The Environment in Anthropology, Second Edition

A Reader in Ecology, Culture, and Sustainable Living

Nora Haenn, Allison Harnish, Richard Wilk, Nora Haenn, Allison Harnish, Richard Wilk

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781479876761
• eBook ISBN: 9781479854271
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

Presents ecology and current environmental studies from an anthropological point of view

The Environment in Anthropology presents ecology and current environmental studies from an anthropological point of view. From the classics to the most current scholarship, this text connects the theory and practice in environment and anthropology, providing readers with a strong intellectual foundation as well as offering practical tools for solving environmental problems.

Haenn, Wilk, and Harnish pose the most urgent questions of environmental protection: How are environmental problems mediated by cultural values? What are the environmental effects of urbanization? When do environmentalists' goals and actions conflict with those of indigenous peoples? How can we assess the impact of "environmentally correct" businesses? They also cover the fundamental topics of population growth, large scale development, biodiversity conservation, sustainable environmental management, indigenous groups, consumption, and globalization.

This revised edition addresses new topics such as water, toxic waste, neoliberalism, environmental history, environmental activism, and REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation), and it situates anthropology in the multi-disciplinary field of environmental research. It also offers readers a guide for developing their own plan for environmental action. This volume offers an introduction to the breadth of ecological and environmental anthropology as well as to its historical trends and current developments. Balancing landmark essays with cutting-edge scholarship, bridging theory and practice, and offering suggestions for further reading and new directions for research, The Environment in Anthropology continues to provide the ideal introduction to a burgeoning field.

SECTION 1

So, What Is Environmental Anthropology?

How do anthropologists go about studying humans’ relationships with nature? How has this field of study changed over time? Questions regarding how people modify, symbolize, and adapt to their immediate surroundings have intrigued anthropologists since the discipline’s earliest days. This section establishes some foundations for studying human-environment issues in anthropology and traces some of the recent trends within the growing field of ecological anthropology.

Ecological anthropology has been one of the most influential forms of anthropological inquiry since the 1960s (McGee and Warms 2012). Recognizing the importance of anthropological theory stemming from this era, we begin the volume with Julian Steward’s work dating from the 1950s. Steward explained cultural diversity and culture change as resulting from individual cultures’ unique adaptations to specific environmental circumstances. His views contrasted strongly with those of other theorists of the time, who believed that cultures followed a single universal trajectory of development. At the beginning of the 20th century, so-called unilineal evolutionists like Lewis Henry Morgan and Sir Edward Burnett Tylor believed that all cultures had passed (or would pass) through the same series of stages as they evolved from primitive to complex civilizations. For example, Tylor postulated that all religions “progressed” from animism to polytheism to enlightened monotheism, “what he viewed as the highest form of religious belief” (McGee and Warms 2012: 12). Steward proposed an alternative multilineal explanation for similarities and differences between societies, one that did not assume that all cultures passed through the same identical stages of development. The methodology for studying these multilineal trends in societal forms involved a field of study that Steward called cultural ecology. Cultural ecology “is the study of the processes by which a society adapts to its environment” (Steward 1968, cited in Moore 2012: 178). Under the framework of cultural ecology, parallel social patterns occurring in different cultures are viewed as adaptations to similar environments rather than fixed elements in a unilineal development (Moore 2012).

Steward’s writing built on previous debates regarding environmental determinism and “possibilism.” Respectively, determinism and possibilism examined whether environmental features determined or simply made possible cultural formations. By the 1950s, most anthropologists subscribed to this latter approach. Nonetheless, determinist ideas persist as researchers explore the extent to which ecologies are malleable and the extent to which people must adapt to the demands of their immediate environment. Anthropologists thus often focus on the creativity involved in developing adaptive systems of exploitation. Prior to Steward’s development of cultural ecology, anthropologists gave little consideration to the environment when endeavoring to explain cultural differences. The selection included here provides the outline of Steward’s idea of a “culture core,” those cultural features most closely associated with the utilization of a specific environment.

One of the most well-known monographs in cultural ecology was authored by this section’s next contributor, Robert McC. Netting. Netting famously studied the agrarian practices of small-scale family farmers in the hills of Nigeria and the Alps of Switzerland. Here, we have included an excerpt from Smallholders, Householders—an ambitious, cross-cultural, comparative study of rural cultivators in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In it, Netting argues that the household is the most effective management unit for intensive production and that smallholders can make a decent living off their land without experiencing the ecological damage, economic instabilities, resource exhaustion, and social inequalities inherent in large-scale industrial faming and export-oriented agribusiness. Netting introduces ideas of sustainability to the collection and expands notions of adaptation to include not only cultures’ adaptation to a physical environment but also their adaptation to broader economic systems. Netting drew attention to the creativity of smallholders and had the foresight to contend that the smallholder system might offer a sustainable alternative to energy-intensive agriculture (Wilk and Stone 1998). Indeed, he made this assertion before sustainability became the buzzword that it is today. Moreover, Netting argued that the most productive farming economies occurred without government interference in production decisions. This version of cultural ecology differed from Steward’s because Netting recognized the importance of colonial forces, local politics, indigenous ecological knowledge, and uneven development for smallholder production systems (Wilk 2006). The following passage from Richard R. Wilk and Priscilla Stone eloquently captures Netting’s position: “In Nigeria‚ [Netting] was appalled at the ignorance and arrogance of colonial officials who meddled in the subsistence livelihoods of millions of people‚ without an inkling of the consequences. His work taught him that African cultivators were wise and wily‚ possessing immense ecological knowledge‚ and a wonderfully adaptable and tough social system. Any responsible development project‚ he thought‚ must start from this system and knowledge” (1998: 179).

The anthropologists James Fairhead and Melissa Leach, like Netting, take issue with the received wisdom that has been passed down through colonial memoirs, policy documents, and reports. Working in the West African prefecture of Kissidougou in southern Guinea, Fairhead and Leach employ a wealth of empirical evidence (including local oral accounts, interview data, participant observation, village resource and vegetation surveys, and a time series of aerial photomosaics) in order to challenge the popular narrative that assumes first that deforestation is occurring in this region and second that it is caused by negligent land management on the part of local residents. In place of this “false forest history,” Fairhead and Leach propose a counternarrative describing how residents of Kissidougou actually encouraged the formation of forest islands around their villages as a way to shelter tree crops, provide natural resources, conceal ritual activities, and offer general protection from the elements. Netting’s and Fairhead and Leach’s attention to environmental history, power inequality, and social constructions of nature corresponds with a larger transition in the field of ecological anthropology from the cultural ecology of Steward toward the political ecology of Eric Wolf and of Piers Blaikie and Harold Brookfield.

In the 1970s, Wolf—a student of Steward’s—incorporated a greater focus on historical inequalities of power and wealth as they relate to humans’ access and control over resources. Combining cultural ecology with the dependency theory of Andre Gunder Frank and the world system theory of Immanuel Wallerstein, Wolf coined the term political ecology to refer to this now-widespread interdisciplinary theoretical orientation (Biersack 2006). Having been further developed and honed by an array of scholars working mostly inside the discipline of geography (see for instance Blaikie and Brookfield 1987; Bryant and Bailey 1997; Bebbington and Batterbury 2001; Paulson et al. 2003; Walker 2005; Robbins 2012), political ecology remains the most widely used approach in ecological anthropology today (Townsend 2009).

From the earliest days of political ecology, researchers working in this area have been concerned with marginal social groups and issues of social justice (Paulson et al. 2005). The next selection, by Dianne Rocheleau, Barbara Thomas-Slayter, and Esther Wangari, exemplifies the ongoing efforts of researchers to refine the political ecology framework. In particular, since Rocheleau et al. observe that gender interacts with other axes of social difference (including class, caste, race, culture, and ethnicity), they propose bringing a feminist perspective to political ecology. They merge into the existing framework the themes of gendered knowledge, gendered environmental rights and responsibilities, and gendered environmental politics and grassroots activism. The resulting feminist political ecology explores how the conservation, commodification, enclosure, degradation, and dispossession of nature is experienced disproportionately on the basis of gender.

But cultural ecology, political ecology, and feminist political ecology are just some of the approaches to studying human-nature interactions that anthropologists have taken over the years. Other approaches include historical ecology, evolutionary ecology, and spiritual ecology, as well as ethnoecology, which is the focus of the next chapter, authored by Virginia D. Nazarea.

Ethnoecology is the cross-cultural study of how humans perceive and use the natural environment. Ethnoecologists integrate techniques from cultural ecology, biology, and linguistics to explore the role of cognition in framing humans’ environmental behaviors (Brosius et al. 1986; Casagrande 2006; Nazarea 1999). They concentrate on terminology and classificatory systems for organizing knowledge about plants, animals, soils, habitats, and ecological processes. One of the primary claims of ethnoecologists has been that Western scientists tend to underestimate the extent of other people’s environmental knowledge and arrogantly dismiss as inferior any non-Western ways of knowing. For example, Harold Conklin—a pioneer of ethnoecology—noted how the traditional agricultural practice of shifting cultivation (also known as milpa, swidden agriculture, field-forest rotation, and slash-and-burn agriculture) had been dismissed by colonial officers, development officials, and the scientific elite as primitive or wasteful, despite the fact that it was only minimally studied (Conklin 1954). After meticulously observing and participating in more than a full annual cycle of agricultural activities, Conklin discovered that the Hanunóo of the Philippines recognize and distinguish over 1,600 different plant types, over 430 of which are cultigens, and most of those are swidden grown (Conklin 1954; Brosius et al. 1986). Conklin drew attention not only to the diversity of swidden agricultural practices but also to the ecological benefits of certain swidden styles.

Generally speaking, “shifting cultivation may refer to any one of an undetermined number of agricultural systems” (Conklin 1957: 1). Typically, it involves the use of fire to clear fields for cultivation (the fire produces a layer of fertilizing ash). After a few years, when the fields become exhausted, new plots are cleared, and the old ones are left to fallow. As the fallowing fields (called swiddens) are reclaimed by native plants and trees, they may become a source of fruits, nuts, roots, fibers, and medicinal plants (Cornell 2011). While some (partial) forms of shifting cultivation—exercised under conditions of population growth and land pressure—can cause long-term environmental degradation (Conklin 1957; Fox et al. 2000), other (integral) systems of swidden farming are efficient, sustainable, and integrated into the existing natural ecosystem (Geertz 1963). Integral shifting cultivation restores nutrient levels in the soil and maintains greater biodiversity than does permanent agriculture, which typically involves either tree-dominated (e.g., rubber, palm oil, tea) or annual-dominated (e.g., maize, cassava) land cover (Chhabra et al. 2008). As Clifford Geertz writes, much of the depreciatory statements about swidden “are dubious and unqualified generalizations (and a few are simply incorrect)” (1963: 16). Conklin’s groundbreaking work revealed the adaptive properties of swidden agriculture and exposed the sophistication of Hanunóo land-use practices.

Following the work of Conklin, ethnoecologists recognize and place a high value on the traditional environmental knowledge that indigenous and other societies have cultivated over centuries or even millennia. Here, Virginia D. Nazarea suggests that ethnoecologists should shift their attention from theoretical interests in cognition and classification to applied work exploring the relationship between cognition and action. Pursued in this way, ethnoecology can provide important insights for the conservation of cultural and biological diversity and the study of environmental conflicts (Casagrande 2006; this volume, section 6).

This section’s ethical discussion comes from Richard J. McNeil, who introduces readers to some basic concepts and principles in the field of environmental ethics. Ethical questions are fundamental for much of the work that we do as ecological anthropologists. Yet few of us are fluent in the language of ethics, and many feel uncomfortable incorporating ethics into public discussions of environmental policies and decision making. As McNeil explains, most of us “take and argue ethical positions without much prior reflection or understanding of the implications.” Sometimes we make moral arguments without recognizing them as such; other times, we claim we are making a moral statement when in fact we are not. McNeil’s “primer” helps readers to become more comfortable with the ethical dimensions of studying and responding to environmental issues. It offers a vocabulary that appears in later selections and with which students may begin to articulate their own ethical standpoints.

In the sixty years since the time of Julian Steward, ecological anthropology has grown from a conversation among researchers, professors, and students into a mature topical specialization and applied research field; its practitioners are as likely to hold university appointments as they are to work for government agencies, businesses, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Several American universities feature graduate programs with concentrations in ecological anthropology. Inside the American Anthropological Association, there is a professional network of ecological anthropologists, with a listserv boasting over two thousand members. Still, there remains some disagreement regarding the field’s terminology. Some use the term environmental anthropology as an umbrella for all the many anthropological approaches to environmental issues (including evolutionary ecology, historical ecology, cultural ecology, political ecology, ethnoecology, and spiritual ecology) and reserve the term ecological anthropology for research that seeks to describe a single ecosystem involving a human population (Townsend 2009). Others use the term ecological anthropology as the umbrella term and define environmental anthropology as the applied dimension of ecological anthropology (Sponsel 2007). Still others use the terms environmental anthropology and ecological anthropology interchangeably. Whatever one chooses to call it, the field of anthropology and the environment is alive and well and continuously responding to new information with new tools for exploring human-environment relationships.

In general, the transformations that have characterized ecological anthropology over the years mirror those that have occurred within the wider discipline of anthropology. Just as cultural anthropologists began to recognize the fluidity, contingency, and malleability of their topic of analysis, ecological anthropologists too recognized that “there are no isolated ecosystems and . . . all humans participate in a world system” (Kottak 1999: 25). Accordingly, anthropologists have broadened their focus to explore the ways in which regional, national, and international economic and political forces inform local processes of cultural and environmental change. And an increasing number of anthropologists characterize their work as applied, rather than purely theo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• General Introduction
• Section 1. So, What Is Environmental Anthropology?
• Section 2. What Does Population Have to Do with It?
• Section 3. What Are Urban, Rural, and Suburban Environments?
• Section 4. How Does Globalization Affect Environment and Culture?
• Section 5. How Do Identities Shape Ecological Experiences?
• Section 6. Can Biodiversity Be Conserved?
• Section 7. Is Green Consumerism the Answer?
• Section 8. Okay, Now What?
• Contributors
• Index