18 Ecological theories: cultural ecology, system ecology and political ecology

Naila Ansari

Table of Content

• Introduction
• Emergence of ecological theories
• Method of Culture Ecology
• Fundamental procedures of cultural ecology
• Methodological Place of Cultural Ecology
• Political ecology
• Ecological functionalism and System Ecology
• Adaptation, Change and ‘Environmental Fit’
• Social and Ecological Systems
• Summary

Learning Objective

• To able to define the concept and characteristics ecological theories: cultural ecology, system ecology and political ecology
• To probes into the Emergence of Ecological theories
• To able to define the major contemporary anthropological Ecological theories with Ecological functionalism and System Ecology

Introduction

Ecological theory is unique in its focus of human as both biological organisms and social beings in interaction their environment. It is considered to be an energy transformation system that is interdependent with its natural physical-biological, human-built, and social-cultural milieu. Human ecological theory is more inclusive and can focus on a range of human populations. Emphasis is given to the creative, use, and management of resources for creative adaptation, human development, and sustainability of environments.

Emergence of Ecological Theories

In nineteenth century, a period of social reform, urbanization, industrialization, expansion of public education, and concern about the health and welfare of families. It remerged in the 1960s with the increased awareness of the interdependence of human actions and environment quality and with the interest in viewing phenomena from holistic and systems perspectives. Ecological ideas are implicit in works of early thinkers like Plato and Aristotle in their conception of processes of growth and development and in their observations on the relationship of population size to the structure and stability of environments (Duncan, 1965). However, it was not until the nineteenth century that the concept of ecology emerged and became part of the science. This was when Darwin’s evolutionary theory came into being, a period of growth in the natural sciences and the beginning of the social sciences. The word ecology is credited to Ernest Haeckel, a German zoologist and early proponent of the theory of evolution. In 1869, Haeckel asserted that the individual was a product of cooperation between the environment and organisable heredity and proposed that a science be developed to study organism in their environment. Ecology was defined as the study of the interrelationships between organisms or life and the environment, both organic and inorganic. It rested on the assumption that life and environment are inseparable parts of greater whole.

Some anthropologists are concerned mostly with the influence of environment on culture. Julian Steward was one of the first to advocate the study of cultural ecology—the analysis of the relationship between a culture and its environment. Steward felt that the explanation for some aspects of cultural variation could be found in the adaptation of societies to their particular environments. Cultural ecology differs from human and social ecology in seeking to explain the origin of particular cultural features and patterns which characterise different areas rather than to derive general principles applicable to any cultural environment situation. It differs from the relativistic and neo-evolutionist conceptions of culture history in that it introduces the local environment as the extra cultural factor in the fruitless assumption that culture comes from culture. Thus, cultural ecology presents both a problem and a method. The problem ascertains whether the adjustments of human societies to their environments require particular modes of behaviour or whether they permit latitude for a certain range of possible behaviour patterns.

The Method of Culture Ecology

Although the concept of environmental adaptation underlies all cultural ecology, the procedures must take into account the complexity and level of the culture. It makes a great deal of difference whether a community consists of hunters and gatherers who submit independently by their own efforts or whether it is an outpost of a wealthy nation, which exploits local mineral wealth and is sustained by railroads, ships, or airplanes. In advanced societies, the nature of the culture core will be determined by a complex technology and by productive arrangements which themselves have a long cultural history.

Three fundamental procedures of cultural ecology are as follows:

First, the interrelationship of exploitative or productive technology and environment must be analyzed. This technology includes a considerable part of what is often called “material culture”, but all features may not be of equal importance. In primitive societies, subsistence devices are basic: weapons and instruments for hunting and fishing; containers for gathering and storing food; transformational devices used on land and water; sources of water and fuel; and, in some environments, means of counteracting excessive cold (clothing and housing) or heat. In more developed societies, agriculture and herding techniques and manufacturing of crucial implements must be considered. In more developed societies, agriculture and herding techniques and manufacturing of crucial implements must be considered. In an industrial world, capital and credit arrangements, trade systems and like are crucial. Socially derived needs –special tastes in foods, more ample housing and clothing, and a great variety of appurtenances to living- become increasingly important in the productive arrangement as culture develops; and yet these originally were probably more often effects of basic adaptations than causes.

Relevant environmental features depend upon the culture. The simpler cultures are more directly conditioned by the environment than advanced ones. In general, climate, topography, soils, hydrographs, vegetation cover, and fauna are crucial, but some features may be more important than others. The spacing of water holes in the desert may be vital to a nomadic seed-gathering people, the habit of game will affect the way hunting is done, and the kinds and seasons of fish runs will determine the habits of reverie and coastal tribes.

Second, the behaviour patterns involved in the exploitation of a particular area by means of a particular technology must be analyzed. Some subsistence patterns impose very narrow limits on the general mode of life of the people, while others allow considerable latitude. The gathering of wild vegetable product is usually done by women who work alone or in small groups. Nothing is gained by co-operation and in fact women come into competition with one another. Seed gatherers, therefore, tend to fragment into small groups unless their resources are very abundant. Hunting, on other hand may be either an individual or a collective project, and the nature of hunting societies is determined by culturally prescribed devices for collective hunting as well as by the species when surrounds, grass-firing, corrals, chutes, and other co-operative methods are employed, the take per man may be much greater than what a lone hunter could bag. Similarly, if circumstances permit, fishing may be done by groups of men using dams, weirs, traps, and nets as well as by individuals.

The use of these more complex and frequently co-operative techniques, however, depends not only upon cultural history- i.e., invention and diffusion- which makes the methods available but upon the environment and its flora and fauna. Deer cannot be hunted advantageously by surrounds, whereas antelope and bison may best be hunted in this way. Slash –and – burn farming in tropical rain forests requires comparatively little co-operation in that a few men clear the land after which their wives plant and cultivate the crops. Dry farming may run the gamut of enterprises of ever-increasing size based on collective construction of waterworks.

The exploitative patterns not only depend upon the habits concerned in the direct production of food and of goods but upon facilities for transporting the people to the source of supply or the goods to the people. Watercraft has been a major factor in permitting the growth of settlements beyond what would have been possible for a foot people. Among all nomads, the horse has had an almost revolutionary effect in promoting the growth of large bands.

The third procedure is to ascertain the extent to which the behaviour patterns entailed in exploiting the environment affects other aspects of culture. Although technology and environment prescribe that certain things must be done in certain ways if they are to be done at all, the extent to which these activities are functionally tied to other aspects of culture. Although technology and environment prescribe that certain things must be done in certain ways if they are to be done at all, the extent to which these activities are functionally tied to other aspects of culture is a purely empirical probe.

The procedure requires a genuinely holistic approach, for if such factors as demography, settlement pattern, kinship structures, land tenure, land use, and other key cultural features are considered separately, their interrelationships to one another and to the environment cannot be grasped. Land use by means of a given technology permits a certain population density. The clustering of this population will depend partly upon where resources occur and upon transformational devices. The composition of these clusters will be a function of their size, of the nature of subsistence activities, and of cultural – historical factors. The ownership of land or resources will be reflect subsistence activities on the one hand and the composition of the group on the other. Warfare may be related to the complex of factors just mentioned. In some cases, it may arise out of competition for resources and have a national character. Even when fought for individual honour or religious purposes, it may serve to nucleate settlements in a way that must be related to subsistence activities.

The Methodological Place of Cultural Ecology

Cultural ecology has been described as a methodological tool for ascertaining how the adaptation of a culture to its environment may entail certain changes. In a larger sense, the problem is to determine whether similar adjustment occur in similar environments. Since in any given environment, culture may develop through a succession of very unlike periods, it is something pointed out that environment, the constant, obviously has no relationship to cultural type. This difficulty disappears, however, if the level of sociocultural integration represented by each period is taken in to account. Cultural types therefore, must be conceived as constellations of core features which arise out of environmental adaptations and which represent similar levels of integration.

Political ecology

Political ecology is term that describes a community of practice united around a certain kind of text. The nature of this community and the equality of these texts, as well as the theory and empirical research that underpins them, are the topic of the remainder of this volume. But broadly they can be understood to address the condition and change of social/environmental systems, with explicit consideration of relations of power. Political ecology, moreover, explores these social and environmental changes with an understanding that there are better, less coercive, less exploitative, and more sustainable ways of doing things. The research is directed at finding causes rather than systems of problems, including starvation, soil erosion, landlessness, biodiversity decline, human health crises, and the more general and pernicious conditions where some social actors exploit other people and environments for limited gain at collective cost. Finally, it is a field that stresses not only that ecological systems are political, but also that our very ideas about them are further delimited and directed through political and economic process. As a result, political ecology presents a Jekyll and Hyde persona, attempting to do two things at once: critically explaining what is wrong with dominant accounts of environmental change, while at the same time exploring alternatives, adaptations, and creative human action in the face of mismanagement and exploitation: offering both a “hatchet” to take apart flawed, dangerous, and politically problematic accounts, and a “seed,” to grow into new socio-ecologies and attitudes do not lead to new environment actions, behaviors, or rules systems; instead, new environmental actions, behaviours, or rules systems lead to new kinds of people. Correlatively, new environmental regimes and conditions have created opportunities or imperatives for local groups to secure and represent themselves politically. Such movements often represent a new form of political action, since their ecological strands can connect disparate groups, across class, ethnicity, and gender.

The diversity of political ecology research also results from innumerable, smaller, differing arguments addressing, among many issues:

• Possibility for community collective action;
• Role of human labour in environmental metabolism;
• Nature of risk-taking and risk-aversion in human behaviour;
• Diversity of environmental perception;
• Causes and effects of political corruption;
• Relationship between knowledge and power.

These many topics and concern overlaps, Understanding how changing forms of knowledge, like computerized mapping, for example, led to new systems of control over a forest probably leads a researcher to ask: What are the concomitant changes in the behaviour of foresters, and does this create new patterns of actual forest ecology?

Political ecology can arguably said to be very old, since nineteenth-and twentieth-century environmental research in geography, anthropology, and allied natural and social sciences has a long critical tradition. Even before a semi-coherent body of political ecology theory emerged in the late twentieth century, many explicitly political practitioners emerged from the ranks of field ecologists, ethnographers, explorers, and other researchers. These represent the deep roots of the field.

Ecological functionalism and System Ecology

The fifties and sixties, then, gave rise to a more sensitive appreciation of the relations between social behaviour and environment in the ethnography of social anthropologist working within the British tradition, although it was still broadly possibility and empiricist in character. Gradually, though, certain changes were taking place.

Particular ethnographic analyses showed a new subtlety in the handling of man-environment interaction (Barth 1956) or crossed disciplinary frontiers (Bookfield and Brown 1963).Most importantly, as part of a growing discontent with structural-functionalism as a theoretical orientation, the idea that social structure or culture was a closed system came in for severe criticism. Although initially the developments in American anthropology, the cultural ecology of Steward, the materialism of Marvin Harris, went largely unnoticed in Britain, the cumulative weight of the literature in these fields eventually had its effect, at least on the younger generation of social anthropologists emerging in the late sixties and seventies.

Under the impact of systems theory and biological ecology, functionalism itself took on a new lease of life. Behavioural and environmental traits were viewed as part of a single system; the two way nature of causality was acknowledged, the wide range of ecological variation. Ecosystems (which could be (specified as either generalised or specialised) became the new analytical and comparative units. Moreover, they were seen as examples of general systems and therefore seen as possessing rational structure and regulatory properties; they were conceived of as flows of energy, materials and information.

So, at least in terms of British social anthropology, man environment relations have at least been brought fully and acceptably within the ambit of social theory. But some writers have shown so much enthusiasm for the new ecology that occasionally the impression is given that we have reached on epistemological nirvana – that, if only the rules are applied correctly, an ecosystem approach will explain everything. Fortunately the new faith already has its heretics. This is not to say that they are therefore necessarily negative; indeed, they build on concepts, theories, methods and data drawn from studies which in other respects they might be expected to be critical of. There are repeated reminders that we should never underestimate the ingenious and pre-eminent role of social factors as casual agents, and that social environmental variables interact in subtle and complex ways, which are just not apparent from simple correlative studies. Accordingly, the dissection of relationships between them requires enormous care and appropriate skills.

Adaptation, Change and ‘Environmental Fit’

The problem of closure, and the related issues of variation and comparison, leads on easily to the second major theme, adaptation. This is because any claim that social behaviour is adaptive is always accompanied by assumptions about the level at which it is so: the individual, kin group, social class, local community, polity, society, or-for that matter- regional system. While certain practices may well be ‘adaptive’ in the sense that they contribute to the reproduction of the system, the system that is being maintained may be to the immediate disadvantage of certain groups and individuals within it.

In gold has an altogether more positive view of adaptation than most other contributors, one that is strictly Darwinian. However, in common with his fellow contributors, it seems that he would reject. Summary the application of the concept to systems, reserving it for practices, such as patterns o f cooperation, skills, organisational techniques and knowledge; Whether or not these function as adaptations is open to dispute, but this is very often their effect. So, while group selection and adaptation may be theoretically difficult to account for and empirically awkward to describe, these is not the same problem in suggesting that individuals adapt to changing environmental circumstances, thought they may do so through the manipulation of social relations, through cooperation, exploitation or conflict (Ruyle 1973).

It seems that we can only speak of the adaptation of groups in a derivative sense, that it is the product of either cumulative adaptation of individuals or the manipulative adaptation of powerful individuals or collectivises within a group (Ellen 1978).

Social and Ecological Systems

Such criticism touched on here by no means apply equally to all analyses employing a systems approach, but it is now evident that the faith placed in it has sometimes been misguided. While the notion of system is a fundamental one has led to significant conceptual and empirical advances, it is insufficient in itself. The selection of variables, the degree to which they must be divided, conveniently grouped and ignored, and the level of closure for any analysis, are all matters which must be determined by a particular theoretical orientation. The notion of a ‘system’ is incapable of assigning relative importance to variables, and relationships, and when this is done it must be based on assumptions of causality extrinsic to the idea of system (MacCormack 1978).

Social organisation is not some kind of reified whole through which all environmental interactions are channelled. The environment affects individuals and individual social relations. Social Systems are to a large degree open and interact through numerous links with environmental variables. But thisdoes not mean that they do not also have an internal systemness which must be understood on its own terms. They are not simply reducible to energy flows; production is not restricted to calories, or even other materials, but concerns values as well (Cook 1973; Ingold, this volume).

At its most general level, this collection of twelve papers throws into relief the articulation of social and ecological relations under a number of specific ethnographic conditions and also at the level of theory. In doing so, it emphasises that the ecology of human systems is not to be understood as an unproblematic extension of that of lower organisms, and that ecology cannot itself provide us with a theoretical framework without also anticipating established social and economic theory. The ‘ecological approach’ does not swallow-up its more conventional alternatives but complements them.

On the other hand, because earlier versions of the man-environment problematic have been discredited through the discovery of some critical weakness, this does not mean that ideas and empirical research inspired by them have nothing left of value. Ecological and ecosystems approaches will continue to be attractive because in many cases they are a useful – if not essential – aid to analysis. Despite the fact that systems seldom allow for adequate problem formulation, let alone problem solving, in themselves, ecology provides a range of technical procedures, data, explanatory and organising concepts which cannot be ignored.

Summary

It could be that the philosophical schools have not been rigorously separated theoretically because they are such close allies in their stance against positivism. Cultural ecology seeks to understand the relationships between cultures and their physical and social environments. Cultural ecologists ask how a particular culture trait may be adaptive in its environment. The theoretical orientation called political economy focuses on the impact of external political and economic processes, particularly as connected to colonialism and imperialism, on local events and cultures in the underdeveloped world. The political economy approach has reminded us that all parts of the world are interconnected for better or worse. Evolutionary ecology involves the application of biological evolutionary principles to the social behaviour of animals, including humans.