BIOS 5445: Human Ecology - Western Michigan Universityhomepages.wmich.edu/~malcolm/BIOS5445-humanecology/Lectures/… · BIOS 5445: Human Ecology Lecture 2: Slide ... abundance and

BIOS 5445: Human Ecology Dr. S. Malcolm Lecture 2: Slide - 1

BIOS 5445: Human Ecology Dr. Stephen Malcolm, Department of Biological Sciences

•  Lecture 2. Approaches to Human Ecology:

– Lecture summary: •  Relevant disciplines. •  Evolutionary, adaptat-

ionist perspective. •  Philosophical

approaches. •  Integration.

Femme se promenant dans une foret exotique Henri Rousseau 1905, Barnes Foundation, PA


2. Relevant disciplines:

•  Ecology and Evolution: –  Processes that generate patterns of distribution and

abundance and their change through time. •  “The ecological theater and the evolutionary play.”

•  Anthropology: –  Natural History of Homo sapiens. –  Study of human behavioral & biological diversity by both

geography (space) and time. –  Diversity (variation) and evolution (change). –  Normal and pathological variability in present and past

•  Sociology. •  Philosophy & Religion. •  Economics. •  Geography.


3. Culture:

•  Set of understandings and learned behavior patterns shared by people in a society.

•  Learned or acquired (not inherited) rules for living that include:

–  Group behavior –  Values –  Language –  Technology –  Unique? - probably not (e.g. parental care).

•  Adaptive.


4. Adaptiveness of culture:

•  Good evidence that culture is adaptive: – “be fruitful & multiply” – Ethnocentrism is a bit like “green beard

selection” - but can lead to: • Xenophobia - fear of foreigners. • Provincialism - inward perspective.


5. Ecological Anthropology:

•  Ecology of human populations around the world.

•  In diverse environments, focus on: – Functioning of groups. – Persistence of groups.

•  Influence of population ecology on culture:

– Cultural traits are a product of environment.


6. Role of environment in human ecology:

•  Two philosophical emphases: – 1. Environmental determinism:

•  Hippocrates - oldest major theoretical approach to human ecology.

•  Specific environmental features have causal effect on cultural features.

•  Dominated late Victorian explanations of non- western cultural variation.

– 2. Environmental possibilism: •  Emphasizes primacy of historical events in

creation of cultures through continuous change over time.


7. Environmental determinism (Figure 3-1):

•  Culture areas: –  Similar environmental regions have similar cultures

•  Evidence from correlations among groups in Polynesia or Great Plains of America:

–  Western Shoshone, Ute & Northern Paiute all nomadic foragers before western contact - adaptation to similar environment.

•  Limitations: –  Hyperbole, ethnocentrism & one-way causation:

•  Montesquieu - heat of southern lands leads to indolence & strong sexuality.

•  Huntington - cool temps & stormy weather foster mental alertness (Europeans & Americans thus have highly developed civilizations).


8. Environmental possibilism (Figure 3-1):

•  More complex cultural causality than simple determinism.

•  Franz Boas (1896): –  Cultural complexity unlikely to have simple

causation. –  Empirical approach emphasized importance of specific

historical events in development of culture. –  Similarities between cultures generated by historical

connections and not simply environment. •  Samoans, Tongans & Hawaiians are similar because they

derived from common ancestors & not because of similar environments.

•  Maoris are also similar but live in a more temperate environment.


9. Cultural ecology (Figure 3-2):

•  Julian Steward in 1930s - strong empiricist. •  Group subsistence (culture core) strongly related to

group culture: –  Foraging. –  Pastoralism. –  Horticulture. –  Intensive agriculture.

•  Two-way interaction between environment and cultural core is important.

•  Technology also becomes important. •  Too much emphasis on resource acquisition & largely

ignored environment or other ecological factors.


10. Other approaches to human ecology:

•  Sociological: –  Comparison of human-made and natural

environments and “biotic” processes (competition etc.); spatial socioeconomic correlations (neighborhoods).

•  Psychological: –  Ecological psychology:

•  Prediction of behavior based on observation and correlations among similar environments.

–  Environmental psychology: •  Perception of resources - e.g. overcrowding (density) and

stress.


11. Other approaches to human ecology (continued):

•  Architectural: –  Influence of artificial physical environments on

social processes & behaviors (e.g. “Feng Shui”). •  Ethnoecology - Linguistic:

–  Use of language to classify - an emic approach. –  Emic & Etic perspectives:

•  Emic - subjective, insider effort to see world from a particular perspective.

–  E.g. ethnobotany - analysis of the way cultures use local plants and identify them (Tzeltal Mayans & Kanam horticulturalists of New Guinea).

•  Etic - objective, outsider view.


12. Other approaches to human ecology (continued):

•  Biological –  Role of evolutionary adaptation in development of

cultures. –  Influence of Charles Darwin. –  Leslie White - Culture evolved to gather and use

energy for social organization. •  Effectiveness at energy gathering means dominance. •  Ignored most historical events as trivial.

–  Julian Steward - Similar but also included historical events and evolution of complexity.


13. Integration:

•  New ecology paradigm - multidisciplinary: –  “New-Ecology” paradigm:

•  Reintegrate analysis of cultural adaptation with general ecological analysis.

•  Emphasis on populations rather than cultures. •  Focus on environmental problems •  Ecosystem approach - humans as part of ecosystems.

–  Human population biology and adaptation (from International Biological Program IBP of the 1960s).

•  Integrates sociocultural & biological approaches. •  Use of models - heuristic constitutive reductionism. •  Need for hypothesis generation & testing.

–  Need to avoid inductive (subjective) explanations and try to be deductive (objective).


Figure 3-1: Human ecology theories (a) Environmental determinism, (b) Environmental possibilism.


Hippocrates (460-377 BCE):

•  Greek physician born island of Cos, Greece

•  “On Airs, Water and Places” (400 BCE).

–  “Humor Theory” •  Blood, phlegm, yellow bile, black bile. •  Balance determined personality, health & appearance

(including race): –  “Inhabitants of mountainous, rocky, well-watered country at

high altitude, where the margin of seasonal climatic variation is wide, will tend to have large-built bodies constitutionally adapted for courage and endurance, and in such natures there will be a considerable element of ferocity and brutality.”

•  This is also known as “Bergman’s Rule” - larger bodies are beneficial in colder climates at higher latitudes.


Figure 3-2:

•  Cultural ecology theory: –  2-way relationship

between environment & culture.

–  1-way relationship between culture core & other aspects of culture.


References:

•  Hippocrates: http://www2.sjsu.edu/depts/Museum/hippoc.html

•  Hippocrates: http:classics.mit.edu/Hippocrates/airwatpl.html

•  Kormondy, E.J., & D.E. Brown. 1998. Fundamentals of human ecology. Prentice Hall, NJ. 503 pp.

Documents

BIOS 5445: Human Ecology - Western Michigan Universityhomepages.wmich.edu/~malcolm/BIOS5445-humanecology/Lectures/… · BIOS 5445: Human Ecology Lecture 2: Slide ... abundance and