Paper No.

: 11 Ecological Anthropology: Cultural and Biological Dimensions

Module : 24 Concepts in Ecology : Biological Dimension

Development Team

Principal Investigator Prof. Anup Kumar Kapoor

Department of Anthropology, University of Delhi

Dr. K. R. Rammohan
Paper Coordinator
Department of Anthropology, Sikkim University, Sikkim

Mr. Sagar Chettri

Content Writer Department of Anthropology, Sikkim University, Sikkim

Prof. A. Paparao
Content Reviewer
Department of Anthropology,
Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati
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 Description of Module

Subject Name Anthropology

Paper Name Ecological Anthropology: Cultural and Biological Dimensions

Module Name/Title Concepts in Ecology : Biological Dimension

Module Id 24

Contents:
Introduction
Development of Cultural ecology and related theories
Cultural Ecology approach
Cultural Evolutionist approach
Ecology and Functionalist Approach
Cultural Materialistic approach
Political Ecologist approach
Ethno ecologist approach
Summary

Learning Outcomes:
After studying this module, students would be able to understand:
 The Role ecological anthropologists in the debate of environmentalism
 How major ecological theories rose against environmentalism

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 Introduction
In the early twentieth century, ecology was established as a sub-discipline of biology known as
“natural ecology”. During the 1930s, “human ecology” was founded, applying the methods of natural
ecology to human societies (Hawley, 1950). Human ecology is the study of the relationships and
interactions among humans, their biology, their cultures, and their physical environments. The human
ecologists study many aspects of culture and environment including how and why cultures do what
they do to solve their subsistence problems, how groups of people understand their environment, and
how they share their knowledge of the environment. The broad field of human ecology includes two
major sub-divisions; these are human biological ecology and cultural ecology. Human biological
ecology is the study of the biological aspect of the human/environment relationship, and cultural
ecology is the study of the ways in which culture is used by people to adapt to their environment
(Sutton & Anderson, 2010). At around the same time, the anthropologist Julian Steward began to
analyze the cultural dimensions of the ecological adaptation of indigenous groups (Steward, 1938), and
later his research is known as “cultural ecology” (Steward, 1955). By the mid 1930s, American school
of thought emerged as a reaction against the ninetieth century unilinear evolutionism and as a scientific
study of the environment and culture. The Cultural Ecology theory considers how environmental forces
influence humans and how human activities affect the biosphere and the Earth itself (Kottak, 1999).
Julian Steward coined the term ‘cultural ecology’ and defined it in his book, The Theory of Cultural
Change (1955), as "a heuristic device for understanding the effect of environment upon culture"
(Steward, 1955). Cultural ecology then branched out within anthropology, engendering such sub-fields
as ethnoecology (Conklin, 1954), neo-functionalist ecology (Rappaport, 1968), human ecology
(Moran, 1990), processual ecology (Bennett, 1993), spiritual ecology (Kinsley, 1995) and political
ecology (Schmink & Wood, 1987). These multiple sub-fields of the ecological paradigm reveal a
constant increase in the scope of its application, and represents ecological science’s response to the
new political and environmental realities faced by contemporary societies.
Cultural Ecology focuses on how cultural beliefs and practices help human populations adapt to
their environments and live within the means of their ecosystem. It contributes to social organization
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 and other human institutions. Cultural Ecology also interprets cultural practices in terms of their long-
term role in helping humans adapt to their environment (Kottak, 1999).
To understand the relationship between culture and environment, several different theories or
methodologies emerged during the course of its development. Besides the work of Steward, Harris’s
work led to the development of new methodologies in the 1960s. For Harris, cultural change begins at
the infrastructural level. Harris’s cultural materialism incorporates the ecological explanation and
advances of a more explicit and systematic scientific research strategy (Barfield, 1997, p.137). Harris’s
main explanatory mechanism was the concept of adaptation (Milton, 1997). Subsequently, Rappaport
and Vayda also contributed importantly to the application of new methodologies in the 1960s. They
focused upon the ecosystem approach, systems functioning, and the flow of energy. These methods
rely on the usage of measurements such as caloric expenditure and protein consumption. This
ecosystem approach remained popular among ecological anthropologists during the 1960s and the
1970s (Milton, 1997). Ethno-ecology was a prevalent approach throughout the same decade. The
methodology of ethno-ecology falls within cognitive anthropology. The 1970s and 1980s saw the
emergence of radical cultural relativism. In the 1990s, ecological anthropologists rejected extreme
cultural relativism and attacked modernist dichotomies (body and mind, action and thought, nature and
culture) (Milton, 1997). Recent ecological anthropology studies have included political ecology,
uniting more traditional concerns for the environment–technology-social-organization nexus with the
emphasis of political economy on power and inequality seen historically, the evaluation and critique of
the Third World development programs, and the analysis of environmental degradation (Netting, 1996,
p. 270).

Development of Cultural ecology and related theories

In The Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin presented a synthetic theory of evolution based on the
idea of descent with modification. In each generation, more individuals are produced than can survive
(because of limited resources), and competition between individuals arises. Individuals with favorable
characteristics, or variations, survive to reproduce. It is the environmental context that determines
whether or not a trait is beneficial. Thomas R. Malthus had an obvious influence on Darwin's
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 formulations. Malthus pioneered demographic studies, arguing that human populations naturally tend
to outstrip their food supply (Seymour-Smith, 1986, p.87). This circumstance leads to disease and
hunger which eventually put a limit on the growth of the population (Seymour-Smith, 1986, p.87).
As a reaction to Darwin’s theory, some anthropologists eventually turned to environmental
determinism as a mechanism for explanation. The earliest attempts at environmental determinism
mapped cultural features of human populations according to environmental information (for example,
correlations were drawn between natural features and human technologies) (Milton, 1997). The
detailed ethnographic accounts of Boas, Malinowski, and others led to the realization that
environmental determinism could not sufficiently account for observed realities, and a weaker form of
determinism began to emerge (Milton, 1997). At the same time, steward looked for the adaptive
responses to similar environments that gave rise to cross-cultural similarities (Netting, 1996, p.267).
Steward’s theory cantered around a culture core, which he defined as "the constellation of features
which are most closely related to subsistence activities and economic arrangements" (Steward, 1955,
p.37).
By the 1960s and 1970s, cultural ecology and environmental determinism lost favor within
anthropology. Ecological anthropologists formed new schools of thought, including the ecosystem
model, ethnoecology, and historical ecology (Barfield, 1997, p. 138). Researchers hoped that
ecological anthropology and the study of adaptations would provide explanations of customs and
institutions (Salzman & Attwood, 1996, p. 169). Ecological anthropologists believe that populations
are not engaged with the total environment around them, but rather with a habitat consisting of certain
selected aspects and local ecosystems (Kottak, 1999, p.23-24). Furthermore, each population has its
own adaptations institutionalized in the culture of the group, especially in their technologies (Salzman
& Attwood, 1996, p.169).

A field such as ecological anthropology is particularly relevant to contemporary concerns with

the state of the general environment. Anthropological knowledge has the potential to inform and
instruct humans about how to construct sustainable ways of life. Anthropology, especially when it has
an environmental focus, also demonstrates the importance of preserving cultural diversity. Biological
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 diversity is necessary for the adaptation and survival of all species; culture diversity may serve a
similar role for the human species because it is clearly one of our most important mechanisms of
adaptation.

Cultural Ecology approach

Julian steward (1902-1972) is an American Neo-evolutionist and his concept of cultural ecology was
particularly interested in the relationship between culture and environment.
He believed that cultures at similar technological levels, in similar
environments, would develop broadly similar institutions. His work thus
depended on cross-cultural comparisons (Nanda & Warms, 2007). He divided
the evolutionary thought into three schools- unilinear, universal and
multilinear. Steward stated that E.B. Tylor and H. L. Morgan are associated
with the unilinear approach to cultural evolution. L. White and V. G. Child
are related with universal approach to cultural evolution. Steward classified himself as a multilinear
evolutionist.
Steward (1968) wrote cultural ecology is the “study of the processes by which a society adapts
to its environment. Its principal problem is to determine whether these adaptations initiate internal
social transformations of evolutionary change” (p. 337). Like biological ecology, which analyzes
adaptation to the complex interconnections that make up an environment, cultural ecology is a view of
“man in the web of life” (Steward, 1973b, p. 31). That web consisted of both natural and cultural
realities:
“Cultural ecology is broadly similar to biological ecology in its method of
examining the interactions of all social and natural phenomena within an area,
but it does not equate social features with biological species or assume that
competition is the major process. It distinguishes different kinds of socio-cultural
systems and institutions, it recognizes both cooperation and competition as
processes of interaction, and it postulates that environmental adaptations depend
on the technology, needs and structure of the society and on the nature of the
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 environment. It includes analysis of adaptation to the social environment”
(Steward, 1968, p. 337).

He studied the Shoshone of the Great Basin in the 1930s and noted that they
were hunter-gatherers heavily dependent on the pinon nut tree. Steward
demonstrated that lower population densities exist in areas where the tree is
sparsely distributed, thus illustrating the direct relationship between resource
base and population density. Steward argued that the links between
environment and culture were particularly clear in societies like the Shoshone
where the margins of survival were slim. In contrast, in societies which “have adequately solved
subsistence problems, the effect of ecology become more difficult to ascertain. In complex societies
certain components of the social superstructure rather than ecology seem increasingly to be
determinants of further developments. With greater cultural complexity analysis becomes increasingly
difficult” (Steward, 1938, p. 262).

Steward outlined three basic methodological steps for a cultural-ecological investigation. First,
“the interrelationship of exploitative or productive technology and environment must be analyzed,”,
that is, the relationship between material culture and natural resources. Second, “the behavior patterns
involved in the exploitation of a particular area by means of a particular technology must be analyzed”
(Steward, 1973b, p. 40–42). For example, certain animals are best stalked by individual hunters while
other game can be captured in communal hunts; different social behaviors are involved in the
exploitation of different resources. The third step in the analysis is to determine how “behavior patterns
entailed in exploiting the environmental effect other aspects of culture” (Steward, 1973b, p.41). This
three-step empirical analysis identifies the cultural core, “the constellation of features which are most
closely related to subsistence activities and economic arrangements” (Steward, 1973b, p. 37).

Robert McC. Netting (1934-1995) is a distinguished cultural ecologist; Netting conducted

lifelong studies of the vital relationships linking peoples’ social institutions, individual behaviors, and
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 collective beliefs to their production practices. He wrote about agricultural practices, household
organization, land tenure, warfare, historical demography, and cultural ecology (Netting, 1977). Robert
McC. Netting uses his study of a Swiss alpine community to show
relationships between land tenure and land use. He also discusses the future of
shifting cultivation and the consequences of the Green Revolution (Netting,
1997). In the 1960s, he undertook research among the Kofyar of Northern
Nigeria. He took ecological approach that Julian Steward pioneered in his
1938 study of mobile hunting societies in the Great Basin of the Southwestern
United States. Netting (1965) in his “Trial Model of Cultural Ecology” argued
that social and cultural factors, and not only biological and physical factors (i.e., Steward’s “relevant
environmental features”), must be included in the definition of effective environment. The innermost
core of Netting’s functionalist model is taken up by what he calls “social instrumentalities”—namely,
demography, productive groups, and rights in resources— precisely those aspects of social
organization that have direct adaptive significance. He uses the example of the small independent
family among the Kofyar, an institution admirably adapted to the labor needs of intensive agriculture in
small parcels of land. He contrasts it with the extended family of the neighbouring Chokfem people,
who are better adapted to shifting cultivation on dispersed lands. Here Netting’s early interest in the
functional links that relate household composition and labor requirements to the ways in which land is
put to productive use.
Netting in his book, Hill Farmers of Nigeria, is a more complete analysis of the intensive ways
in which the Kofyar managed their homestead gardens on hilly slopes by terracing and fertilizing.
Netting demonstrates that population density, division of labor, and rights to land and labor are
functionally interrelated with crucial aspects of the ecosystem.

Cultural Evolutionist approach

Leslie White (1900-1975) is an American anthropologist who developed the theory of Cultural
Evolution and he was deeply influenced by Morgan’s model of evolutionary theory and the Karl

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 Marx’s theory of Materialism. His main contribution was that he provided scientific insights to the
evolution of culture. He created a formula that measures the degree of cultural development.
In The Evolution of Culture (1959), White turned his attention to the course of evolution from
the ‘Primate Revolution’ to the fall of Rome. He opined that ‘energy’ is the key mechanism in
evolutionary development, with amount of energy available per capita per year determining the overall
level of cultural evolution at any given time and space. In the earliest phase, energy existed in the form
of the human body alone. Later, men and women harnessed other sources: fire, water, wind, and so on.
Advances in the manufacture of tools, in the domestication of animals and plants, and in the
intensification of agriculture all increased efficiency and spurred the cultural evolution (Barnard,
2000).
He also illustrated that “culture developed when the amount of energy harnessed by people per
capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency of the technological means of putting the energy to
work is increased or as both factors are simultaneously increased. It is expressed with the following
formula: E X T→ C, in which C represents the degree of cultural development, E the amount of energy
harnessed per capita per year, and T the quality of efficiency of the tools employed in the expenditure
of energy (White, 1949, p. 368–369).
White divided culture into three subsystems – 1. Technological, 2. Sociological and 3.
Ideological. He argued that the technological system is the basis of cultural evolution and composed of
the material, mechanical, physical and chemical instruments, as well as the way people use these
techniques. The sociological system is made up of interpersonal relations expressed in patterns of
behavior, collective as well as individual. The ideological system is composed of ideas, beliefs, and
knowledge expressed in articulation speech or other symbolic form (White, 1949, p. 362–363). White’s
three categories of culture—technological, sociological, and ideological—are not equivalent;
technology has priority because, according to White’s definition, it involves the capture and
transformation of energy that is essential for life in all organisms.

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 CULTURE
(Cultural Evolutionist
Approach)

TECNOLOGIES SOCIOLOGICAL IDEOLOGICAL

(Material,
(Interpersonal (Ideas, beliefs,
Mechanical, physical
relations, behaviors) knowledge)
and chemical
instruments)

Fig 1: Cultural Evolutionist approach

According to White “The technological system is therefore both primary and basic and
important as all human life and culture rest and depend upon it” (White, 1949, p. 365). White’s
argument on the importance to the technological realm of culture goes as follows:
1. Technology is an attempt to solve the problem of survival.
2. It means capturing enough energy and diverting it for human need.
3. Those societies that captured more energy and use it most efficiently were at an adaptive advantage;
they were, in an evolutionary sense, more advanced.
4. Therefore, in this way some societies are more advanced than the others in an evolutionary sense.
In his theory of cultural evolution, White believed that culture has general laws of its own.
Based on this universal principle, culture evolves itself. Therefore, an anthropologist’s task is to
discover those principles and explain the particular phenomena of culture. He called this approach
culturology, which attempts to define and predict cultural phenomena by understanding general pattern
of culture.

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 Ecology and Functionalist Approach
A. Roy Rappaport ((1926-1997) first defined the ecology in terms of structural functionalist approach.
He was influenced by Julian steward. He saw culture as a function of the
ecosystem and culture as a means of adaptation to environments. The carrying capacity and energy
expenditure are central themes in Rappaport’s studies conducted in New Guinea. He completed the
first systematic study of ritual, religion, and ecology, and this study is characterized as synchronic and
functionalist. Rappaport (1971) defines an ecological population as "an aggregate of organisms having
in common a set of distinctive means by which they maintain a common set of material relations
within the ecosystem in which they participate" (p.238). Similarly, he defines ecosystem as "the total
of living organisms and non-living substances bound together in material exchanges within some
demarcated portion of the biosphere" (p.238).
The classical example of an ecological approach to the ritual system of a small-scale society is
found in Roy Rappaport’s Pigs for the Ancestors, a study of the ritual system of the Tsembaga of New
Guinea. In this book, Rappaport postulates that the slaughter and consumption of pigs in Tsembaga
ritual – the ‘kaiko’ – functions as a regulatory mechanism that keeps within acceptable parameters the
size of the herd of pigs, the intake of animal protein, and the amount of female labor needed to take
care of them as well as of the gardens. The picture presented by Rappaport is one in which all the
components of Tsembaga reality – ecological, nutritional, social, military, ideological – constitute a
coherent totality. Rappaport’s study provide a model for understanding the role of ritual in the creation
and maintenance not just of social solidarity, but in the maintenance of the
conditions within which human organisms can survive.

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 Andrew Vayda serves at present on the editorial boards of Anthropological Theory, Borneo
Research Council publications, and Human Ecology and is a founding board member of the
Association for Fire Ecology of the Tropics. He in his monograph “Maori Warfare” (1960) focused on
such matters as the importance of understanding variability and considering
context in human-ecological interactions, on seeing humans as important agents of
environmental change, and on the centrality of historical analysis in explanation.
He specializes in methodology and explanation at the interface between social and
ecological science. Additionally, he has directed and participated in numerous
research projects focused on people’s interactions with forests in Indonesia and
Papua New Guinea. 'Progressive contextualization' emerged in the 1980s and was
originally developed by Andrew Vayda (1983). This approach links the environment with development
issues by analysing the power of "non-place-based' forces' like transnational corporations over "place-
based activities" involving agriculture and the like (Bryant 2001: 153).
In the late 1970s, Vayda initiated a long-lasting involvement in applied research on people-
forest interactions in Indonesia, collaborating first with the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Program,
and later with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)-Indonesia and the Center for International Forest
Research.

Cultural Materialistic approach

The American anthropologist Marvin Harris (1927-2001) in his book “The Rise of Anthropological
Theory” (1968) first developed the anthropological theory known as Cultural
Materialism. His concept of cultural materialism was influenced by the
writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, yet is a materialism distinct
from Marxist dialectical materialism, as well as from philosophical materialism
(Moore, 2004). The cultural materialism embraces three anthropological
thoughts, materialism (Karl Marx’s & Friedrich Engels’s dialectical
materialism), cultural evolution (Leslie White) and cultural ecology (Julian Steward) [Barfield, 1997,
p. 232].
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 The Rise of Anthropological Theory, Harris described cultural materialism as the socio-cultural
analogue of Darwinian selection and immediately identifies it as non idealist and evolutionary. Harris
developed “the principle of techno-environmental and techno-economic determinism. This principle
holds that similar technologies applied to similar environments tend to produce similar arrangements of
labor in production and distribution, and that these in turn call forth similar kinds of social groupings,
which justify and co-ordinate their activities by means of similar systems of values and beliefs.
Translated into a research strategy, the principle of techno-environmental, techno-economic
determinism and assigns priority to the study of the material conditions of socio-cultural life, much as
the principle of natural selection assigns priority to the study of differential reproductive success”
(Harris, 1968, p.4).
Harris insisted that the relevant question is not “the reality” of the actions versus the ideas of
people, or of socio-cultural phenomena as observed versus socio-cultural phenomena as experienced.
Instead, Harris asserted, we must make two sets of distinctions: “First, the distinction between mental
and behavioral events, and second, between emic and etic events”. Behavioral events are simply “all
the body motions and environmental effects produced by such motions, large and small, of all the
human beings who ever lived”. Mental events, on the other hand, “are all the thoughts and feelings that
we humans experience within our minds” (Harris, 1979, p. 31–32). The second set of distinctions is
between emic and etic. Emic perspectives convey a participant’s point of view; etic perspectives are
from an observer’s point of view. These two ways of knowing imply different research approaches and
agendas.
These distinctions lead to specific categories of human actions and thoughts. First are those
relating to the needs of meeting subsistence requirements, the etic behavioral mode of production.
Second are the actions taken to ensure the existence of the population, the etic behavioral mode of
reproduction. Third are actions taken by each society to maintain “secure and orderly behavioral
relationships among its constituent groups and with other societies”, and because this is a principal area
of discord. The associated set of behaviors are “the economic processes which allocate labor and the
material products of labor to individuals and groups” (Harris, 1979, p. 51). Therefore, we are
concerned with the etic behavioral domestic economies and etic behavioral political economies. A final
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 etic category, behavioral superstructure, consists of acts related to the importance of symbolic
processes for the human psyche—from art to advertising, ritual to sport. Harris then lumps—for no
clear reason—modes of production and reproduction under the rubric “infrastructure” and domestic
and political economies under the name “structure”. When “behavioral superstructure” is added to
these two categories, voilà—a tripartite scheme of etic behavior emerges: infrastructure, structure, and
superstructure. Although Harris (1979) briefly sketched a parallel tripartite scheme for mental and emic
components, he was uninterested in the effort and collapsed the framework as soon as it was
constructed, leaving us with infrastructure, structure, and superstructure (all etic categories) and the
fourth catch-all, mental and emic superstructure (p.54).
Cultural materialism explains cultural similarities and differences as well as models for culture change
within a societal framework consisting of three distinct levels:
a. Infrastructure: Cultural materialism promote the idea that infrastructure consists of ‘material
realities’ such as technological, economic, and reproductive (demographic ) factors that mould
and influences the other two aspects of culture.
b. Structure: The structure sector of culture consists of organizational aspects of culture such as
domestic economy (family, division of labour, age and gender roles) and kinship systems and
political economy (class, caste, police and military).
c. Superstructure: It consists of ideological and symbolic aspects of society such as art, music,
religion, ideas, literature, sports, science and value (Scupin & DeCorse, 2012, p. 288).

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 CULTURAL
MATERIALIST
APPROACH

INFRASTRUCTURE STRUCTURE SUPERSTRUCTURE

(Material realities: (Domestic economy, (Art, music, religion,
technological, political economy) ideas, literature,
economy) science)

Fig 2: Cultural Materialistic Approach

The structure and superstructure are dependent on the infrastructure and any change in the
infrastructure will create change in structure and superstructure. Marvin Harris explained this
relationship through his article titled ‘The Cultural Ecology of India’s Secret Cattle’ that was published
in the year of 1966. McGee and Warms (2012) commented: “…Hindu prohibition on killing cattle
should be understood in relation to the role that cattle play in the production of food crops, fuel and
fertilizer. Marvin Harris convincingly demonstrates the material and ecological importance of cattle to
Indian society and argued that this, rather than Hindu religious doctrine, is the ultimate basis of the ban
on killing and eating cattle … the sacredness of cattle is the result of their productive importance” (p.
261).
Therefore, cultural materialists believe that technological and economic aspects play the
primary role in shaping a society. Cultural materialism aims to understand the effects of technological,
economic and demographic factors on moulding societal structure and superstructure through strictly
scientific methods.

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 Political Ecologist approach
Political ecology has engaged with the politics of environmental science pretty much since it started.
In the days of cultural ecology, researcher such as Harold Conklin (1954) showed that shifting
cultivation was not necessarily as damaging as many governmental or environmental scientists
assumed, and that this kind of cultivation could both support livelihoods and have a beneficial impact
on landscape. Since the transition to political ecology, various researchers have emphasized on how
science always reflects politics. The British Political Research Group was formed in 1976 partly to
access how science was used to support state authority concerning decision about energy or
technology. Thompson, Warburton and Hatley (1986) showed how different scientific projections of
environmental calamity in the Himalayas could be linked to the political worldviews of scientific
institutions. Since, then a variety of political ecological researches have looked on how scientific
explanations of environmental problems are affected by politics, and how we need to reassess these
explanations in order to achieve more accurate, and more useful, environmental policies (Fairhead &
Leach, 1996; Bassett & Zueli, 2000; Forsyth, 2003).
Political ecology in Anthropology started in the 18th century with philosophers such as Adam
Smith, Karl Marx, and Thomas Malthus. Political economy attempted to explain the relationships
between economic production and political processes (Perry, 2003, p. 123; Ritzer, 2008, p. 28). It
tended toward overly structuralist explanations, focusing on the role individual economic relationships
in the maintenance of social order (Wolf, 1997, p. 7-9). Within anthropology,
Eric Wolf pushed political economy towards a neo-Marxist framework which
began addressing the role of local cultures as a part of the world capitalist
system as opposed to earlier political economists and anthropologists who
viewed those cultures as “primitive isolates” (Wolf, 1997, p. 13). Eric Wolf
first introduced the term ‘political ecology’ in 1972 and reflected on cultural
ecology, an approach associated with anthropologist Julian Steward, who
assessed the degree to which small scale societies developed cultural attributes based upon material
and environmental endowments and possibilities (Butzer 1989). He emphasises on the "problematics of
adaptation to the environment without attending to the structures of inequality that mediated human-
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 nature articulations", while at the same time the obsessive concentration of orthodox Marxists on
economic analysis served to neglect the importance of nature and environment (Biersack 2006: 3).

Ethno ecologist approach

Harold Conklin’s (1926- 2016) work focuses on integrating the ethnoecology and cultural ecology of
the agro ecosystems of the Hanunoo and Ifugao in the Philippines (Barfield, 1997, p.138). He is
renowned in ecological anthropology for opining that slash-and-burn cultivation under conditions of
abundant land and sparse population is not environmentally destructive (Netting, 1996, p.268). He
showed that shifting hill cultivation was not necessarily as damaging as what many governments or
environmental scientists assumed, and this kind of cultivation could both support livelihoods and have
a beneficial impact on landscapes. Furthermore, he gives complete descriptions of the wide and
detailed knowledge of plant and animal species, climate, topography, and soils that makes up the
ethnoscientific repertoire of indigenous food producers (Netting, 1996, p.268). He sets the standards
for ecological description with detailed maps of topography, land use, and village boundaries (Netting,
1996, p. 268).
Most Anthropological studies of traditional knowledge have been conducted within the general
framework of ethnoscience, which can be defined as “the study of systems of knowledge developed by
a given culture who classify the objectives, activities and events of its universe” (Hardesty, 1977). A
subset of ethnoscience, ethnoecology, refers to the study of how traditional groups organize and
classify their knowledge of the environment and environmental process. Conklin (1954, 1955, 1957)
and Frake (1961, 1962) suggested that ecologically oriented ethnographers should combine traditional
techniques from cultural and biological ecology with others, principally derived
from linguistics, that were deemed to be better suited to explore native
conceptions of the environment (Fowler, 1977). The basic assumption of the
ethnoecology is that the environmental interactions of human beings that are
greatly influenced by thought, knowledge and language. Another basic
assumption of ethnoecology is that different group of people, or cultures,
perceive and conceive of the world somewhat differently as a result of varying
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 social, historical, cultural and environmental conditions and experiences.
Sharecropping in Brazil ‘is a form of agriculture in which a landowner allows a tenant to use
the land in return for a share of the crops produced on their portion of land’ is given by Johnson
(1974). It is a cognized model with environmental events and behavior by share croppers. The study
compares two sets of data on swidden agricultural activities by these farmers. The first set consists of a
cognitive model of land categories, their attributes, and rules stating ‘which crops like which lands
best’. There were eight relatively stable and mutually contrasting land categories, which the
sharecroppers tended to identify in terms of two sets of attributes, one set reflecting soil fertility
("strong" vs. "weak") and the other referring to soil moisture ("hot" meaning dry vs. "cold" meaning
wet), which reflects soil drainage conditions. The sharecroppers verbally associate individual crop
types with particular combinations of land attributes. In the case of squash, for instance, the most
"liked" lands were those that were "strong" and "hot". There were two varieties of manioc, one
preferring lands that is “strong” and “cold” and the other prefer "hot" soils. The association of crops
with land categories was codified by rules such as the following:
1. One need not bother planting crops on sandy hillsides or saline soils.
2. It is "almost" worthless to plant on an old swidden field.
3. River bottoms will only produce potatoes.

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 Summary
• Cultural Ecology focuses on how cultural helps in human adaptation to their environments.
• The subject studies social organization and other human institutions.
• And understand the relationship between culture and environment

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