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Contents

Acknowledgments ix
General Introduction 1
Section 1. So, What Is Environmental Anthropology? 3
1. The Concept and Method of Cultural Ecology 12
Julian Steward
2. Smallholders, Householders 18
Robert McC. Netting
3. False Forest History, Complicit Social Analysis: Rethinking Some
West African Environmental Narratives 24
James Fairhead and Melissa Leach
4. Gender and Environment: A Feminist Political Ecology Perspective 34
Dianne Rocheleau, Barbara Thomas-Slayter, and Esther Wangari
5. A View from a Point: Ethnoecology as Situated Knowledge 41
Virginia D. Nazarea
6. Ethics Primer for University Students Intending to Become
Natural Resources Managers and Administrators 48
Richard J. McNeil

Section 2. What Does Population Have to Do with It? 57

7. Ester Boserup’s Theory of Agrarian Change: A Critical Review 64
David Grigg
8. The Benefits of the Commons 68
Fikret Berkes, David Feeny, Bonnie J. McCay, and James M. Acheson
9. 7 Billion and Counting 75
David Bloom
10. Rural Household Demographics, Livelihoods, and the Environment 79
Alex de Sherbinin, Leah VanWey, Kendra McSweeney,
Rimjhim Aggarwal, Alisson Barbieri, Sabine Henry,
Lori M. Hunter, Wayne Twine, and Robert Walker
11. Carrying Capacity’s New Guise: Folk Models for Public Debate and
Longitudinal Study of Environmental Change 91
Lisa Cliggett

v
vi | Contents

12. The Environment as Geopolitical Threat: Reading Robert Kaplan’s

“Coming Anarchy” 102
Simon Dalby

Section 3. What Are Urban, Rural, and

Suburban Environments? 117
13. The Growth of World Urbanism 124
Charles Redman
14. Economic Growth and the Environment 140
Theodore Panayotou
15. Bhopal: Vulnerability, Routinization, and the Chronic Disaster 149
S. Ravi Rajan
16. The Lawn-Chemical Economy and Its Discontents 159
Paul Robbins and Julie Sharp
17. Addictive Economies and Coal Dependency:
Methods of Extraction and Socioeconomic Outcomes
in West Virginia, 1997–2009 170
Robert Todd Perdue and Gregory Pavela
18. The Anti-Politics Machine: “Development” and Bureaucratic
Power in Lesotho 185
James Ferguson with Larry Lohmann

Section 4. How Does Globalization Affect

Environment and Culture? 197
19. How Do We Know We Have Global Environmental Problems?
Science and the Globalization of Environmental Discourse 202
Peter J. Taylor and Frederick H. Buttel
20. Bottled Water: The Pure Commodity in the Age of Branding 214
Richard R. Wilk
21. Indigenous Initiatives and Petroleum Politics in the
Ecuadorian Amazon 222
Suzana Sawyer
22. Land Tenure and REDD+: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly 229
Anne M. Larson, Maria Brockhaus, William D. Sunderlin,
Amy Duchelle, Andrea Babon, Therese Dokken, Thu Thuy Pham,
I. A. P. Resosudarmo, Galia Selaya, Abdon Awono, and Thu-Ba Huynh
23. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection 241
Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
 Contents | vii

Section 5. How Do Identities Shape

Ecological Experiences? 245
24. Cultural Theory and Environmentalism 250
Kay Milton
25. Endangered Forests, Endangered People: Environmentalist
Representations of Indigenous Knowledge 254
J. Peter Brosius
26. The Nature of Gender: Gender, Work, and Environment 274
Andrea Nightingale
27. “But I Know It’s True”: Environmental Risk Assessment, Justice,
and Anthropology 286
Melissa Checker
28. Bringing the Moral Economy Back in . . . to the Study of
21st-Century Transnational Peasant Movements 300
Marc Edelman
29. How to Queer Ecology: One Goose at a Time 310
Alex Carr Johnson

Section 6. Can Biodiversity Be Conserved? 317

30. Neoliberal Conservation: A Brief Introduction 324
Jim Igoe and Dan Brockington
31. The Power of Environmental Knowledge: Ethnoecology and
Environmental Conflicts in Mexican Conservation 332
Nora Haenn
32. Radical Ecology and Conservation Science:
An Australian Perspective 344
Libby Robin
33. Stolen Apes: The Illicit Trade in Chimpanzees, Gorillas, Bonobos,
and Orangutans 359
Daniel Stiles, Ian Redmond, Doug Cress, Christian Nellemann, and
Rannveig Knutsdatter Formo
34. Difference and Conflict in the Struggle over Natural Resources:
A Political Ecology Framework 362
Arturo Escobar

Section 7. Is Green Consumerism the Answer? 369

35. The Invisible Giant: Cargill and Its Transnational Strategies 373
Brewster Kneen
viii | Contents

36. Treading Lightly? Ecotourism’s Impact on the Environment 380

Martha Honey
37. What Is Degrowth? From an Activist Slogan to a Social Movement 390
Federico Demaria, François Schneider, Filka Sekulova, and
Joan Martinez-Alier
38. Protecting the Environment the Natural Way: Ethical Consumption
and Commodity Fetishism 401
James G. Carrier

Section 8. Okay, Now What? 411

39. Living Up to Our Words 416
Paul Durrenberger
40. Social Responsibility and the Anthropological Citizen 423
Barbara Rose Johnston
41. World Is Burning, Sky Is Falling, All Hands on Deck! Reflections on
Engaged and Action-Oriented Socio-Environmental Scholarship 445
Garrett Graddy-Lovelace, Allison Harnish, and Julianne A. Hazlewood
42. A Wonderfully Incomplete Bibliography of Action-Oriented
Anthropology and Applied Environmental Social Science 482
Allison Harnish, Julianne A. Hazlewood, Amanda Bedker, and
Sydney Roeder
Contributors 509
Index 519
General Introduction

Today, environmental problems threaten not only natural ecological qualities but
also humanity’s very existence. This collection of readings demonstrates the impor-
tance of anthropological theory and practice for solving environmental problems.
In making selections from a large body of excellent work, we searched for highly
readable articles that touch on the breadth of environmental issues on which
anthropologists work. Our search found that today’s anthropology of the environ-
ment is changing rapidly. Anthropologists are deploying new research methods,
new interdisciplinary collaborations, and new theories to make sense of environ-
mental problems and people’s responses to them. Given these innovations and the
growing size of the literature, no reader can offer more than a sample. The read-
ings we have chosen address some of the key environmental questions of the 21st
century. These include the socio-ecological effects of population growth, economic
development and underdevelopment, consumption, globalization, and biodiver-
sity conservation as well as the role of identities in shaping human-environment
interactions. In order to tackle these questions, this volume offers a mix of practical
case studies, theoretical debate, and discussion of moral and ethical issues.
New to this second edition, we have added discussion questions to every sec-
tion. These questions vary in their difficulty and are intended to help readers
capture the key points from each chapter and to bring the work of the many
authors included into conversation with one another. Additional discussion
questions and activities are included in a separate “Instructor’s Guide.”
Section 1 presents an overview and background of today’s anthropological
approaches to the environment. Students will find that many of the ideas in this
section reappear, sometimes in new guises, in later contributions. Discussions
of theory continue in the following sections, each of which includes one chapter
authored by a prominent theorist. The sections then include examples of aca-
demic and popular reporting of cases and issues, followed by a polemical piece
offering a contrarian position and a chapter that gives an ethical reflection.
Investigative pieces offer broad descriptions of environmental problems, often
using aggregate statistics. Case studies of current research and action focus atten-
tion on the specific ways people are working through, or failing to address, environ-
mental problems. The polemical pieces present opposing information to challenge
other contributions, to spark discussion, and to provide critical perspective. Finally,
ethical discussions demonstrate that all environmental issues rest on larger ques-
tions of social justice, humanity’s place in the world, and fundamental ideas about

1
2 | General introduction

what it means to be human. We hope readers will use the ethical arguments to
reflect on the moral underpinnings of their own approach to environmental issues.
In order to fit so much material into an affordable reader, we have abridged
the original publications. In making editorial choices, we sought to retain coher-
ence in the authors’ original argumentation and maintain a narrative flow. We
encourage readers intrigued by a particular selection to return to the publica-
tion’s original version to gain a fuller sense of the complete work.
This reader as a whole demonstrates three themes that link the topical sec-
tions. The first is the diversity of approaches to understanding environmental
problems. People throughout the world face environmental crises. However,
environmental issues are perceived differently by people of distinct genders,
races, classes, and cultural orientations. People disagree about the content of
problems and what they mean to the groups affected by them. These disagree-
ments deeply affect the ways environmental problems are solved and by whom.
A second theme is the need for creative inquiry that finds possibilities within
the limits of different knowledge structures. If no single approach is a cure-all for
environmental problems, then we might question how far any theory or method
can take us in understanding and resolving a situation. We may find that a theory
that helps in explanation is less useful in the development of practical solutions.
We may find a need for multiple explanatory theories. In any case, rather than
view the diversity of environmental problems and proposed solutions as lead-
ing to a stalemate, students of anthropology will find themselves uniquely posi-
tioned to develop creative intellectual and practical responses to this diversity.
The third theme is the importance of personal action in the face of environ-
mental problems. Students are often most familiar with environmental activism
centered on recycling, litter removal, and rain forest protection. Some authors
here point to the need for broader forms of activism, and they make clear sug-
gestions for change. Other authors propose or imply the need for political solu-
tions. Transparently or not, an author’s ethical position always informs her or
his writing. The readings on morality and ethics are meant to help students link
moral positions to the solutions proposed by other authors.
Also new to this second edition is a section on applied work and scholar-
advocacy. Formulating an effective personal response to environmental problems
is difficult, especially as solutions are often depicted as an onerous number of small
tasks (“100 Things You Can Do to Save the Environment”). The moral, ethical,
political, and practical discussions presented in this section are intended to help
students get beyond the dizzying number of environmental problems and solutions.
We believe that a combination of theory, empirical research, and ethical
debate may offer the most powerful anthropological response to environmental
problems. In this sense, we hope these readings serve as tools for those whose
concern for ecological issues pushes them beyond cursory analyses to a more
comprehensive approach.
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 anthro-
pological inquiry since the 1960s (McGee and Warms 2012). Recognizing the
importance of anthropological theory stemming from this era, we begin the vol-
ume with Julian Steward’s work dating from the 1950s. Steward explained cultural
diversity and culture change as resulting from individual cultures’ unique adap-
tations 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 cen-
tury, 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 soci-
etal 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 environ-
ment” (Steward 1968, cited in Moore 2012: 178). Under the framework of cul-
tural 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 deter-
minism and “possibilism.” Respectively, determinism and possibilism exam-
ined whether environmental features determined or simply made possible
cultural formations. By the 1950s, most anthropologists subscribed to this lat-
ter approach. Nonetheless, determinist ideas persist as researchers explore the
extent to which ecologies are malleable and the extent to which people must

3
4 | Section 1

adapt to the demands of their immediate environment. Anthropologists thus

often focus on the creativity involved in developing adaptive systems of exploi-
tation. Prior to Steward’s development of cultural ecology, anthropologists gave
little consideration to the environment when endeavoring to explain cultural dif-
ferences. 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 cultiva-
tors 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 agri-
business. Netting introduces ideas of sustainability to the collection and expands
notions of adaptation to include not only cultures’ adaptation to a physical envi-
ronment 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 sustain-
ability 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 Stew-
ard’s because Netting recognized the importance of colonial forces, local politics,
indigenous ecological knowledge, and uneven development for smallholder pro-
duction 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 conse-
quences. His work taught him that African cultivators were wise and wily‚ pos-
sessing 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 prefec-
ture of Kissidougou in southern Guinea, Fairhead and Leach employ a wealth
of empirical evidence (including local oral accounts, interview data, participant
 So, What Is Environmental Anthropology? | 5

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 his-
tory,” 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 con-
structions 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 interdisci-
plinary theoretical orientation (Biersack 2006). Having been further developed
and honed by an array of scholars working mostly inside the discipline of geog-
raphy (see for instance Blaikie and Brookfield 1987; Bryant and Bailey 1997; Beb-
bington and Batterbury 2001; Paulson et al. 2003; Walker 2005; Robbins 2012),
political ecology remains the most widely used approach in ecological anthro-
pology 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 perspec-
tive 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 anthropol-
ogists 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.
6 | Section 1

Ethnoecology is the cross-cultural study of how humans perceive and use the
natural environment. Ethnoecologists integrate techniques from cultural ecol-
ogy, 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 agri-
cultural practice of shifting cultivation (also known as milpa, swidden agricul-
ture, 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 undeter-
mined 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 state-
ments 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
 So, What Is Environmental Anthropology? | 7

societies have cultivated over centuries or even millennia. Here, Virginia D.

Nazarea suggests that ethnoecologists should shift their attention from theoreti-
cal interests in cognition and classification to applied work exploring the rela-
tionship between cognition and action. Pursued in this way, ethnoecology can
provide important insights for the conservation of cultural and biological diver-
sity and the study of environmental conflicts (Casagrande 2006; this volume,
section 6).
This section’s ethical discussion comes from Richard J. McNeil, who intro-
duces 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 envi-
ronmental 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 agen-
cies, businesses, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Several Ameri-
can universities feature graduate programs with concentrations in ecological
anthropology. Inside the American Anthropological Association, there is a pro-
fessional 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 (includ-
ing evolutionary ecology, historical ecology, cultural ecology, political ecology,
ethnoecology, and spiritual ecology) and reserve the term ecological anthropol-
ogy 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 environ-
mental 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.
8 | Section 1

In general, the transformations that have characterized ecological anthropol-

ogy 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 anthropolo-
gists 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 char-
acterize their work as applied, rather than purely theoretical.
The “new ecological anthropology” is “about finding practical solutions
to environmental problems” and “building new methodological and theo-
retical approaches to study those phenomena” (Paulson et al. 2003: 212; Kot-
tak 1999). Many contributors to this reader call for continued changes in the
objects of anthropological research, as well as in the theories that frame human-
environment inquiries. They want to focus attention on power structures, dis-
courses, and identities in ecological settings. Yet these authors never set aside the
original question of adaptation, a broader comparative and historical perspec-
tive, or a focus on situated knowledge.

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Walker, Peter A. 2005. Political Ecology: Where Is the Ecology? Progress in Human Geography 29
(1): 73–82.
Wilk, Richard R. 2006. “But Young Men Don’t Want to Farm Any More”: Political Ecology and
Consumer Culture in Belize. In Reimagining Political Ecology. Aletta Biersack and James B.
Greenberg, eds. Pp. 149–170. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Wilk, Richard R., and Priscilla Stone. 1998. Introduction to “A Very Human Ecology: Celebrating
the Work of Robert McC. Netting.” Human Ecology 26 (2): 175–188.

Questions for Discussion

Questions to Accompany Chapter 1: “The Concept and Method of Cultural Ecology”
by Julian Steward
1. What is cultural ecology? What are its three fundamental procedures?
2. How is the problem and method of cultural ecology different from other theoretical
frameworks?
3. What does holistic mean? How does this definition inform the concept and method of cul-
tural ecology?
4. What is the culture core?
5. Why does Steward suggest that the expression culturally prescribed ways should be used with
caution? What does this expression have to do with human-environment interactions?
10 | Section 1

6. What relationships exist between humans’ environments (e.g., deserts, rainforests) and their
social patterns (e.g., kinship systems, political formations, economic cooperation)?
Questions to Accompany Chapter 2: “Smallholders, Householders” by Robert McC. Netting
1. What does Netting mean when he states that binary terms like “traditional and modern,
preindustrial and industrial, Western and non-Western, or even extensive and intensive . . .
[impose] an evolutionary straitjacket on our thinking”? How does this statement affect our
anthropological thinking about human-environment relationships?
2. What does sustainability mean? Why is it that “traditional” cultivators are often assumed to
employ more sustainable land-use tactics than “modern” commercial and industrial land
users do?
Questions to Accompany Chapter 3: “False Forest History, Complicit Social Analysis: Rethinking
Some West African Environmental Narratives” by James Fairhead and Melissa Leach
1. What is a narrative, as defined by Fairhead and Leach?
2. How do narratives inform our thinking about relationships between people and the environ-
ment? How have social scientists helped to produce and reproduce these kinds of narratives
over time?
3. What false forest histories are contained in the narratives concerning Kissidougou?
4. What are the political effects of these narratives?
5. What counternarrative do Fairhead and Leach posit in place of the false forest history?
6. What methods do Fairhead and Leach employ in order to discredit the false forest history and
substitute their own counternarrative?
Questions to Accompany Chapter 4: “Gender and Environment: A Feminist Political Ecology
Perspective” by Dianne Rocheleau, Barbara Thomas-Slayter, and Esther Wangari
1. What is feminist political ecology? How is this different from political ecology and the other
theoretical frameworks that came before it?
2. What three themes encompass Rocheleau et al.’s feminist political ecology framework?
3. What common threads connect feminist political ecology to other scholarship and move-
ments focused on gender, science, and environment?
4. What do Rocheleau et al. mean when they state that “there are real, not imagined, gender
differences in experiences of, responsibilities for, and interests in ‘nature’ and environments
but that these differences are not rooted in biology per se”? Can you think of any instances in
which your own perceptions of and interactions with nature were affected by gender, culture,
class, race, or place?
Questions to Accompany Chapter 5: “A View from a Point: Ethnoecology as Situated Knowledge”
by Virginia D. Nazarea
1. What two approaches to ethnoecology does Nazarea identify? How do these two approaches
differ in regard to their implications for non-Western systems of classification?
2. What does Nazarea add to the anthropological conversation on ethnoecology? To where does
she suggest ethnoecologists should turn their attention?
3. How do cognitive anthropology, in general, and the work of Harold Conklin, in particular,
inform Nazarea’s perspective?
Questions to Accompany Chapter 6: “Ethics Primer for University Students Intending to Become
Natural Resources Managers and Administrators” by Richard J. McNeil
1. Which ethical theory or theories resonate most closely with your own social and environ-
mental outlook?
2. Think of an example wherein you employed one ethical theory, then moderated your initial
stance by incorporating a second ethical theory. McNeil offers the following example of such
 So, What Is Environmental Anthropology? | 11

a moderation: “I know that I am supposed not to lie, but the truth would hurt his feelings
terribly.” Have you ever performed such a moderation in regard to your behavior toward
the environment?
3. What is the difference between a moral agent and a moral subject?
4. How far into the plant, animal, and other taxa do you extend ethical consideration? Do you
include chimpanzees and dolphins in your moral community? What about fish and frogs?
What about trees and rocks?
5. What is a moral dilemma? Can you recall an instance when you experienced one of the four
types of moral dilemmas identified by Kidder? What moral dilemmas are present in this
week’s news?
1

The Concept and Method of Cultural Ecology*

Julian Steward

Cultural Ecology
Cultural ecology differs from human and social ecology in seeking to explain
the origin of particular cultural features and patterns which characterize
different areas rather than to derive general principles applicable to any cultural-
environmental situation. It differs from the relativistic and neo-evolutionist
conceptions of culture history in that it introduces the local environment as the
extracultural factor in the fruitless assumption that culture comes from culture.
Thus, cultural ecology presents both a problem and a method. The problem is
to ascertain whether the adjustments of human societies to their environments
require particular modes of behavior or whether they permit latitude for a cer-
tain range of possible behavior patterns. Phrased in this way, the problem also
distinguishes cultural ecology from “environmental determinism” and its related
theory “economic determinism,” which are generally understood to contain their
conclusions within the problem.
The problem of cultural ecology must be further qualified, however, through
use of a supplementary conception of culture. According to the holistic view,
all aspects of culture are functionally interdependent upon one another. The
degree and kind of interdependency, however, are not the same with all fea-
tures. Elsewhere, I have offered the concept of cultural core—the constellation
of features which are most closely related to subsistence activities and economic
arrangements. The core includes such social, political, and religious patterns as
are empirically determined to be closely connected with these arrangements.
Innumerable other features may have great potential variability because they are
less strongly tied to the core. These latter, or secondary, features are determined
to a greater extent by purely cultural-historical factors—by random innovations
or by diffusion—and they give the appearance of outward distinctiveness to
cultures with similar cores. Cultural ecology pays primary attention to those
features which empirical analysis shows to be most closely involved in the utili-
zation of environment in culturally prescribed ways.

* From Julian Steward, ed., Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution. © 1955 by the
Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Renewed 1983 by Jane C. Steward. Used by permission of the
University of Illinois Press.

12
 The Concept and Method of Cultural Ecology | 13

The expression “culturally prescribed ways” must be taken with caution, for
its anthropological usage is frequently “loaded.” The normative concept, which
views culture as a system of mutually reinforcing practices backed by a set of
attitudes and values, seems to regard all human behavior as so completely deter-
mined by culture that environmental adaptations have no effect. It considers that
the entire pattern of technology, land use, land tenure, and social features derive
entirely from culture. Classical illustrations of the primacy of cultural attitudes
over common sense are that the Chinese do not drink milk nor the Eskimo eat
seals in summer.
Cultures do, of course, tend to perpetuate themselves, and change may be
slow for such reasons as those cited. But over the millennia cultures in differ-
ent environments have changed tremendously, and these changes are basically
traceable to new adaptations required by changing technology and productive
arrangements. Despite occasional cultural barriers, the useful arts have spread
extremely widely, and the instances in which they have not been accepted
because of preexisting cultural patterns are insignificant. In preagricultural
times, which comprised perhaps 99 percent of cultural history, technical devices
for hunting, gathering, and fishing seem to have diffused largely to the limits
of their usefulness. Clubs, spears, traps, bows, fire, containers, nets, and many
other cultural features spread across many areas, and some of them throughout
the world. Later, domesticated plants and animals also spread very rapidly within
their environmental limits, being stopped only by formidable ocean barriers.
Whether or not new technologies are valuable is, however, a function of the
society’s cultural level as well as of environmental potentials. All preagricultural
societies found hunting and gathering techniques useful. Within the geographi-
cal limits of herding and farming, these techniques were adopted. More advanced
techniques, such as metallurgy, were acceptable only if certain preconditions,
such as stable population, leisure time, and internal specialization, were present.
These conditions could develop only from the cultural ecological adaptations of
an agricultural society.
The concept of cultural ecology, however, is less concerned with the origin
and diffusion of technologies than with the fact that they may be used differ-
ently and entail different social arrangements in each environment. The envi-
ronment is not only permissive or prohibitive with respect to these technologies,
but special local features may require social adaptations which have far-reaching
consequences. Thus, societies equipped with bows, spears, surrounds, chutes,
brush-burning, deadfalls, pitfalls, and other hunting devices may differ among
themselves because of the nature of the terrain and fauna. If the principal game
exists in large herds, such as herds of bison or caribou, there is advantage in
cooperative hunting, and considerable numbers of peoples may remain together
throughout the year. If, however, the game is nonmigratory, occurring in small
and scattered groups, it is better hunted by small groups of men who know their
14 | Julian Steward

territory well. In each case, the cultural repertory of hunting devices may be
about the same, but in the first case the society will consist of multifamily or
multilineage groups, as among the Athabaskans and Algonkians of Canada and
probably the prehorse Plains bison hunters, and in the second case it will prob-
ably consist of localized patrilineal lineages or bands, as among the Bushmen,
Congo Negritoes, Australians, Tasmanians, Fuegians, and others. These latter
groups consisting of patrilineal bands are similar, as a matter of fact, not because
their total environments are similar—the Bushmen, Australians, and southern
Californians live in deserts, the Negritoes in rain forests, and the Fuegians in a
cold, rainy area—but because the nature of the game and therefore of their sub-
sistence problem is the same in each case.
Other societies having about the same technological equipment may exhibit
other social patterns because the environments differ to the extent that the cul-
tural adaptations must be different. For example, the Eskimo use bows, spears,
traps, containers, and other widespread technological devices, but, owing to the
limited occurrence of fish and sea mammals, their population is so sparse and
cooperative hunting is so relatively unrewarding that they are usually dispersed
in family groups. For a different but equally compelling reason, the Nevada Sho-
shoni were also fragmented into family groups. In the latter case, the scarcity of
game and the predominance of seeds as the subsistence basis greatly restricted
economic cooperation and required dispersal of the society into fairly indepen-
dent family groups.
In the examples of the primitive hunting, gathering, and fishing societies, it is
easy to show that if the local environment is to be exploited by means of the cul-
turally derived techniques, there are limitations upon the size and social compo-
sition of the groups involved. When agricultural techniques are introduced, man
is partially freed from the exigencies of hunting and gathering, and it becomes
possible for considerable aggregates of people to live together. Larger aggre-
gates, made possible by increased population and settled communities, provide
a higher level of sociocultural integration, the nature of which is determined by
the local type of sociocultural integration.
The adaptative processes we have described are properly designated ecologi-
cal. But attention is directed not simply to the human community as part of the
total web of life but to such cultural features as are affected by the adaptations.
This in turn requires that primary attention be paid only to relevant environ-
mental features rather than to the web of life for its own sake. Only those features
to which the local culture ascribes importance need be considered.

The Method of Cultural Ecology

Although the concept of environmental adaptation underlies all cultural ecology,
the procedures must take into account the complexity and level of the culture. It
 The Concept and Method of Cultural Ecology | 15

makes a great deal of difference whether a community consists of hunters and

gatherers who subsist independently by their own efforts or whether it is an out-
post of a wealthy nation, which exploits local mineral wealth and is sustained by
railroads, ships, or airplanes. In advanced societies, the nature of the culture core
will be determined by a complex technology and by productive arrangements
which themselves have a long cultural history.
Three fundamental procedures of cultural ecology are as follows:
First, the interrelationship of exploitative or productive technology and envi-
ronment must be analyzed. This technology includes a considerable part of what
is often called “material culture,” but all features may not be of equal importance.
In primitive societies, subsistence devices are basic: weapons and instruments
for hunting and fishing; containers for gathering and storing food; transporta-
tional devices used on land and water; sources of water and fuel; and, in some
environments, means of counteracting excessive cold (clothing and housing)
or heat. In more developed societies, agriculture and herding techniques and
manufacturing of crucial implements must be considered. In an industrial world,
capital and credit arrangements, trade systems, and the like are crucial. Socially
derived needs—special tastes in foods, more ample housing and clothing, and a
great variety of appurtenances to living—become increasingly important in the
productive arrangement as culture develops; and yet these originally were prob-
ably more often effects of basic adaptations than causes.
Relevant environmental features depend upon the culture. The simpler cul-
tures are more directly conditioned by the environment than advanced ones. In
general, climate, topography, soils, hydrography, vegetational cover, and fauna
are crucial, but some features may be more important than others. The spacing
of water holes in the desert may be vital to a nomadic seed-gathering people, the
habits of game will affect the way hunting is done, and the kinds and seasons of
fish runs will determine the habits of riverine and coastal tribes.
Second, the behavior patterns involved in the exploitation of a particular area
by means of a particular technology must be analyzed. Some subsistence pat-
terns impose very narrow limits on the general mode of life of the people, while
others allow considerable latitude. The gathering of wild vegetable products is
usually done by women who work alone or in small groups. Nothing is gained by
cooperation, and in fact women come into competition with one another. Seed
gatherers, therefore, tend to fragment into small groups unless their resources
are very abundant. Hunting, on the other hand, may be either an individual or
a collective project, and the nature of hunting societies is determined by cultur-
ally prescribed devices for collective hunting as well as by the species. When
surrounds, grass-firing, corrals, chutes, and other cooperative methods are
employed, the take per man may be much greater than what a lone hunter could
bag. Similarly, if circumstances permit, fishing may be done by groups of men
using dams, weirs, traps, and nets as well as by individuals.
16 | Julian Steward

The use of these more complex and frequently cooperative techniques, how-
ever, depends not only upon cultural history—i.e., invention and diffusion—
which makes the methods available, but upon the environment and its flora and
fauna. Deer cannot be hunted advantageously by surrounds, whereas antelope
and bison may best be hunted in this way. Slash-and-burn farming in tropical
rain forests requires comparatively little cooperation in that a few men clear the
land, after which their wives plant and cultivate the crops. Dry farming may or
may not be cooperative; and irrigation farming may run the gamut of enterprises
of ever-increasing size based on collective construction of waterworks.
The exploitative patterns depend not only upon the habits concerned in the
direct production of food and of goods but upon facilities for transporting the
people to the source of supply or the goods to the people. Watercraft have been
a major factor in permitting the growth of settlements beyond what would have
been possible for a foot people. Among all nomads, the horse has had an almost
revolutionary effect in promoting the growth of large bands.
The third procedure is to ascertain the extent to which the behavior patterns
entailed in exploiting the environment affect other aspects of culture. Although
technology and environment prescribe that certain things must be done in cer-
tain ways if they are to be done at all, the extent to which these activities are
functionally tied to other aspects of culture is a purely empirical problem. In
the irrigation areas of early civilizations, the sequence of sociopolitical forms or
cultural cores seems to have been very similar despite variation in many outward
details or secondary features of these cultures. If it can be established that the
productive arrangements permit great latitude in the sociocultural type, then
historical influences may explain the particular type found. The problem is the
same in considering modern industrial civilizations. The question is whether
industrialization allows such latitude that political democracy, communism,
state socialism, and perhaps other forms are equally possible, so that strong his-
torical influences, such as diffused ideology—e.g., propaganda—may supplant
one type with another, or whether each type represents an adaptation which is
specific to the area.
The third procedure requires a genuinely holistic approach, for if such factors
as demography, settlement pattern, kinship structures, land tenure, land use, and
other key cultural features are considered separately, their interrelationships to
one another and to the environment cannot be grasped. Land use by means of
a given technology permits a certain population density. The clustering of this
population will depend partly upon where resources occur and upon transporta-
tion devices. The composition of these clusters will be a function of their size, of
the nature of subsistence activities, and of cultural-historical factors. The owner-
ship of land or resources will reflect subsistence activities on the one hand and
the composition of the group on the other. Warfare may be related to the com-
plex of factors just mentioned. In some cases, it may arise out of competition for
 The Concept and Method of Cultural Ecology | 17

resources and have a national character. Even when fought for individual honors
or religious purposes, it may serve to nucleate settlements in a way that must be
related to subsistence activities.

The Methodological Place of Cultural Ecology

Cultural ecology has been described as a methodological tool for ascertaining
how the adaptation of a culture to its environment may entail certain changes.
In a larger sense, the problem is to determine whether similar adjustments occur
in similar environments. Since in any given environment, culture may develop
through a succession of very unlike periods, it is sometimes pointed out that
environment, the constant, obviously has no relationship to cultural type. This
difficulty disappears, however, if the level of sociocultural integration repre-
sented by each period is taken into account. Cultural types, therefore, must be
conceived as constellations of core features which arise out of environmental
adaptations and which represent similar levels of integration.
Cultural diffusion, of course, always operates, but in view of the seeming
importance of ecological adaptations, its role in explaining culture has been
greatly overestimated. The extent to which the large variety of world cultures can
be systematized in categories of types and explained through cross-cultural regu-
larities of developmental process is purely an empirical matter. Hunches arising
out of comparative studies suggest that there are many regularities which can be
formulated in terms of similar levels and similar adaptations.