Environmental sociology

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Environmental sociology is typically defined as the sociological study of societal-

environmental interactions, although this definition immediately presents the perhaps

insolvable problem of separating human cultures from the rest of the environment. Although

the focus of the field is the relationship between society and environment in general,

environmental sociologists typically place special emphasis on studying the social factors that

cause environmental problems, the societal impacts of those problems, and efforts to solve

the problems. In addition, considerable attention is paid to the social processes by which

certain environmental conditions become socially defined as problems.

Although there was sometimes acrimonious debate between

the constructivist and realist "camps" within environmental sociology in the 1990s, the two

sides have found considerable common ground as both increasingly accept that while most

environmental problems have a material reality they nonetheless become known only via

human processes such as scientific knowledge, activists' efforts, and media attention. In other

words, most environmental problems have a real ontological status despite our

knowledge/awareness of them stemming from social processes, processes by which various

conditions are constructed as problems by scientists, activists, media and other social actors.

Correspondingly, environmental problems must all be understood via social processes,

despite any material basis they may have external to humans. This interactiveness is now

broadly accepted, but many aspects of the debate continue in contemporary research in the

field.

Contents

 [hide]

1 History

o 1.1 Academic

2 Concepts

o 2.1 Existential dualism

3 Five Paradigms and Research Methods in Environmental Sociology

o 3.1 Neo-Malthusianism

o 3.2 New Ecological Paradigm

o 3.3 Eco-Marxism

o 3.4 Ecological Modernization / Reflexive Modernization

o 3.5 Social Construction of the Environment

4 Events

o 4.1 Modern environmentalism

o 4.2 Historical studies

5 See also

6 References

7 External links

[edit]History

Modern thought surrounding human-environment relations is traced back to Charles Darwin.

Darwin’s concept of natural selection suggested that certain social characteristics played a

key role in the survivability of groups in the natural environment. Although typically taken at

the micro level, evolutionary principles, particularly adaptability, serve as a microcosm

of human ecology. Work by Humphrey and Buttel (2002) traces the linkages between

Darwin's work on natural selection, human ecological sociology, and environmental

sociology.

[edit]Academic

It became recognized in the latter half of the 20th century that biological determinism failed

to fully explain the relationship between humans and the environment. As the application

of social determinism became more useful, the role of sociology became more pervasive in

analyzing environmental conditions. At first, classical sociology saw social and cultural

factors as the only cause of other social and cultural conditions. This lens ignored the concept

of environmental determinism or the environmental factors that cause social phenomena.

The works of William R. Catton, Jr. and Riley Dunlap challenged the

constricted anthropocentrism of classical sociology. In the late 1970s, they called for a new

holistic, or systems perspective. Since the 1970s, sociology has noticeably transformed to

include environmental forces in social explanations. Environmental sociology emerged as a

coherent subfield of inquiry after the environmental movement of the 1960s and early 1970s.

It has now solidified as a respected, interdisciplinary subject in academia.

[edit]Concepts

[edit]Existential dualism

The duality of the human condition rests with cultural uniqueness and evolutionary traits.

From one perspective, humans are embedded in the ecosphere and coevolved alongside other

species. Humans share the same basic ecological dependencies as other inhabitants of nature.

From the other perspective, humans are distinguished from other species because of their

innovative capacities, distinct cultures and varied institutions. Human creations have the

power to independently manipulate, destroy, and transcend the limits of the natural

environment (Buttel and Humphrey, 2002: p.47).

Support for each perspective varies among different communities. Biologists and ecologists

typically put more weight on the first perspective. Social scientists, on the other hand,

emphasize the second perspective. This division has shaped the foundation for the primary

paradigms of environmental sociology.

[edit]Five Paradigms and Research Methods in Environmental Sociology

According to Buttel (2005), there are five basic epistemologies in environmental sociology.

In practice, this means five different theories of what to blame for environmental degradation,

i.e., what to research or consider as important. In order of their invention, these ideas of what

to blame build on each other and thus contradict each other.

[edit]Neo-Malthusianism

Works like Hardin's The Tragedy of The Commons (1968) reformulated Malthusian thought

about abstract population to a model of selfishness as causing environmental degradation of

the use of common property goods like the air, water, or general environmental conditions.

Hardin offered mass privatization or a tyrannical state to induce presumed environmental

solutions. Many other sociologists shared this view of solutions well into the 1970s (see

Ophuls). There have been many critiques of this view, particularly sociologist Elinor

Ostrom or economist Amartya Sen. Even though much of mainstream journalism considers

Malthusianism the only view of environmentalism, most sociologists would disagree since

social organizational issues of environmental degradation are more demonstrated to cause

environmental problems than abstract population per se. For instance, countries with low

numbers of people can "outconsume" countries with high numbers of people and have a

higher environmental impact this way.

[edit]New Ecological Paradigm

In the 1970s, The New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) conception critiqued the claimed lack of

human-environmental focus in the classical sociologists and the Sociological priorities their

followers created. This was critiqued as the Human Excemptionalism Paradigm (HEP). The

HEP viewpoint claims that human-environmental relationships were unimportant

sociologically because humans are 'exempt' from environmental forces via cultural change.

This view was shaped by the leading Western worldview of the time and the desire for

Sociology to establish itself as an independent discipline against the then popular racist-

biological environmental determinism where environment was all. In this NEP view, human

dominance was felt to be justified by the uniqueness of culture, argued to be more adaptable

than biological traits. Furthermore, culture also has the capacity to accumulate and innovate,

making it capable of solving all natural problems. Therefore, as humans were not conceived

of as governed by natural conditions, they were felt to have complete control of their own

destiny. Any potential limitation posed by the natural world was felt to be surpassed using

human ingenuity. Research proceeded accordingly without environmental analysis.

In the 1970s, sociological scholars like Riley Dunlap and William R. Catton, Jr. began

recognizing the limits of what would be termed the Human Exemptionalism Paradigm.

Catton and Dunlap (1978) suggested a new perspective that took environmental variables into

full account. They coined a new theoretical outlook for Sociology, the New Ecological

Paradigm, with assumptions contrary to HEP.

The NEP recognizes the innovative capacity of humans, but says that humans are still

ecologically interdependent as with other species. The NEP notes the power of social and

cultural forces but does not profess social determinism. Instead, humans are impacted by the

cause, effect, and feedback loops of ecosystems. The earth has a finite level of natural

resources and waste repositories. Thus, the biophysical environment can impose constraints

on human activity. They discussed a few harbingers of this NEP in 'hybridized' theorizing

about topics that were neither exclusively social or environmental explanations of

environmental conditions. It was additionally a critique of Malthusian views of the 1960s and

1970s.

Dunlap and Catton's work immediately received a critique from Frederick Buttel who argued

to the contrary that classical sociological foundations could be found for environmental

sociology, particularly in Weber's work on ancient "agrarian civilizations" and Durkheim's

view of the division of labor as built on a material premise of specialization/specialization in

response to material scarcity. This environmental aspect of Durkheim has been discussed by

Schnaiberg (1971) as well.

[edit]Eco-Marxism

In the middle of the HEP/NEP debate, the general trend of Neo-Marxism was occurring.

There was cross pollenization. Neo-Marxism was based on the collapse of the widespread

believability of the Marxist social movement in the failed revolts of the 1960s and the rise of

many New Social Movements that failed to fit in many Marxist analytic frameworks of

conflict sociology. Sociologists entered the fray with empirical research on these novel social

conflicts. Neo-Marxism's stress on the relative autonomy of the state from capital control

instead of it being only a reflection of economic determinism of class conflict yielded this

novel theoretical viewpoint in the 1970s. Neo-Marxist ideas of conflict sociology were

applied to capital/state/labor/environmental conflicts instead of only labor/capital/state

conflicts over production.

Therefore, some sociologists wanted to stretch Marxist ideas of social conflict to analyze

environmental social movements from this materialist framework instead of interpreting

environmental movements as a more cultural "New Social Movement" separate than material

concerns. So "Eco-Marxism" was based on using Marxist conflict sociology concepts applied

to environmental conflict.

Two people following this school were James O'Connor (The Fiscal Crisis of the State, 1971)

and later Allan Schnaiberg.

Later, a different trend developed in the Marxist historical revisionism of John Bellamy

Foster). By his delving within Marx's Third Book of Das Kapital, Foster argued (1999) that

environmentalism didn't have to be imported into Marx's thought because Marx himself was

the original "eco-communist" who wanted to remove the exploitation of the urban factory

worker simultaneously with the removal of the rural exploitation of the landscape instead of

Marx by the end of his life showing a clear preference of the former over the latter. Foster

argues the ecological concerns don't have to be "imported" into classical Marxism, only

merely rediscovered in Marx's analysis of the British Agricultural Revolution. In 'traditional

Marxist' interpretations that eco-Marxist scholar John Bellamy Foster critiques, there was

a Promethean view of Marx--so similar to the Human Exemptionalism Paradigm. Foster

argued Marx himself was an 'eco-communist' concerned about the "Metabolic Rift" of

industrial societies with the environment particularly in industrial agriculture destroying the

productivity of the land and creating wastes in urban sites and destruction of urban health

simultaneously. By this, Foster critiques the idea that the original classical sociological

thinkers like Marx were supportive of the "Human Excemptionalist Paradigm" and neglectful

of environmental conditions.

Societal-environmental dialectic

In 1975, the highly influential work of Allan Schnaiberg transfigured environmental

sociology, proposing a societal-environmental dialectic. This conflictual concept has

overwhelming political salience. First, the economic synthesis states that the desire for

economic expansion will prevail over ecological concerns. Policy will decide to maximize

immediate economic growth at the expense of environmental disruption. Secondly, the

managed scarcity synthesis concludes that governments will attempt to control only the most

dire of environmental problems to prevent health and economic disasters. This will give the

appearance that governments act more environmentally conscious than they really do. Third,

the ecological synthesis generates a hypothetical case where environmental degradation is so

severe that political forces would respond with sustainable policies. The driving factor would

be economic damage caused by environmental degradation. The economic engine would be

based on renewable resources at this point. Production and consumption methods would

adhere to sustainability regulations.

These conflict-based syntheses have several potential outcomes. One is that the most

powerful economic and political forces will preserve the status quo and bolster their

dominance. Historically, this is the most common occurrence. Another potential outcome is

for contending powerful parties to fall into a stalemate. Lastly, tumultuous social events may

result that redistribute economic and political resources.

Treadmill of production

In 1980, Schnaiberg developed a conflict theory on human-environment interaction. The

theory is that capitalism is driven by higher profitability and thereby must continue to grow

and attract investments to survive in a competitive market. This identifies the imperative for

continued economic growth levels that, once achieved, accelerate the need for future growth.

This growth in production requires a corresponding growth in consumption. The process

contains a chief paradox; economic growth is socially desired but environmental degradation

is a common consequence that in turn disrupts long-run economic expansion (Schnaiberg

1980).

[edit]Ecological Modernization / Reflexive Modernization

By the 1980s, a critique of Eco-Marxism was in the offing, given empirical data from

countries (mostly in Western Europe like the Netherlands, Western Germany and somewhat

the United Kingdom) that were attempting to wed environmental protection with economic

growth instead of seeing them as separate. This was done through both state and capital

restructuring. Major proponents of this school of research are Mol and Spaargaren. Popular

examples of ecological modernization would be "cradle to cradle" production

cycles, industrial ecology, biomimicry, permaculture, and agroecology--all implying that

economic growth is possible if that growth is well organized with the environment in mind.

Reflexive Modernization

The many volumes of the German sociologist Ulrich Beck first argued from the late 1980s

that our risk society is potentially being transformed by the environmental social movements

of the world into structural change without rejecting the benefits of modernization and

industrialization. This is leading to a form of 'reflexive modernization' with a world of

reduced risk and better modernization process in economics, politics, and scientific practices

as they are made less beholden to a cycle of protecting risk from correction (which he calls

our state's organized irresponsibility--politics creates ecodisasters, then claims responsibility

in an accident, yet nothing remains corrected because it challenges the very structure of the

operation of the economy and the private dominance of development, for example. Beck's

idea of a reflexive modernizationlooks forward to how our ecological and social crises in the

late 20th century are leading toward transformations of the whole political and economic

system's institutions, making them more "rational" with ecology in mind.

[edit]Social Construction of the Environment

Additionally in the 1980s, with the rise of postmodernism in the Western Academy and the

appreciation of discourse as a form of power, some sociologists turned to analyzing

environmental claims as a form of social construction more than a 'material' requirement.

Proponents of this school are Hannigan, particularly in Environmental Sociology: A Social

Constructionist View (1995). Hannigan argues for a 'soft constructionism' (environmental

problems are materially real though they require social construction to be noticed) over a

'hard constructionism' (the claim that environmental problems are entirely social constructs).

[edit]Events

[edit]Modern environmentalism

United States

The 1960s built strong cultural momentum for environmental causes, giving birth to the

modern environmental movement and large questioning in sociologists interested in

analyzing the movement. Widespread green consciousness moved vertically within society,

resulting in a series of policy changes across many states in the U.S. and Europe in the 1970s.

In the United States, this period was known as the “Environmental Decade” with the creation

of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and passing of the Endangered

Species Act, Clean Water Act, and amendments to the Clean Air Act. Earth Day of 1970,

celebrated by millions of participants, represented the modern age of environmental thought.

The environmental movement continued with incidences such as Love Canal.

[edit]Historical studies

While the current mode of thought expressed in environmental sociology was not prevalent

until the 1970s, its application is now used in analysis of ancient peoples. Societies

including Easter Island, the Anaszi, and the Mayans were argued to have ended abruptly,

largely due to poor environmental management. This has been challenged in later work

however as the exclusive cause (biologically-trained Jared Diamond's Collapse (2005); or

more modern work on Easter Island). The collapse of the Mayans sent a historic message that

even advanced cultures are vulnerable to ecological suicide--though Diamond argues now it

was less of a suicide than an environmental climate change that led to a lack of an ability to

adapt--and a lack of elite willingness to adapt even when faced with the signs much earlier of

nearing ecological problems. At the same time, societal successes for Diamond included New

Guinea and Tikopia island whose inhabitants have lived sustainably for 46,000 years.

John Dryzek et al. argue in Green States and Social Movements: Environmentalism in the

United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway (2003)[1]that there may be a common

global green environmental social movement, though its specific outcomes are nationalist,

falling into four 'ideal types' of interaction between environmental movements and state

power. They use as their case studies environmental social movements and state interaction

from Norway, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany. They analyze the past

30 years of environmentalism and the different outcomes that the green movement has taken

in different state contexts and cultures.

Recently and roughly in temporal order below, much longer-term comparative historical

studies of environmental degradation are found by sociologists. There are two general trends:

many employ world systems theory--analyzing environmental issues over long periods of

time and space; and others employ comparative historical methods. Some utilize both

methods simultaneously, sometimes without reference to world systems theory (like

Whitaker, see below).

Stephen G. Bunker (d. 2005) and Paul S. Ciccantell collaborated on two books from a world

systems theory view, following commodity chains through history of the modern world

system, charting the changing importance of space, time, and scale of extraction and how

these variables influenced the shape and location of the main nodes of the world economy

over the past 500 years.[2][3] Their view view of the world was grounded in extraction

economies and the politics of different states that seek to dominate the world's resources and

each other through gaining hegemonic control of major resources or restructuring global

flows in them to benefit their locations.

The three volume work of environmental world systems theory by Sing C. Chew analyzed

how "Nature and Culture" interact over long periods of time, starting with World Ecological

Degradation (2001)[4][5][6] In later books, Chew argued that there were three "Dark Ages" in

world environmental history characterized by periods of state collapse and reorientation in

the world economy associated with more localist frameworks of community, economy, and

identity coming to dominate the nature/culture relationships after state-facilitated

environmental destruction delegitimated other forms. Thus recreated communities were

founded in these so called 'Dark Ages,' novel religions were popularized, and perhaps most

importantly to him the environment had several centuries to recover from previous

destruction. Chew argues that modern green politics andbioregionalism is the start of a

similar movement of the present day potentially leading to wholesale system transformation.

Therefore, we may be on the edge of yet another global "dark age" which is bright instead of

dark on many levels since he argues for human community returning with environmental

healing as empires collapse.

More case oriented studies were conducted by historical environmental sociologist Mark D.

Whitaker analyzing China, Japan, and Europe over 2,500 years in his bookEcological

Revolution (2009)[7]. He argued that instead of environmental movements being "New Social

Movements" peculiar to current societies, environmental movements are very old--being

expressed via religious movements in the past (or in the present like in ecotheology) that

begin to focus on material concerns of health, local ecology, and economic protest against

state policy and its extractions. He argues past or present is very similar: that we have

participated with a tragic common civilizational process of environmental degradation,

economic consolidation, and lack of political representation for many millennia which has

predictable outcomes. He argues that a form ofbioregionalism, the bioregional state [8] , is

required to deal with political corruption in present or in past societies connected to

environmental degradation.

Interestingly, after looking at the world history of environmental degradation from very

different methods, both sociologists Sing Chew and Mark D. Whitaker came to similar

conclusions and are proponents of (different forms of) bioregionalism.

[edit]See also

Ecological anthropology

Agroecology

Ecological modernization theory

Ecological Design

Environmental design

Environmental design and planning

Environmental Economics

Environmental Policy

Environmentalism

Human ecology

Ecological economics

Ecological anthropology

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is missing citations or needs footnotes. Please help add inline citations to guard against copyright violations and factual inaccuracies. (January 2008)

Ecological anthropology is a subfield of anthropology that deals with human-

environmental (culture-nature) relationships over time and space.[1] It investigates the ways

that a population shapes its environment and the subsequent manners in which these relations

form the population’s social, economic, and political life.[2] Ecological anthropology applies

a systems approach (Ellen 1982; Hardesty 1997; McGee 1996) to the study of the

interrelationship between culture and the environment. At the heart of contemporary

ecological anthropology is “an understanding that proceeds from a notion of the mutualism of

person and environment” (Ingold 1992:40) and the reciprocity between nature and culture

(Harvey 1996).

In the 1960s, ecological anthropology first appeared as a response to cultural ecology, a sub-

field of anthropology headed by Julian Steward. Steward focused on studying different

modes of subsistence as methods of energy transfer and then analysed how they determine

other aspects of culture. Culture became the unit of analysis. The first ecological

anthropologists explored the idea that humans as ecological populations should be the unit of

analysis, and culture became the means by which that population alters and adapts to the

environment. It was characterised by systems theory, functionalism and negative feedback

analysis (Kottak 1999).

From the beginning various scholars criticised the discipline, saying it inherently was too

focused on static equilibriums which ignored change, that it used circular reasoning, and that

it oversimplified systems.[3] One of the current criticisms is that, in its original form,

ecological anthropology relies upon cultural relativism as the norm (Kottak 1999). However,

in today's world, there are few cultures who are isolated enough to live in a true culturally

relative state. Instead, cultures are being influenced and changed by

media, governments, NGOs, businesses, etc. In response, the discipline has seen a shift

towards applied ecological anthropology, political ecology and environmental anthropology.

One of the leading practitioners within this sub-field of anthropology was Roy Rappaport. He

delivered many outstanding works on the relationship between culture and the natural

environment in which it grows, especially concerning the role of ritual in the processual

relationship between the two. He conducted the majority, if not all, of his fieldwork amongst

a group known as the Maring, who inhabit an area in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.

Contents

 [hide]

1   See also

2   Further reading

3   External links

4   Further information

5   References

[edit]See also

Cultural ecology

Environmental Anthropology

Environmental sociology

Medical anthropology

Sociocultural system

[edit]Further reading

Ann McElroy & Patricia K. Townsend (1989), Medical Anthropology in Ecological

Perspective (2nd ed.), Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, ISBN 0-8133-0742-2

[edit]External links

McGrath, Stacy (n.d) "Ecological Anthropology", M.D Murphy (Ed) Anthropological

Theories. Department of Anthropology, University of Alabama webpage Accessed 8

August 2009

Online Journal of Ecological Anthropology, University of South Florida Accessed 9

August 2009

Open Access Journal entitled "Ecological and Environmental Anthropology" Accessed 9

August 2009

[edit]Further information

This section needs additional citations for verification.Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2009)

Universities with Ecological Anthropology programs

University University University

Indiana UniversityNorth Carolina State University

Oregon State University

Rutgers University Stanford University University of Arizona

University of Florida University of Georgia University of Hawaii

University of Kent University of London University of Maryland

University of Texas at San Antonio University of Washington

Ecological anthropology

Rate:

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Published: May 24, 2007, 5:47 pmEdited: May 24, 2007, 5:47 pm

Lead Author: Leslie E. Sponsel

Topics:

  Environmental Anthropology

This article has been reviewed by the following Topic Editor: David Casagrande

Some societies have proven to be sustainable for centuries or even millennia. Others have degraded their habitat and depleted thenatural resources in it to the extent of undermining their economic and social viability thereby leading to sociocultural disintegration and even collapse. Examples of sustainable societies are the highlanders of New Guinea, Inca of the Andes, Menominee in Wisconsin, Norse of Iceland, Pueblo of the southwestern region of the United States, San of southern Africa, Tikopia in the South Pacific, Tokugawa era Japan, Tonga in the South Pacific, and Yanomami in the Amazon between Brazil and Venezuela. Examples of unsustainable societies that eventually collapsed are the prehistoric Anasazi of the southwestern region of the United States, central Classic Lowland Maya of Central America, Norse of Greenland, and Rapanui (Easter Island) in the South Pacific. However, there is considerable controversy surrounding some cases, especially the Maya and Rapanui.Although many scientific and academic disciplines and professions provide information and insights into the important matters of sustainability, human ecology, and adaptation, anthropology is unique because of the breadth and depth of its perspective. Anthropologists can describe the changing niche of humans at the species level over more than four million years of prehistory andevolution. They can also describe the niche of humans at the population level for many of the more than 7,000 distinct cultures known historically.Anthropology is the holistic study of human diversity and unity throughout time and space encompassing all aspects of being human, but with particular attention to culture. Culture is the system of socially patterned, shared, and learned ideas and behavior as well as their material manifestations that together distinguish a particular society or ethnic group. There is tremendous diversity in the ways that different cultures formulate and answer these four pivotal questions: What is nature? What is human nature? What is the place of humans in nature? What should be the place of humans in nature? Cultural diversity has been the key to the adaptation and adaptability of the human species. This has facilitated the global dispersal of Homo sapiens into a multitude of very different kinds of environments (biomes) from the tropics to the Arctic. Indeed, culture is more important than biology (morphology and physiology) in the adaptation of circumpolar peoples such as the Aleut, Chuckchi, Inuit, and Saami to their harsh environments. Each biome presents a different combination of limitations and possibilities for relating society to nature. Likewise, each culture also has a different combination of limitations and possibilities for relating their society to nature. Thus, culture can be a decisive factor influencing what individuals and groups identify as environmental resources, hazards, or risks, and how they deal with these and related phenomena. Given such considerations, ecological anthropology concentrates on how culture mediates the dynamic interactions between human populations and the ecosystems in their habitats. Accordingly ecological anthropologists have variously addressed each of the main categories of natural resources, including water, soils, plants, animals, minerals, andenergy, but each with special attention to how a particular culture influences daily decisions, choices, and activities in exploiting them. The primary approaches within contemporary ecological anthropology are cultural ecology, historical ecology, political ecology, and spiritual ecology. Building on these approaches is the applied dimension of ecological anthropology called environmental anthropology.

Julian Steward, far more than any other single anthropologist, is responsible for the development of cultural ecology. During the 1920s-30s, Steward conducted pioneering field research on the interaction of a particular human society and its natural environment in the Western United States working with Shoshone, Paiute, and other Native Americans. During the 1950s-60s, he developed formally his generic theoretical and methodological framework for cultural ecology. Steward recognized that there were multiple pathways for adapting to the same biome over time, a process he called multilinear evolution. The investigation of multilinear evolution was based on a comparison of the cultural ecology of societies at the same level of sociocultural integration (bands, tribes, chiefdoms, states) in the same biome (e.g., deserts, savannas, or tropical rainforests). In turn, this was based on detailedethnographic investigations of the cultural ecology of several societies concentrating on identifying the natural resources that they depend on for their subsistence, the technology and organization of labor used to extract and process the resources, and how these factors in turn influence other aspects of culture. Steward’s basic cultural ecology persists as an underlying general theme in subsequent anthropological research on human-environment interactions many decades later, even though new components and emphases have been added.

During the 1950s-1960s, Brent Berlin, Harold Conklin, Charles Frake, and others pioneered in the development of ethnoecologywhich may be considered as a research specialization within cultural ecology. Ethnoecological research concentrates on how different cultures view aspects of their environment, especially through identifying their classification of particular domains of nature such as soils, wild plants, birds, or insects. These classifications are pursued through vocabulary lists from the language of the culture in question. Accordingly, ethnoecology operates at the intersection of linguistics and cultural anthropology. Ethnoecology and cultural ecology have helped to demonstrate the profoundly detailed and reliable traditional environmental knowledge that indigenous and other societies have accumulated over centuries or even millennia of adaptation to the ecosystems in their habitat. For instance, William Balee has shown that the Ka`apor of the Amazon in Brazil recognize 768 species of plants from the seed to the reproductive adult stages which they utilize for food, medicines, crafts, building, and other purposes. Ethnoecology provides a most useful entry into understanding human ecology from the perspective of the people in a local community as they interact with the ecosystems in their habitat. However, researchers need to pay more attention to the relationships between what people say and what they actually do in their environment in order to transcend the limitations of purely linguistic inquiries and become more relevant to ecology.In the 1960s-80s, cultural ecology was transformed into ecological anthropology by John Bennett, Roy A. Rappaport, Andrew P. Vayda, and others. This was accomplished by applying a systems approach to studying the role of a human population in the processes of energy flow and nutrient cycling within their ecosystem. Methodologically there was also far greater emphasis on the collection of quantitative data than in previous work. For example, Rappaport measured caloric input and output in the gardens of the Tsembaga people in the highlands of New Guinea who employ swidden or shifting horticulture. He related this in turn to their ritual and warfare beliefs and customs as mechanisms for maintaining the balance between the human and pig populations which could easily become competitors for many of the same food resources. The development of this systems ecology framework was further stimulated by the International Biological Program from 1964-1974. The IPB contributed to the subsequent movement to study the human dimensions of global environmental change.

Two additional theoretical and methodological frameworks were developed mainly in the 1980s and 1990s to try to render ecological anthropology more scientific. First, Marvin Harris vigorously pursued explicitly and systematically the development of cultural materialism as a research strategy to reveal and explain the ecological rationale underlying various aspects of culture. He divided the cultural system into three components: infrastructure as the product of the interactions among environment, population, andtechnology; structure as the local domestic and wider political economy; and superstructure as the ideational realm encompassing religion, myth, and the arts. Harris argued that the infrastructure is most basic and most influential because it functions as the ultimate adaptive mechanism for the very survival and maintenance of individuals and society as a whole. He asserted that infrastructure is probably the primary cause of much of the rest of the cultural system and accordingly assigned it research priority. Harris demonstrated the explanatory power of cultural materialism through his ingenious analyses of many cultural puzzles such as Aztec ritual sacrifice, the custom of the sacred cow in India, and Islamic and Jewish prohibitions on eating pork. For example, Harris forcefully argued that the cow was sacred in India because it was far more valuable alive for its milk, dung for cooking fuel and fertilizer for farm fields, and plowing than dead for its meat and hide. The Hindu religion reinforced this pragmatic infrastructural causality.The second innovative framework is human behavioral or evolutionary ecology. Pioneered by Eric Alden Smith and Bruce Winterhalder, it shifts attention to individuals as the locus of adaptation with an emphasis on decision making in the use of natural resources ranked according to their relative costs and benefits (optimal foraging theory). This connects human ecology more directly with natural selection and other evolutionary theory.Both of these special frameworks, cultural materialism and human behavioral ecology, have been criticized as simplistic andreductionistic. Nevertheless, both have proven to have some validity and utility in advancing the anthropological understanding of human-environment interactions.

In the 1990s, ecological anthropology diversified further by adding research variously focused on historical, political, or spiritual aspects of human ecology and adaptation. William Balee, John Bennett, and Carole Crumley, among others, developed a diachronic approach to examining the interactions between the sociocultural and environmental systems over extended periods of time as they transformed one another within a regional landscape. Previous research had been largely synchronic, examining a particular society as if it were isolated, traditional, static, and timeless, and also as if the society had no lasting cumulative impact on its environment and the latter was static as well. For instance, in the Republic of Guinea in Africa, foresters, botanists, andconservationists interpreted relics of forests near villages as having escaped the deforestation by villagers that created the surrounding savannas. However, James Fairhead and Melissa Leach demonstrated that these forest patches are actually generated and managed by the villagers as a focus for their rituals and other cultural practices. In other words, the forests are anthropogenic rather than purely natural. Other studies in historical ecology pay far more attention than cultural ecology used to do to the impact of external factors on local societies and ecosystems, such as cultural contact and change in the context of colonialism and, more recently, globalization.The above are among the considerations contributing to the interest of some researchers in concentrating on political ecology; that is, how power differentials and struggles are involved in human-environment interactions. This in turn links with issues of economic, social, and environmental justice. For instance, Susan Stonich analyzed how the economic development policies of the national government and international agencies impoverished the economy and habitat of farmers in Honduras. The interconnections between the abuses

of human rights and the environment have been explored by Barbara Rose Johnston. Most recently she documented the radioactive contamination of the environment of various societies during the Cold War, such as the impact of U.S.atomic bomb testing in the Marshall Islands of the South Pacific. Robert Hitchcock and other anthropologists are among those who have collaborated with the San hunter-gatherers of southern Africa to help them pursue community-based resource management to retain their subsistence economy and other aspects of their cultural identity in the face of external forces impinging on their traditional lands and resources including farmers, herders, miners, tourists, and even wildlife conservationists.In some situations anthropologists concerned with ecology and the environment are faced with a real dilemma. They are committed to both nature and culture, yet sometimes the two interests can be in competition or even conflict. The most striking case in this regard is the Makah Indian Tribe of the Olympic Peninsula in the state of Washington who clashed with major environmental andanimal rights groups when in the mid-1990s they sought to resume their annual hunting of a small number of grey whales as part of their cultural traditions. Yet in such cases, at least ideally, environmental anthropologists might well serve as mediators between the divergent cultural and environmental groups to try to secure a win-win solution since they are knowledgeable and concerned about both interests. Accordingly, more anthropologists need to acquire formal training and skills in the procedures for nonviolent conflict resolution.Beyond historical and political factors, religion and spirituality can also be powerful influences in human-environmental interactions and in dealing with environmental problems and issues. This is revealed in the most recent approach to ecological anthropology that is sometimes called spiritual ecology. Religion is an ancient cross-cultural universal; no society is known that does not have one or more religions, although individuals within a society vary in the degree of their religiosity and spirituality if any. Spirituality is an integral component of religion, but also extends beyond organizations to personal relationships with other people, nature, and the supernatural. Those who pursue spiritual ecology as a scientific and academic endeavor, a personal path of spirituality, and/orenvironmental activism, share the conviction that the worsening environmental crisis can only be resolved by a fundamental change in the way humans relate to nature involving sustainable and green environmental worldviews, attitudes, values, behaviors, and institutions. No single religion is considered to be the cause or solution for the ecocrisis; instead, adherents to any religion or spiritual practice need to apply introspection to develop more environmentally friendly orientations and conduct.Beliefs and emotions are often as important as reason in natural resource use, management, and conservation. For example, Bruce A. Byers and colleagues have shown that the Shona in the Zambezi valley of northern Zimbabwe consider some mountains, forests, and rivers to be sacred. Their sacred places and the biodiversity therein are more likely to be conserved in contrast to secular counterparts.Part of this substantial diversification of approaches within ecological anthropology since the 1990s involves a growing emphasis on applied rather than basic research, although certainly the two are often interdependent. However, with the worsening ecocrisis and other factors, increasingly research has concentrated on identifying and solving practical environmental questions, problems, and issues. This is the arena of environmental anthropology per se. Researchers in this arena still pursue various approaches within ecological anthropology to investigate matters of survival, adaptation, and change with an emphasis on culture, communities, and fieldwork. However, their work concentrates on practical aspects like using the traditional environmental knowledge of indigenous peoples to promote alternative methods of economic development that are sustainable as they increasingly articulate with the broader regional, national, and global economies. As another example, other anthropologists

deal with the relationship between local communities and protected areas established by the government and international environmental organizations to conservebiodiversity. Still others document and advocate the human rights of indigenous communities and other ethnic groups in the face of outside encroachment on their traditional territory and resources. Anthropologists also consider how variables such as gender, socioeconomic class, nationality, and identities relate to environmental matters.Environmental anthropology is expanding further the realm of ecological anthropology to embrace research at scales ranging from the local to the regional, national, and global levels including the consequences of climate change; to collaborate in multidisciplinary research teams incorporating members from the host country; to use high tech resources such as geographical information systems, remote sensing, and satellite data imaging; to consider rights, politics, and policies as they are linked with social, economic, and environmental justice; to pursue nonviolent conflict resolution in areas where different groups compete for scarce or diminishing natural resources; to community challenges and responses with hazards and risk perception, whether natural or anthropogenic; and to environmental organizations, discourses, and identities.In the process of the development of environmental anthropology as an extension of ecological anthropology that is more practical, applied research has not supplanted basic research nor have pragmatic concerns replaced those of the academic intellectual, instead these are all complementary. Furthermore, historical continuities persist, like the legacy of cultural ecology, this in spite of discontinuities such as the historicizing of cultural ecology through historical ecology as an additional component in the anthropological investigation of human-environment interactions.By now anthropological interests and activities concerning ecology and the environment have reached maturity with distinctive organizations like the Anthropology and Environment unit of the American Anthropological Association that has a membership approaching a thousand and its own listserv; special periodicals (Human Ecology, Journal of Ecological Anthropology, andEcological and Environmental Anthropology ); distinctive textbooks and anthologies; and special training programs at various universities[1].Ecological anthropology and environmental anthropology are increasingly contributing research of broader relevance to the local, national, international, and global communities in coping with natural resources, hazards, and other environmental problems and issues. In various ways anthropologists have addressed pivotal environmental issues including the population explosion, natural resource depletion such as soil erosion, unsustainable economic development and consumption levels, habitat destruction likedeforestation, biodiversity loss, environmental mismanagement, pollution, and hazards.Furthermore, environmental matters are important politically, as well as ecologically and economically, because many of the conflict zones in the world are also regions of serious environmental problems including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burundi,Colombia, Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Iraq, Madagascar, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Rwanda, Solomon Islands, Somalia,Sri Lanka, and Sudan. Moreover, climate changes, especially those connected with global warming, are destined to further aggravate many environmental problems as societies are increasingly impacted in all levels and aspects throughout the world.No doubt ecological and environmental anthropology have developed the foundation, maturity, momentum, and achievements to continue to contribute to our understanding and advancement of human ecology and adaptation from the local to the global levels as long as humanity has a future. However, that future depends on replacing ecocide with ecosanity, and that in turn requires far more attention to the information and insights of the disciplines and professions that contribute to environmental studies including ecological and environmental

anthropology. Ecocide is by far the greatest threat to the security of every being on planet Earth. Ultimately, any human population, economy, and society can only be as healthy as its habitat.