DOCSLIB.ORG

Hunters and Gatherers Peter Jordan

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Hunters and Gatherers Peter Jordan C H A P T E R 2 6 Hunters and Gatherers Peter Jordan The investigation of hunter-gatherers lies at Emile Durkheim—developed their ideas through con- the core of the archaeological and anthropological sideration of hunting-and-gathering societies (Bar- enterprise, whose central concern is to investigate and nard 2004:ix). The implicit assumption underlying explain the immense diversity among human cultures much of this work is the belief that foragers charac- (Ames 2004:364). Extended periods of human history terize a conceptual baseline in human development have been characterized by societies that lived exclu- (Pluciennik 2005). sively by hunting, fishing, and gathering, and this way As a result, “ideas observed, tested, or refined with of life represents the conditions in which key periods the study of hunter-gatherers have been among the of human evolution occurred prior to the emergence most important areas of anthropological research” and subsequent spread of agriculture and pastoral- (Hitchcock and Biesle 2000:3). These research initia- ism in the Holocene (Barnard 2004:1). It was also tives have included the application of evolutionary as hunters and gatherers that humans developed the ecological theory to human populations (Hawkes et crucial physical and mental capacities that are shared al. 1982, 1997; Hurtado et al. 1985; Winterhalder and by all humans to this day (Mithen 1996). The study of Smith 1981, 2000; Winterhalder 2001), debates about hunting-and-gathering societies has therefore come the origins and impact of hunter-gatherer social com- to serve as a testing ground for general theories about plexity (Ames and Maschner 1995; Hayden 1981; Mas- human evolution as well as to speculate about the chner 1991; Price 1981; Price and Brown 1985; Tesart “original” social, ideological, and political condition 1982; Woodburn 1980; Yesner 1980; see Arnold 1996 of humanity: for a recent review), and the emergence of ethnoar- chaeology (Arnold and Kramer 2001, with references). The world’s hunting and gathering peoples—the Currently hunter-gatherer studies remain one of the Arctic Inuit, Aboriginal Australians, Kalahari, San, few areas of academic research where sociocultural and similar groups—represent the oldest and per- anthropology, archaeology, bioanthropology, and lin- haps most successful human adaptation. Until 12,000 guistic research converge toward “a number of prin- years ago virtually all humanity lived as hunters and gatherers. (Lee and Daly 1999:1) ciples, testable hypotheses, even competing theoretical approaches, to evaluate against the ethnographic and As a result, investigation of forager societies “may archaeological data” (Panter-Brick et al. 2001:9–10). hold the key to some of the central questions about the For archaeologists, the study of the remaining for- human being—about social life, politics and gender, aging societies is often presented as one of the most about diet and nutrition and living in nature: how direct means of understanding extended periods of people can and have lived without the state; how to human prehistory, although it has become increasingly live without accumulated technology; the possibility apparent that present-day hunter-gatherers cannot be of living in Nature without destroying it” (Lee and assumed to represent “pristine survivals” from earlier Daly 2001:1). For example, many present-day hunter- eras of human evolution. Hunter-gatherer societies gatherers live in the least socially differentiated societ- are flexible and innovative in their social organization, ies ever recorded, providing an important point of culture, and belief systems. For millennia many groups comparison for explaining the origin and operation had long and complex histories of interaction and ex- of stratified societies that characterize most of the change with farming and pastoral neighbors, empires, modern world. Many of the great figures in archaeol- nation-states, and the world economic system (Fews- ogy and anthropology—A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Julian ter and Zvelebil 2001, with references). Nevertheless, Steward, Graham Clark—as well as the great thinkers hunter-gatherer research has become a crucial com- in the wider social sciences—Adam Smith, Karl Marx, ponent of the archaeological discipline, and despite 447 these criticisms and realizations, most would now This economic definition of hunter-gatherer has been agree, that when “due account is taken of historical cir- augmented to include secondary features grounded in cumstances, ethnographic analogies can be a valuable the foraging economy, such as distinct forms of social tool” in hunter-gatherer archaeology (Ames 2004:366; organization, a unique ideology based on uncondi- Arnold and Kramer 2001; Cunningham 2003; Fewster tional sharing among close kin and the perception of and Zvelebil 2001). the environment as giving its resources unconditionally My aim in this chapter is to focus on the emer- to the human collective (Ingold 1988; Lee 1992; Solway gence and increasing diversification of research into and Lee 1990; Bird David 1992). These three elements— foraging societies, and to explore the relevance of this economic, social, and ideological—also converge in the research for archaeology. I draw a broad distinction popular archetype of egalitarian foragers. If these mo- between (1) general research into societies that hunt bile band societies represent a distinct and ancient form and gatherer, which includes some of the early “classic” of human existence, then hunter-gatherer studies can documentations of ethnography (Boas 1966), and (2) define its focus as being on an “original” way of life that hunter-gatherer studies as a specialized and rigorous once characterized all humanity, a conceptual baseline scientific approach to foraging societies whose aim is to measure off more recent developments. to generate general predictions about all hunter-gather- Since the 1960s decades of active research into hunt- ers as exemplars of an archetypal social and economic ing-and-gathering societies has revealed a much more form of organization. An important subtheme running confusing picture and subjected some of these enduring through the chapter is an examination of the ways in images of timeless, pristine, egalitarian hunter-gather- which knowledge of, and debates about, contemporary ers to a robust and ongoing critique. In almost every hunter-gatherers have influenced and have been drawn case, forager behavior and social organization have into archaeological research into foraging societies. been shown to vary well beyond the scope of the simple “mobile band” model outlined above. Fundamental HUNTER-GATHERERS: differences in subsistence, prestige, social complexity, SOME WORKING DEFINITIONS relative affluence, interpersonal violence, and gender For Western researchers, some of the best-known and roles have also been documented, and there are impor- recently documented hunters and gatherers include tant differences in diet, health, demography, worldview, the Australian Aborigines, the Arctic Inuit (who live and storage practices. Researchers are still struggling in a long arc from eastern Siberia, through north- to account for and explain this diversity, including the ern North America to Greenland) and the Northwest degree to which there is anything distinctive enough Coast groups in North America. In particular, the San about these societies for the term “hunter-gatherer” to (Bushmen) peoples of the Kalahari region in southern have analytical utility or theoretical significance (Burch Africa have seen intense attention from researchers, as 1994:452). More recently, debates have therefore shifted have the foragers in the belt of African tropical rain away from defining what typical foragers are or do, to- forests in Zaire, Congo, the Central African Republic, ward producing better explanations of the processes Cameroon, and Gabon. Various other hunter-gatherer generating this observed diversity and variability. It is groups exist in East Africa, the Americas, Siberia, In- no longer sufficient “to use one or two model hunter- dia, and Southeast Asia. gatherer groups as ‘model foragers’” (Kuhn and Stiner Idealized images of these surviving hunter-gather- 2001:99), and increasingly the subsistence-based term ers are often presented as a stark contrast to the dense “hunter-gatherer” has come to serve as “a ‘minimal’ urban reality of most contemporary humanity (Lee definition, a starting point on which to graft a more and Daly 1999:1). But do these romantic ideas about nuanced understanding” (Panter-Brick et al. 2001:2). foraging societies represent a category with analytical These developments are traced below. utility—is there anything distinct about hunter-gath- erers as opposed to pastoralists or agriculturalists? In CULTURAL ECOLOGY, JULIAN STEWARD, strict terms, “hunter-gatherer” refers to a taxonomic AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN classification based on an economic mode of subsis- HUNTER-GATHERER STUDIES tence (Pluciennik 2004). For example, Winterhalder The emergence of modern hunter-gatherer studies can (2001:12) defined forager subsistence as “derived from be traced back to pioneering work of Julian Steward non-domesticated resources, species not actively man- (1936, 1938, 1955), “The Social and Economic Basis aged by themselves or other human beings.” of Primitive Bands,” and to a series of conferences 448 peter jordan (Lee and DeVore 1968) in the late 1960s “which had Steward notes, the details of these “simpler cultures” tremendous
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Julian H. Steward: a Contributor to Fact and Theory in Cultural Anthropology” in Process and Pattern in Culture: Es- Says in Honor of Julian H
    NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES JULIAN HAYNES S TE W ARD 1902—1972 A Biographical Memoir by RO BE R T A. MANNERS Any opinions expressed in this memoir are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences. Biographical Memoir COPYRIGHT 1996 NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS WASHINGTON D.C. Courtesy of the University of Illinois JULIAN HAYNES STEWARD January 31, 1902–February 6, 1972 BY ROBERT A. MANNERS ULIAN HAYNES STEWARD, ANTHROPOLOGIST, was born in Wash- Jington, D.C., the son of Thomas G., chief of the Board of Examiners of the U.S. Patent Office, and Grace Garriott, whose brother, Edward Garriott, was chief forecaster of the U.S. Weather Bureau. In an autobiographical sketch prepared for the National Academy of Sciences, Steward remarked that nothing in his family background or in his early education accounted for his later interest in anthropology. On the other hand, his school and neighborhood in the suburbs of Washington involved him in close association with the children of writ- ers, senators, representatives, doctors, and “generally per- sons of some distinction” who apparently did contribute to a developing interest in intellectual matters. When he was sixteen, Steward was admitted to the newly established Deep Springs Preparatory School (now Deep Springs College), a school located near Death Valley and devoted to the development of practical skills and to the promotion “of the highest well-being.” At this time, he said This memoir was originally prepared for inclusion in the multivolume American Na- tional Biography to be published by Oxford University Press.
    [Show full text]
  • Leslie White (1900-1975)
    Neoevolutionism Leslie White Julian Steward Neoevolutionism • 20th century evolutionists proposed a series of explicit, scientific laws liking cultural change to different spheres of material existence. • Although clearly drawing upon ideas of Marx and Engels, American anthropologists could not emphasize Marxist ideas due to reactionary politics. • Instead they emphasized connections to Tylor and Morgan. Neoevolutionism • Resurgence of evolutionism was much more apparent in U.S. than in Britain. • Idea of looking for systematic cultural changes through time fit in better with American anthropology because of its inclusion of archaeology. • Most important contribution was concern with the causes of change rather than mere historical reconstructions. • Changes in modes of production have consequences for other arenas of culture. • Material factors given causal priority Leslie White (1900-1975) • Personality and Culture 1925 • A Problem in Kinship Terminology 1939 • The Pueblo of Santa Ana 1942 • Energy and the Evolution of Culture 1943 • Diffusion Versus Evolution: An Anti- evolutionist Fallacy 1945 • The Expansion of the Scope of Science 1947 • Evolutionism in Cultural Anthropology: A Rejoinder 1947 • The Science of Culture 1949 • The Evolution of Culture 1959 • The Ethnology and Ethnography of Franz Boas 1963 • The Concept of Culture 1973 Leslie White • Ph.D. dissertation in 1927 on Medicine Societies of the Southwest from University of Chicago. • Taught by Edward Sapir. • Taught at University of Buffalo & University of Michigan. • Students included Marshall Sahlins and Elman Service. • A converted Boasian who went back to Morgan’s ideas of evolutionism after reading League of the Iroquois. • Culture is based upon symbols and uniquely human ability to symbolize. • White calls science of culture "culturology" • Claims that "culture grows out of culture" • For White, culture cannot be explained biologically or psychologically, but only in terms of itself.
    [Show full text]
  • Is Archaeology Anthropology?
    Is Archaeology Anthropology? Deborah L. Nichols, Dartmouth College Rosemary A. Joyce, University of California, Berkeley Susan D. Gillespie, University of Florida Archeology is anthropology...save that the people archeology studies happen to be dead. —Braidwood (1959:79) n a famous phrase, Philip Phillips (1955:246-247) of archaeology, some of them quite successful (notably Istated that "New World archaeology is anthropology at Boston University and Calgary University; Ferrie 2001; or it is nothing." A few years later, Robert Braidwood Wiseman 1980, 1983), recent events have brought this made a similar characterization for the Old World (see issue greater attention and garnered more broad-based epigraph). That these well-established archaeologists support for separation. They have also provoked equally were motivated to make such pronouncements indicates passionate arguments from the other side. a sense of uncertainty even then of the relationship be- Most visible among the recent proposals for an au- tween archaeology and anthropology. This uncertainty tonomous archaeology was the forum "Archaeology Is has not abated, and nearly 50 years later the relationship Archaeology" organized by T. Douglas Price at the 2001 has become more strained. Archaeology in the United Society for American Archaeology meeting (reported in States, as in many other countries, is viable outside of Wiseman 2001,2002). It motivated a Point-Counterpoint anthropology. Academically it is housed in nonanthro- exchange among James Wiseman (2002), Robert Kelly pology departments, institutes, and interdisciplinary pro- (2002), and Susan Lees (2002) in the SAA Archaeologi- grams at a number of universities. Most professional cal Record, with Kelly (SAA President) and Lees (co- archaeologists are employed outside the academy where editor of American Anthropologist) arguing against their identity as anthropologists (if it exists) is often separation from anthropology.
    [Show full text]
  • The Transformation of Cultural Anthropology : the Decline of Ecology and Structure and the Rise of Political Economy and the Cultural Construction of Social Reality*
    The Transformation of Cultural Anthropology : The Decline of Ecology and Structure and the Rise of Political Economy and the Cultural Construction of Social Reality* William P. MITCHELL" Deux principales approches dominent la recherche anthropologique actuelle aux Etats-Unis : l'économie politique et la construction cultu­ relle de l'« autre », motifs qui ont largement remplacé les analyses éco­ logiques et strucluralo-symboliques proposées il y a encore dix ans. Cet article rend compte de ces développements dans l'ethnographie des Andes de ces vingt-cinq dernières années. Dans les Andes, pendant les années 1970 et 1980, de nombreux cher­ cheurs ont étudié l'écosystème vertical, stimulés par l'hypothèse de l'ar­ chipel vertical de John Murra et l'écologie culturelle de Julián Steward et Marvin Harris. L'hypothèse de Murra et le fort zeitgeist écologique des années 1970 ont orienté la recherche andine pendant plus de deux This is a slightly revised version of a talk presented to the Five Field Update panel of the Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges at the 91st Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, CA, November, 1992. I am grateful to the Monmouth University Grants and Sabbaticals Committee for supporting various aspects of my research. Barbara Jaye read several drafts of the paper and has provided me many helpful suggestions. I am grateful to Monica Barnes, Jane Freed, Sean Mitchell, Barbara Price and Glenn Stone for their comments on the paper. I also thank Constance Sutton and Sean Mitchell for demonstrating to me the utility of incorporating identity and construction into issues of class and power.
    [Show full text]
  • Julian Steward
    Julian Steward Background Julian Steward was born in Washington, D.C., the second child of the chief of the Board of Examiners of the US. Patent Office. As a freshman at the University of California in 1921, he took an introductory course in anthropology taught by Alfred Kmeber, Robert Lowie, and Edward Winslow Gifford. The next year he transferred to Cor- nell, where he got his B.A. The president of Cornell, Livingston Farrand, himselfan anthropologist, advised him to return to California. He did so, and at Berkeley Steward and his fellow students (including William Dun- can Strong, Lloyd Warner, and Ralph Beals) gained a concern for the role of physical environment in culture from Carl Sauer of the geography department. Steward spent his summers in archaeological and ethnographic studies along the Columbia River and in the Owens Valley. During this period he discovered the Eastern Mono practice of systematically irrigat- ing wild seed plants and tubers, even though they did no planting or culti- vation. During 1929 hifcompiled a description and trait analysis of petm- glyphs in California, Njvada, Utah, Arizona, and Lower California. His analysis uncovered indications of chronology and function, but the tedi- ous work discouraged further interest in the culture trait approach. The same year he finished his doctorate with a dissertation entitled The Ceremonial Buffoon of the American Indian (published in 1931). 320 Julian Steward Steward spent the years of the Great Depression at the universities of Michigan, Utah, and California. He worked primarily on Great Basin archaeology, especiallycave sites on the ancient terraces of the Great Salt Lake Region.
    [Show full text]
  • Frameworks of Analysis
    PART I Frameworks of Analysis INTRODUCTION Tony Bennett then examine the forms of cultural analysis that have been associated It is clear from our discussion in the general with the development of psychological and introduction that it is impossible to tie the sociological thought. Peter Burke’s discussion term ‘culture’ to a single concept or to a of cultural history provides a bridge into simple history of usage. It is better understood the next group of chapters focused mainly as referencing a network of loosely related on text-based disciplines. James English’s concepts that has been shaped by the relations account of the role that the analysis of form between the different histories and fields of has played in the development of literary usage with which the term has came to be studies is followed here by Tia DeNora’s entangled. A significant factor here has been consideration of music as both text and the different meanings deriving from the ways performance. Mieke Bal then examines the in which the concept has been used and relations between art history and the more interpreted in the social science disciplines recent development of visual culture studies. one the one hand and in the humanities The next two chapters – Tom Gunning’s on the other. These different disciplinary discussion of film studies and Toby Miller’s articulations of the concept are the focus account of broadcasting – are concerned with of the contributions composing this first the forms of cultural analysis that have been part of the book, which also assesses how developed in relation to the two main media the ‘cultural turn’ has affected developments systems of the twentieth century.
    [Show full text]
  • A Conversation with Eric Wolf Author(S): Ashraf Ghani and Eric Wolf Source: American Ethnologist, Vol
    A Conversation with Eric Wolf Author(s): Ashraf Ghani and Eric Wolf Source: American Ethnologist, Vol. 14, No. 2 (May, 1987), pp. 346-366 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/645379 Accessed: 20/10/2009 21:47 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Blackwell Publishing and American Anthropological Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Ethnologist. http://www.jstor.org comments and reflections a conversation with EricWolf ASHRAF GHANI-Johns Hopkins University What is an anthropological text? A discourse fixed by writing forged in the process of en- counters between an author as a bearer of a cultural history and an institutional system deter- mining the articulation of his/her disciplinary universe, and conditioning the delineation of the central problems, the choice of key theoretical interlocutors, methods of investigation and pre- sentation.
    [Show full text]
  • How Society Is Shaped by Technology Sarahi Vargas
    How Society is Shaped by Technology Sarahi Vargas TechNology has beeN rapidly shapiNg AmericaN society for the past thirty years, aNd aNthropology caN help explaiN what is happeNiNg. MarviN Harris, FraNz Boas, aNd Eric Wolf are three aNthropologists with differeNt theoretical positioNs. MarviN Harris believes aNthropology should be a scieNce as he touches oN the coNcept of Marxism aNd desigNs a model that shows how cultural materialism affects the sociocultural system. FraNz Boas believes aNthropology to be a part of the humaNities as he uses a holistic approach to She/Her/Hers uNderstaNd the lives of humaNs. Eric Wolf’s "My name is Sarahi Vargas. I graduated beliefs lie iN betweeN the other two siNce he from CSUDH in May 2020 with a B.A. in believes iN uNderstaNdiNg all aspects of culture. Anthropology, with a focus in Though I am most favorable of FraNz Boas’ Archaeology. I chose this essay because positioN, the other aNthropologists meNtioNed I wanted to write on how anthropology methods can be used to view how share maNy similarities aNd differeNces that caN technology today affects society." help describe how society has beeN shaped by techNology. For iNstaNce, MarviN Harris would say that techNology plays a big role iN materialism, which iNflueNces humaN relatioNships iN America’s sociocultural system. With further elaboratioN of the three aNthropologists’ theoretical positioNs, it will be easier to uNderstaNd how society has chaNged to HOW SOCIETY IS BEING SHAPED BY TECHNOLOGY - SARAHI VARGAS ESJOA | 36 adapt to New techNologies. advaNcemeNts compared to the West, which To begiN, MarviN Harris believes iN the affected their political ecoNomy.
    [Show full text]
  • Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Inuit: Reflections on TEK Research and Ethics GEORGE W
    ARCTIC VOL. 52, NO. 2 (JUNE 1999) P. 113–124 Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Inuit: Reflections on TEK Research and Ethics GEORGE W. WENZEL1 (Received 24 February 1998; accepted in revised form 20 January 1999) ABSTRACT. The intimate knowledge that Inuit possess about the environment has figured prominently in North American Arctic research since at least the mid-1960s, when adherents of Julian Steward’s adaptationist perspective essentially displaced the acculturation paradigm that until then had dominated Inuit studies. While Nelson’s Hunters of the Northern Ice is the prototype of integrating traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) into the cultural analysis of Inuit, virtually all ecologically framed research on Inuit adaptation since has drawn extensively on TEK, if only as one of several information sources. Recently, however, Inuit and agencies and individuals concerned with the conduct of research in the North have expressed concern about the appropriation of this culturally specific knowledge. In the contemporary research environment of Nunavut, TEK is now a political (as well as scientific and cultural) concern. More specifically, I conclude that 1) TEK is not qualitatively different from other scientific data sets; therefore, its analysis and interpretation must be subject to the same “rules” that apply to other forms of information; 2) TEK, because it is frequently contextualized in individuals, demands closer ethical treatment than it has previously been accorded; and 3) the protection of TEK from “abuse” by scientists through intellectual property rights initiatives is problematic and unlikely to serve the long-term interests of either Inuit or researchers. Key words: traditional ecological knowledge, Inuit, research and ethics, intellectual property rights RÉSUMÉ.
    [Show full text]
  • Eric Robert Wolf 1923-1999
    ERIC ROBERT WOLF 1923-1999 A Biographical Memoir by CONRAD PHILLIP KOTTAK © 2012 The National Academy of Sciences Any opinions expressed in this memoir are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Academy of Sciences. ERIC WOLF ERIC ROBERT WOLF February 1, 1923–March 6, 1999 BY CONRAD PHILLIP KOTTAK Eric Robert Wolf, an Austrian-born sociocultural anthropologist, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1995. Wolf’s lifelong fascination with cultural diversity can be traced to his childhood in multilingual Vienna and his 1 teen years in multiethnic Sudetenland, where his Austrian father (his mother was Russian) ran a textile factory prior to the 1938 Nazi takeover. To avoid persecu- tion as Jews, Wolf and his family moved first to England and then to the United States, where they settled in Jackson Heights, Queens, New York. WOLF IN NEW YORK: QUEENS AND COLUMBIA In 1940 Wolf enrolled at Queens College, where he planned to study biochemis- try. That plan changed when an early anthropology course exposed him to a field that encompassed his interests in culture, history, ethnicity, and the gamut of human experience. His mentor at Queens was Hortense Powdermaker. uring World War II, Wolf deferred his college educa- tion for three years Dto serve with the U.S. Army in the Italian Alps, where he would later return for anthropological field- work in 1960 (1974). Returning from combat duty, Wolf resumed his studies at Queens. He received his undergraduate degree from the Department of Anthropology and Sociology in spring 1946.
    [Show full text]
  • New Perspectives on Organism-Environment Interactions in Anthropology Emily Schultz St
    St. Cloud State University theRepository at St. Cloud State Anthropology Faculty Publications Department of Anthropology 2013 New perspectives on organism-environment interactions in anthropology Emily Schultz St. Cloud State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/anth_facpubs Part of the Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Schultz, Emily, "New perspectives on organism-environment interactions in anthropology" (2013). Anthropology Faculty Publications. 2. https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/anth_facpubs/2 This Chapter in a Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Anthropology at theRepository at St. Cloud State. It has been accepted for inclusion in Anthropology Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of theRepository at St. Cloud State. For more information, please contact [email protected]. New perspectives on organism-environment interactions in anthropology Emily A. Schultz St. Cloud State University [email protected] Abstract Anthropologists contend that the organism-environment connections responsible for human evolution are indirect—mediated by culture. This chapter reviews influential twentieth-century anthropological interpretations of the cultural mediation of human adaptations to environments, arguing that ethnography and other qualitative forms of analysis reveal important phenomena overlooked by quantitative analysts committed to methodological individualism. It highlights work by post-positivist
    [Show full text]
  • MANE-005 Environmental Anthropology Indira Gandhi National Open University School of Social Sciences
    MANE-005 Environmental Anthropology Indira Gandhi National Open University School of Social Sciences Block 2 THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES OF ENVIRONMENTAL ANTHROPOLOGY UNIT 1 Culture Environment Relationship 5 UNIT 2 Application of Concept of Ecosystem in Anthropology 15 UNIT 3 Current Approaches in Environmental Anthropology 31 UNIT 4 Research Methodology in Environmental Anthropology 46 Expert Committee Prof. Veena Basin Faculty of Anthropology SOSS, IGNOU Department of Anthropology Dr. Rashmi Sinha North Campus, University of Delhi, Delhi Reader, Faculty of Anthropology Prof. V. Gangadharam School of Social Sciences Department of Anthropology IGNOU, New Delhi Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati Dr. Mitoo Das, Assistant Professor Prof. P. K. Biswas Faculty of Anthropology Indian Institute of Forest Management School of Social Sciences Po Box 357, Nehru Nagar, Bhopal IGNOU, New Delhi Prof. Rabindra Nath Pati, Project Director Council Dr. Rukshana Zaman, Assistant Professor for Tribal and Rural Development (CTRD), Faculty of Anthropology Mahamaya Bhawan, HIG-101 School of Social Sciences KananVihar, Phase-I, P.O: Patia, Bhubaneswar IGNOU, New Delhi Prof. Birinchi K. Medhi Dr. P. Venkatramana, Assistant Professor Department of Anthropology Faculty of Anthropology Guwahati University, Guwahati School of Social Sciences IGNOU, New Delhi Dr. Amita Baviskar, Associate Professor Institute of Economic Growth Dr. K. Anil Kumar, Assistant Professor Delhi University Enclave, Delhi Faculty of Anthropology School of Social Sciences Dr. Subha Ray, Associate Professor IGNOU, New Delhi Department of Anthropology University of Calcutta, Dr. N. K. Mungreiphy, Research Associate 35, Ballygunge Circular Road, Kolkata (DBT), Faculty of Anthropology School of Social Sciences, IGNOU Programme Coordinator: Dr. Rashmi Sinha, SOSS, IGNOU, New Delhi Course Coordinator: Dr.
    [Show full text]