humans use Nature, how they incorporate Nature into Society, and what they do to themselves, Nature, and Society in the process.¹

This type of approach requires standards of measurement or effect. The fundamental criterion that I advocate for the assessment of impact by humans on Nature is sustained yield;^* the basic value for man is survival at a reasonable level of security. These are very general criteria; over and beyond them are a host of other values, preferences, and means-end schema that characteristically conflict, and between which the citizen will be required to make choices, compromises, and trade-offs.

The term “adaptation,” used frequently in this book, refers to my focus on strategic behavior as the key to a policy-oriented cultural ecology. The rational or purposive manipulation of the social and natural environments constitutes the human approach to Nature: the characteristics of this style of adaptation must, it seems to me, become the heart of any approach to human ecology that concerns itself with the question of what people want and how they go about getting it, and what effects this has on themselves and Nature. Adaptive behavior is viewed as multidimensional: what may be adaptive for one individual is maladaptive for another or for the group; what may be adaptive for humans may not be so for Nature. The effort to distinguish between these dimensions of adaptation is one of the tasks of an anthropological ecology concerned with policy.

My fundamental assumption is that the history of human-environment relationships, especially since the appearance of Homo sapiens,^* has featured a growing absorption of the physical environment into the cognitively defined world of human events and actions—indeed, to the point where the argument seriously can be advanced that the concept “human ecology” is a myth, and that there is (or shortly will be) only, and simply, Human Society: people and their wants, and the means of satisfying them. Actually this idea has been clinging to the periphery of anthropological thought for many years. An example can be found in the old distinction between material and nonmaterial culture, which contained a proposal to the effect that water flowing over a dam becomes an item of material culture, since man is using the water as he uses any tool. Hence, humans are constantly engaged in seizing natural phenomena, converting them into cultural objects, and reinterpreting them with cultural ideas.

If Culture comes to embrace more and more of Nature, we are left with a dilemma: on the one hand, it becomes more difficult to work with theories that assume a permanent distinction between Nature and Culture—Humanity and Environment—Man-made and Natural environments. On the other hand, if Culture absorbs Nature, then what general theory of ecology shall we choose? The situation is responsible for considerable intellectual confusion: the merging of Nature and Culture might lead scientists to assume that a general ecology based on biological (plant-animal) ecology includes both, but I believe that the long-term trend will run in the other direction—toward a theory that assimilates Humans and Nature into a common social frame of reference.

The dualistic theories that opposed Humans to Nature led, in Western thought, to two contrasting conceptions: first, that Humanity, or Culture, is determined by Nature; and second, that as Humans developed natural resources, they became increasingly “independent” of Nature. These ideas were always subjected to criticism, but in the late 19th century, the second tended to predominate, since the majority of scholars found it difficult to conceive of a truly finite or limited environment: Kenneth Boulding’s “space ship Earth” (1962).² Therefore, they went along with the Nature-exploiters of the age of industrialization who built a high-energy culture on the assumption that the benefits to Everyman, and especially to the profit-takers, were always greater than any possible costs. Anthropology, like other fields of study emerging in the 19th century, has been preoccupied chiefly with what people do for themselves, and not with what they do to Nature or to themselves in the process (Anderson, 1969; Shea and Emmons, 1972). Consequently, anthropologists, like other scholars, have spent most of their time refuting environmental determinism, rather than seriously examining the consequences of an anthropocentric ecological posture and theory.

The scientific fields concerned with human-environmental relations are in a transitional period marked by a struggle to evolve an adequate understanding of this long-neglected problem. The effort must proceed at both empirical and theoretical levels. At the time of writing, the most significant research undertakings are to be found in the natural sciences, where attention is given mainly to the polluting effects of human intervention and unrestricted transformation of resources. The social sciences are just beginning to show comparable interest. It is typical that while, among these social fields, anthropology has displayed more consistent concern through the years for human-environmental research, the majority of anthropological studies have been related to purely-intradisciplinary problems and have made little contribution to questions of policy.

THE ECOLOGICAL TRANSITION AND ITS IMAGERY

The title of this book, “the ecological transition,” is to some extent a misnomer insofar as its substance is dealt with directly in only one chapter—Chapter 5. However, the idea pervades the book. By the “ecological transition” I mean, first, the development of an anthropocentric orientation toward the natural world that emerged in the Western Renaissance but has since characterized every civilization and nation. Although the substantive problems of this book concern a single scientific discipline—cultural anthropology—I try to visualize these problems and the problems of the discipline as artifacts of this historical transition.

In technological terms, the transition concerns the tendency to seek ever-larger quantities of energy in order to satisfy the demands of human existence, comfort, and wealth. The events associated with this transition are the topics of archeology insofar as one is concerned with the emergence of food-production, irrigation, fire and the wheel, improved tool-kits, and the technology of advanced architecture. The transition is the topic of historical study when we are concerned with armies, empires, and nations; it becomes the subject matter of economics when we consider industrialization and commerce. Each of these many events made its contribution to the transition, and to the increasing impact on Nature, but the process did not become overwhelming until the Industrial Revolution.

Sociologically, the transition is expressed by the increasing size of the social organ and the networks of communication associated with, and also causing, the ecological and technological changes. These social developments are always accompanied by another: the emergence of hierarchies of status that differentiate humans into those who have power and those who do not, or between those who have prestige (or standing) and those who lack it. While the rudiments of these differentiae are found in all human societies, however simple, they become a focus for chronic social unrest mainly in advanced stages of the transition.

Ecologically speaking, the transition is expressed in the growing incorporation of Nature into Culture and by the breakdown of local self-sufficiency—the ability of the local group to satisfy its needs with existing resources in a particular geographical range. Increasingly, as the transition proceeded, the local groups cultivated wants that could be satisfied only by resources at far distance, enlarging the “home range” indefinitely and subjecting Nature to intensified exploitation in order to acquire wealth for the implementation and enhancement of status. Thus, the transition is marked by the expansion of ecological impact resulting from the accumulation of substances and objects for social purposes unrelated to biological survival.

Philosophically, the transition concerns the replacement of certain images of humanity by others. Hannah Arendt, in her book The Human Condition, was concerned with some of these changes, and a modified version of her exposition can serve our purposes. The important concept is her use of the old term Homo faber, that personification of Homo sapiens that emphasizes the makings of things—“man the maker and fabricator, whose job it is to do violence to nature in order to build a permanent home for himself” (p. 304). The outstanding characteristics of Homo faber are listed by Arendt as follows:

And, indeed, among the outstanding characteristics of the modern age from its beginning to our own time we find the typical attitudes of homo faber : his instrumentalization of the world, his confidence in tools and in the productivity of the maker of artificial objects; his trust in the all-comprehensive range of the means-end category, his conviction that every issue can be solved and every human motivation reduced to the principle of utility; his sovereignty, which regards everything given as material and thinks of the whole of nature as of “an immense fabric from which we can cut out whatever we want to resew it however we like”; his equation of intelligence with ingenuity, that is, his contempt for all thought which cannot be considered to be “the first step … for the fabrication of artificial objects, particularly of tools to make tools, and to vary their fabrication indefinitely”; finally, his matter-of-course identification of fabrication with action. (pp. 305-306)

Of course, Homo faber has always been with us, since the term simply refers to an aspect of the human personality. This aspect can take on greater or lesser importance in particular times and cultures. We tend to view Oriental civilizations as keeping Homo faber in control and emphasizing another of Ms. Arendt’s types—the vita contemplativa—as a more suitable cultural goal. The crucial development in the West, and in industrial societies generally, was not, according to Arendt, merely the dominance of Homo faber over other modes of the human personality, but rather the loss of standards of meaning concerning the nature of the objects produced. This loss came about as a result of a growing emphasis on instrumental rationality—on the process of fabrication itself. This shift to an emphasis on process over content detached men from the restraining ethics and philosophical meanings of civilization and defined the “what” in terms of objectives of power and mastery over Nature and over other men. Whereas the vita activa—the doing and performing (the political)—component was guided by the vita contemplativa in preindustrial culture (vide the image of the samurai writing poetry to define the meaning of his life), in modern culture the vita activa has lost these guiding restraints and is defined by the Homo faber instrumentalities. Hence, the increasing impact on Nature in the ecological transition.

Ms. Arendt’s rather intricate and perhaps fanciful philosophical reconstruction is an oversimplification (or at least my rendition is such); but it is a useful one nonetheless, and it establishes the right mood. Anthropology, like other products of modern civilization, has undergone comparable changes in its basic imagery and conceptual foundations. One stream of thought in anthropology has tended to portray humanity as multipotential—both constructive and destructive, moral and amoral, traditional and innovative—which is of course nothing less than the truth, although just why the balance may tip one way or the other is another question. If the multipotentiality is viewed without choice or bias, then the resulting attitude is one of ethical neutrality—and certainly this has characterized anthropology (via cultural relativity) and the other social sciences for a long time.

But anthropology was never really content with this neutral stance; like other social sciences, it contained covert preferences or images. One, of course, was the concept of progress. This position, which implied that human proclivities worked more to the good than the bad whatever the context, saw the human adventure as a struggle upward toward the material conquest of Nature. As we shall point out later in the book, the emphasis in prehistory was on accomplishment and progress, not cultural decline or destructive impact on Nature as the price of advancement. Allied to the progress image was the liberal humanist version of humanity, which saw humans as essentially good, rational, and inclined to take the moderate course in the long run. The realization of human potential, whatever it may be, was seen as a generally desirable outcome of history.

These optimistic images have been considerably shaken by current events. The ethologists lean toward a pessimistic interpretation of the human potential, seeing man as a kind of rogue species with a bias toward the destructive that needs constant restraint. Radical cultural anthropologists are inclined to see progress in negative terms as equivalent to human exploitation by the powerful—the course of human history in its sociological context of status has been a very high price to pay for material conquest. The ecologists (though not as yet to any great extent in anthropology) see man as a despoiler of Nature and stupid to boot, since he ignores dangerous feedbacks that endanger his own survival. Obviously, these shifts in human imagery are leading to a reexamination of the theoretical basis of anthropology, and this book has been conceived in part as a modest contribution to that end. It is my conviction that only an injection of philosophy—a return to the consideration of value in things and in human actions—will do the job.

Many aspects of these images in anthropology can be see...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface to AldineTransaction Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Prologue: Images of Man and Nature
• 2 Culture, Ecology, and Social Policy
• 3 Human Ecology and Cultural Ecology
• 4 System, Ecosystem, and Social System
• 5 The Ecological Transition: From Equilibrium to Disequilibrium
• 6 Culture and Ecology: The Use of Biological Concepts
• 7 Culture and Ecology: Culture as the Master Variable
• 8 Adaptation and Human Behavior
• 9 Adaptation as Social Process
• 10 Epilogue: Ecology, Culture, and Anthropology
• References
• Index