Environment and Anthropology

Abstract

The history of anthropological theories of human-environment relations will be briefly covered: environmental determinism, sociological possibilism, cultural ecology, and ecosystem approaches. Such approaches, which broadly endorse positivist scientific methodologies, constitute what is now generally described as ecological anthropology. The package of key concepts here includes adaptation (particularly cultural adaptation), energy transfer, systems models, and, since the nineteen-seventies, some applications of neo-Darwinian socio-ecology. A core problematic has been the extent to which biological approaches to ecology are sufficient to deal with the special problems raised by human social organisation, consciousness, symbolic mediation and cultural transmission. With the growth in the profile of environmental issues in political and development discourse, the ‘environment’ is increasingly subject to critical interrogation to locate its various cultural constructions. Anthropologists have worked on environmental knowledge, and on the perception of and response to environmental hazards and issues. At the theoretical level, some have sought to specify more clearly the meaning of ecological as opposed to social relations. These approaches are not easily brought within the narrow understanding of ecological anthropology, and at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the term environmental anthropology is being employed as a more inclusive description.