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Ecological Anthropology Author(S): Benjamin S Ecological Anthropology Author(s): Benjamin S. Orlove Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 9 (1980), pp. 235-273 Published by: Annual Reviews Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2155736 . Accessed: 22/01/2014 13:58 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . 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]. Annual Reviews is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Annual Review of Anthropology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.8.234.130 on Wed, 22 Jan 2014 13:59:00 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Ann.Rev. Anthropol. 1980. 9:235-73 Copyrighti 1980 by AnnualReviews Inc. All rightsreserved ECOLOGICAL +9656 ANTHROPOLOGY Benjamin S. Orlove Divisionof EnvironmentalStudies and Departmentof Anthropology, Universityof California,Davis, California95616 INTRODUCTION Ecologicalanthropology may be definedas the studyof the relationsamong the populationdynamics, social organization, and cultureof humanpopula- tions and the environmentsin which they live. It includes comparative researchas well as analysesof specificpopulations from both synchronic and diachronicperspectives. In many cases, systemsof productionconsti- tute importantlinks amongpopulation dynamics, social organization,cul- ture, and environment.Defined as such, ecologicalanthropology provides a materialistexamination of the rangeof humanactivity and thus bearsan affinity to other materialisticapproaches in the social and biological sciences. Reviewarticles can be criticalor encyclopedic;this one adoptsthe former approach.It presentsthe developmentof ecologicalanthropology, not as a smoothaccumulation of informationand insights, but as a seriesof stages. Eachstage is a reactionto the previousone ratherthan merelyan addition to it. The first stage is characterizedby the work of Julian Stewardand LeslieWhite, the secondis termedneofunctionalism and neoevolutionism, and the thirdone is calledprocessual ecological anthropology. In all three cases,this articlediscusses the theoreticalassumptions and methodological approaches,and examinesa few representativestudies. It reviewsthe links to biologicalecology and analyzesthe mechanismsof change.It is in these areasthat processualecological anthropology is particularlystrong. It thus adoptsa more historicalapproach than the positivistslant of recenttexts in the field (123, 194, 205). 235 0084-6570/80/1015-0235$01.00 This content downloaded from 128.8.234.130 on Wed, 22 Jan 2014 13:59:00 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 236 ORLOVE This articlefocuses primarily on workin socialanthropology. It contains relativelylittle archaeology. The treatmentof demographyis brief;for other studies of demographicanthropology, see (181, 229, 340). The primary focusis on social,economic, and political activity and ideology; there is only brief treatmentof what has been termed "biosocialecology" (321). The relationbetween environments and human physiology,nutrition, disease and the like, thoughpart of humanecology, is not discussedin this article, althoughsome work(166a, 236, 249) in ecologicalanthropology examines these topics. THE FIRST STAGE OF ECOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY:JULIAN STEWARD AND LESLIEWHITE Ecologicalanthropology owes its existenceto a numberof swingson intel- lectualpendulums. Stated briefly, it emergedfrom the reactionto the incau- tious culturalevolutionism associated with Morgan,Tylor, and others in the nineteenthcentury. In this period,a numberof writersdeveloped mod- els of culturalevolution. The specificdetails of the modelsand some aspects of the conceptualizationof culturevaried, but the writersshared the as- sumptionthat all culturescould be placedin a small numberof stagesand that cultures tended to move through these stages in a relativelyfixed sequence.Morgan, one importantfigure in this school, establisheda set of sevenevolutionary stages which Marx and Engels encountered and utilized. The culturalevolutionistic approaches were overcome by the datawhich they attemptedto order;the reactionto them led to the institutionalization of anthropologyas an academicdiscipline. The increasinglydetailed evi- denceof complexculture and social organization among allegedly primitive groupsmade it difficultto relegatethem to more backward,earlier stages. The reactionto culturalevolutionism took differentforms on oppositesides of the Atlanticand thus brokea relativelyhigh degreeof intellectualcon- sensus.Anthropologists in America,led by Boas at ColumbiaUniversity, questionedthe unilinearityof the evolutionaryschemes and the assumption of progressinherent in evolution.They acceptedthe interestin cultural processand change,but lookedmore prudentlyfor detailsof each case of culturechange, examining whether traits were diffusedor independently inventedand how they werereworked by each culturethat adoptedthem. The schoolthat they formedhas beenaptly named historical particularism. The Britishanthropologists faced a differentissue whichthe culturalevolu- tionistshad not resolved,the natureof the forcesthat unitedthe different elementsof a givenculture or stageof cultures.Focusing on societiesrather thancultures, they foundthat the diverseelements served certain functions, This content downloaded from 128.8.234.130 on Wed, 22 Jan 2014 13:59:00 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ECOLOGICALANTHROPOLOGY 237 althoughdifferent authors did not agreeon the natureof these functions. They also observedthat the elements formed coherent structures.The influenceof Britishsocial anthropology,itself changedsomewhat over the decades,has begunto be felt in ecologicalanthropology only recently(36a); the historyof ecologicalanthropology for many yearsremained primarily American. Ecologicalanthropology emerged from the Boasianschool of historical particularism(136, 223). It canbe seenas havingpassed through two stages andnow enteringa third.The term"stage" is usedto referto a set of works that share theoreticalapproaches, modes of explanation,and choices of researchproblems. The term also suggeststhat the stages follow one an- otherchronologically and that each is an intellectualoutgrowth of the one thatpreceded it. The firststage ran from about 1930 to 1960,and the second fromabout 1960 to the early1970s. These dates cannot be exact,since many writerscontinue to employ earlierapproaches after new ones have been introduced.In addition,some researchers have shifted from one stageto the next,but othershave remained with the previousones. The stagesthus refer to analyticalframeworks rather than to specific periods in time or the writingsof specificindividuals. As an intellectualendeavor, contemporary ecological anthropology can be clearlyattributed to two individuals:Julian Steward and LeslieWhite. Thesemen shared a strongBoasian training; Steward at Berkeleyand White at Chicagowere both taughtby studentsof Boas, who had foundedthese departments(Alfred Kroeberand Robert Lowie, Fay Cooper Cole and EdwardSapir, respectively.) It is an apparentparadox that Steward,who receivedmore contact with individualsoutside this Boasiancircle in his graduatestudent days, made the less definitivebreak with historical particu- larism. Steward'swork in ecologicalanthropology was motivatedby a consistent set of intellectualconcerns (177). His contact at Berkeleywith the noted geographerCarl Sauerled him to examinethe effect of environmenton culture.This interestcharacterizes his earlypostdoctoral work in the Great Basin and his later more comparativework elsewhere.(Sauer also in- fluencedDaryll Forde,one of the more ecologicallyoriented British social anthropologists.)His "methodof culturalecology" (292, 294) demonstrates his materialistemphasis. This method entails the study of the relation betweencertain features of the environmentand certaintraits of the culture possessedby the sets of people living in that environment.Within the environment,Steward emphasized the quality,quantity, and distributionof resources.The aspectsof culturethat he examinedmost closelywere tech- nology,economic arrangements, social organization,and demography,al- thoughhe includedother aspects as well. Stewardstressed the fact that the This content downloaded from 128.8.234.130 on Wed, 22 Jan 2014 13:59:00 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 238 ORLOVE environmentinfluenced only certainelements of a culture,which he termed the "culturecore"; other elementsof culturewere subjectto the autono- mousprocesses of culturehistory which the morestrict Boasians discussed. Stewardwas particularlyinterested in findingwhat he termed"regulari- ties," or similaritiesbetween cultures that recurin historicallyseparate or distinct areas or traditions,and which may be explainedas a result of similarenvironmental features. These regularities are analytically similar to the individuallines of changewhich he examinedin his approachof multi- linearevolution. By introducingthe conceptof "levelof socioculturalinte- gration,"he began effortsto integratethe study of small-scale"tribal" isolates with that of complexsociety and large sociopoliticalunits. His methodpermitted both synchronicanalyses of static equilibriaand
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