Environmental Anthropology

Graduate Class

Lectures and Readings

The first part of this class begins as another ‘history and theory class’ with a focus on the specific topic of environmental anthropology. Many of our graduate students did not come from undergraduate anthropology and they needed background into this essential subfield of anthropology. After that, we dove into TEK, ecological economics, HBE, political ecology, environmentalism, resilience, complexity, environmental history, and world systems. For many years I identified myself as an environmental anthropologist of the ‘new environmental anthropology’ (in the last two sections of the syllabus below, nowadays I might say an ecological-evolutionary anthropologist and systems scientist, but what’s a label). The ‘new ecology’ includes the resilience and adaptive cycle concepts that came largely from Buzz Holling. The ‘new environmental anthropology’ utilizes the ideas of energy self-organization (Odum) and complex systems science (Prigogine).

As a graduate class, this course included classic readings for each topic. Over the years, I reduced that load somewhat, but I always made them work harder than the undergraduates. I had a great deal of sympathy (too much?) for students required to read papers in their second (or third) language. The readings are listed below in parentheses.

Introduction

History

  • Functionalism, Cultural Ecology and Cultural Energetics (Spencer (1877), White (1959))

    • The ppt was a very simple introduction to ecology that left much time for discussion.

  • Ecosystems Anthropology (Rappaport (1971))

    • This ppt covered the Kemp’s 1971 paper on the flow of energy among an Inuit group on the Baffin Island, Canada. It is a good demonstration of early systems diagramming of energy flow.

  • Human Adaptability, Cultural Materialism – Neo-Functionalism and Neo-Evolutionism (Boserup (1963), Carneiro (1970))

    • This week has two ppts. The first is from Steward’s Theory of Culture Change (1955). The second cover’s Harris’s Cultural Materialism (1979). Both end with critiques of the works. It can be said generally that Steward’s work focuses on detailed description of a single culture, which became known as cultural ecology. Harris’s work on the other hand was comparative, cross-cultural analysis that attempted to discover general principles of human culture and cultural evolution.

Science and Human Ecology

  • Human Ecology (Netting (1993), Netting et al. (1995))

    • This ppt covers a 1995 paper, “The Social Organization of Agrarian Labor,” by Netting et al. His 1981 book, Balancing on an Alp, was perhaps the best example of the detailed, cite focused cultural ecology that was championed by Steward. It was a big influence on me, and many of his research foci appear in my dissertation.

  • Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and Common Property (Berkes (1999:111-126), Berkes, et al. (1989))

    • This ppt is a thorough introduction to both of these relatively recent and fascinating approaches to the ecological study of traditional societies.

  • Sustainability, Sustainable Development, Conservation, and Ecological Economics (Haberl, et al. (2001), Campbell (2008))

    • This week has two shorter ppts, again intended to guide discussion. The question, what is meant by ‘sustainability’? is addressed. The second ppt is and introduction to the Ecological Footprint method of Wackernagel and Rees (1996). Both ppts include comparative demonstrations of the emergy accounting method from HT Odum.

  • Evolutionary Ecology – Human Behavioral Ecology (Alvard (1998))

    • This ppt covers a paper by Winterhalder and Smith, “Analyzing Adaptive Strategies: HBE at 25” (2000), the chief proponents of the methodology of ‘human behavioral ecology’ for ecological anthropology. Their approach is rigorous, scientific fieldwork that aimed to produce mathematical models that could be used to predict behavior, especially among foraging peoples. Prey choice, patch choice, and time allocation methods were important tools. My dissertation chair, Bill Keegan, produced an archaeological application of these mathematical methods.

Radical Critiques: Environment, Power, and Nature-Culture

  • Political Ecology and Ecology of Practice (Escobar (1998), Paulson et al. (2003))

    • This week includes two ppts. The first is a critique of ‘political ecology’ from a paper entitled “Political ecology: where is the ecology?” by Walker (2005). Many ecological anthropologists, including myself, felt that the newly popular field was in fact a ‘greenwashing’ of political ecology, at least in its earliest forms. The second ppt is a brief treatment of a paper by the popular poststructuralist Arturo Escobar, “Discourse of Nature: Elements of a Poststructural Political Ecology” (1996). The focus is the contentious political movement for ‘sustainable development’, which he says in actuality is the ‘discursive incorporation’ of nature as capital.

  • Environmental Movements (Brosius (1999))

    • The paper by Brosius is sharp criticism for the creation of international development institutions. He says that they inscribe and naturalize certain discourses. While they create certain solutions to environmental degradation, they simultaneously preclude others. They privilege certain actors and marginalize others. He says that institutions often obstruct meaningful change through endless negotiation, legalistic evasion, compromise among ‘stakeholders,’ and the creation of unwieldy projects aimed at top-down environmental management. Most importantly, however, Brosius says that they insinuate and naturalize a discourse that excludes moral or political imperatives. They favor instead indifferent bureaucratic and/or technoscientific forms of institutionally created and validated intervention.

  • Constructing Nature (Signe (1996))

    • I love this chapter by Signe, I should have made a ppt for it. The chapter is from the book by Descola and Palsson (1996). The ppt for this week is a summary of their introductory chapter to the edited volume. It is a feminist critique of dualisms in western society. The authors ask, are we to restrict ourselves to endless ethnographic accounts of local ‘cosmologies’ or must we look for general trends or patterns that would enable us to replace different emic conceptions of nature within a unified analytical framework? Reading most poststructuralists gives me a headache.

The “New Ecology” and Opportunities for New Environmental Anthropology

  • Resilience and Panarchy (Walker and Salt (2006))

    • This long ppt explores the ‘new ecology’ ecological program of Buzz Holling: resilience and panarchy (the adaptive cycle). Topics covered are hierarchical organization and emergent properties, stability domains, ecological succession and human-induced succession, common perceptions of nature, resilience and sustainable development, hierarchy and scale, and adaptive management policy.

  • Ecosystems and Complex Systems (Odum and Odum (2001:61-75), Abel (2003))

    • The ppt for this week introduces the concepts of dissipative structures (Prigogine), self-organized autocatalytic systems (Odum), maximum empower (Odum), the adaptive cycle (Holling), stability domains (Holling), pulsing (Odum), and many various emergent properties of sociocultural systems. One of my papers is included as a reading, “Understanding Complex Human Ecosystems: The Case of Ecotourism on Bonaire” (2003).

The Past, the Present, and other Applications