world leaders

PERSPECTIVES: AN OPEN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Nina Brown, Thomas McIlwraith, Laura Tubelle de González

2020 American Anthropological Association 2300 Clarendon Blvd, Suite 1301 Arlington, VA 22201

ISBN Print: 978-1-931303-67-5 ISBN Digital: 978-1-931303-66-8

http://perspectives.americananthro.org/

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14 14 CULTURE AND CULTURE AND SUSTAINABILITY: SUSTAINABILITY: ENVIRONMENTAL ENVIRONMENTAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE ANTHROPOCENE ANTHROPOCENE

Christian T. Palmer, Windward Community College [email protected]

Learning Objectives Learning Objectives

• Identify the methods and theories anthropologists use to examine human interactions with the environment.

• Define political ecology and explain its relationship to anthropology.

• Describe the Anthropocene and discuss how anthropology contributes to understanding the human role in environmental destruction.

• Explain how anthropology contributes to public discussions and the creation of public policy with lawmakers, activists, corpora-tions, and others regarding major environmental challenges.

LIVING IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

357

We live on a planet where the climate—winds, precipitation, weather, temperatures—is being mod-

ified by the collective impact of the human species. I arrived at anthropology through an interest in

understanding human impacts on the environment. I began by studying ethnobotany as an undergrad-

uate and received a master’s degree in environmental science. As I researched human-environmental

dynamics, I realized that scientists had largely identified what needed to be done to address many of

the world’s pressing environmental problems, but few of the recommended changes had been adopted,

thwarted by political, cultural, and economic forces. Anthropologists’ approach is holistic; they seek to

simultaneously understand all of the interactions of political, cultural, and economic factors to fully

explore the complexity of human-environmental interactions. Thus, I felt that anthropology provided

a good place to start to understand and begin to address some of the most important questions facing

our species. For example, how can we provide for basic human needs while not sacrificing the welfare

of other species? Why do many people say that they care about protecting the environment but then

do nothing about it? What political, economic, and cultural factors are prohibiting world leaders from

agreeing on solutions to global environmental challenges? To answer such questions, we must under-

stand how humans think and act as groups, our socially and culturally mediated ways of interacting

with each other, other species, and the world around us.

Arriving at Environmental Anthropology

In many ways, anthropology as a discipline is only now starting to address these questions. In Decem-

ber 2014, Bruno Latour, a French anthropologist, spoke to a standing-room-only audience at the

American Anthropological Association annual meeting in Washington, D.C., to discuss the relationship

between the Anthropocene and anthropology.1 Anthropocene is a term used to describe the period (or

epoch) in geological time in which the effects of human activities have altered the fundamental geo-

chemical cycles of the earth as a result of converting forests into fields and pastures and burning oil, gas,

and coal on a large scale. Because human activities have changed the earth’s atmosphere, anthropolo-

gists can make important contributions to studies of geology, chemistry, and meteorology by consid-

ering the effects of humans and their cultural systems. As Latour noted, the discipline of anthropology

is uniquely qualified to provide insight into key components of current environmental crises by deter-

mining the reasons behind choices various groups of humans make, bridging the social and natural sci-

ences, and studying contradictions between cultural universals (traits all humans have in common) and

particularities (interesting cultural differences).

This chapter summarizes how anthropologists have contributed to analysis and resolution of envi-

ronmental concerns. I begin with a brief overview of anthropological analysis of human interactions

with the environment and then explore how anthropological perspectives toward human-environmen-

tal interactions have changed over time. I end the chapter with a call to action—an invitation for stu-

dents to use lessons they have learned from anthropology to challenge the kinds of thinking that have

produced current environmental crises and see where those anthropological approaches take them.

Environmental anthropology is an exciting subfield that will grow in importance as questions of envi-

ronmental sustainability become increasingly central to scientific and popular conversations about the

future of our species and the planet.

Humans and the Environment

358 PERSPECTIVES: AN OPEN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

If we think about anthropology from the classic four-field approach, which includes both physical

anthropology and archaeology, many of the questions with which those disciplines have historically

wrestled were related to our species’ long-term relationship with the environment. Around two million

years ago, climate changes decreased the amount of forest and expanded grasslands in Africa, which

led to the early Hominin radiation (the geographic expansion of multiple Hominin species). It also led

hominin species to walk upright, which freed their hands to make and use tools. Subsequent climate

changes, particularly expansions and contractions of glaciers associated with ice ages, also contributed

to Homo sapiens expanding to new parts of the globe.

Fast-forwarding to the beginning of human agriculture roughly 10,000 years ago, we can see how

the global expansion of Homo sapiens and their first permanent settlements and urban centers led to

the development of agriculture, a profound new way of interacting with the environment. The ability

of early humans to shape the landscape, first by simply encouraging wild plants to grow and later by

planting and irrigating crops and domesticating plants and animals, set humans on the path toward our

current problematic relationship with the planet. Archaeologists’ questions about human diets, tools,

and architecture inevitably explore how ancient civilizations interacted with their environments. For

example, archaeologists examine the relative frequency of different kinds of pollen and tree rings over

thousands of years to understand how landscapes changed over time through both human and natural

processes.

Many archaeologists credit increased productivity that came with agriculture as the foundation of

civilization, allowing humans to live in larger settlements, specialize in craft production, and develop

social hierarchies and eventually math, writing, and science. From this perspective, the seeds of social

complexity were contained within the first grains domesticated in the hills surrounding the Fertile

Crescent. Others have questioned the idea that the effects of agriculture were purely beneficial. For

example, Marshall Sahlins called foraging (hunter-gatherer) societies “the original affluent societies”

and noted that hunter-gatherers had more leisure time, healthier diets, more time to socialize, and

greater social equality than agricultural or even industrial societies.2 He also noted that they were afflu-

ent not because they had everything, but because they could easily meet their basic needs of food,

shelter, and sociality. Others have looked at the advances in science, medicine, and communication

technology and disagreed with Sahlins, arguing that we are better off with the developments brought

by agriculture. Sahlins’ critique of agriculture (and subsequently of civilization) should not be seen as

a suggestion to deindustrialize; rather, it is a challenge to assumptions that Western civilization and

its technological developments necessarily represent improvements for human societies. Perhaps the

strongest argument against capitalism and industrialization is the real possibility of environmental col-

lapse that those systems have brought.

Sahlins’ analysis calls into question the idea that humans as a species are necessarily progressing

through history and encourages us to think about how “necessities” are culturally constructed. Do we

really need cars or cell phones to be happy? How about books and vaccines? Because many of our inno-

vations in technology, agriculture, and transportation have come at the expense of the natural systems

that support us, we need to think about human “progress” in relationship to its impact on the envi-

ronment. The impacts of climate change from our dependence on fossil fuel, toxic byproducts from

expanding chemical industries, and pollution of land, soil, and water from industrialized agriculture are

a significant challenge to a vision of human history in which we expect things to get better and better.

Archaeological evidence of collapses of earlier societies—Harappan cities in the Indus River Valley,

the Mayans in Central America, and the Rapa Nui of Easter Island, for example—provides a sobering

warning as many pre-historic cultures’ practices were, at some level, environmentally unsustainable,

leading to deforestation, soil salinization, or erosion.

359

Figure 1: The ball courts at Copan show the complexity and development of early Mayan society. Research suggests that deforestation was one of the causes of the collapse of the city-state.

For example, archaeologists have explored the collapse of a number of Mayan cities from an envi-

ronmental perspective.3 After examining samples of pollen from nearby lakebeds, they determined the

relative abundance of various ecosystems, such as cornfields and pine forests, over time. They found

that deforestation in the uplands associated with an expanding population around the Mayan city of

Copan was one of the factors that led to the city’s decline. Land was cleared to increase agricultural

production and to harvest wood for the construction of houses, fueling cooking fires, and producing

lime, which was used to make plaster for large-scale construction projects. The study suggests that pre-

historic groups’ lack of adequate environmental management systems could have affected their ability

to maintain their complex urban societies—a warning for society today.

Another fascinating story of the complex relationships between culture, plants, and the economy

relates to development of sugar cane plantations in the Caribbean. Anthropologist Sidney Mintz doc-

umented how our sweet tooth led to development of the slave trade, industrialization, capitalism, and

colonization in the Americas.4 He examined how sugar went from being a luxury good associated with

the upper class as a spice and medicine to a regular staple for factory workers. The increased con-

sumption of sugar associated with industrialization provided financial incentives for continuing slav-

ery and colonization projects in the Americas. Mintz’s work is not usually described as environmental

anthropology, but his careful documentation of the relationship between people and sugar cane clearly

demonstrates the importance of certain species of plants in shaping human history.

The question of how humans interact with their environment through hunting and gathering, agri-

culture, and deforestation is central to understanding how human groups meet their basic needs and

continue to survive and develop. By examining these past and present cultural configurations critically

and carefully, anthropology provides a valuable perspective from which to understand such environ-

mental questions.

Sustainability and Public Anthropology

Environmental anthropology provides an opportunity for anthropologists to engage in larger public

360 PERSPECTIVES: AN OPEN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

debates. The American Anthropological Association, for example, recently issued a Statement on

Humanity and Climate Change meant to “to recognize anthropological contributions to global climate

change-related issues, articulate new research directions, and provide the American Anthropological

Association with actions and recommendations to support and promote anthropological investigation

of these issues including the development of course curricula and application of anthropological theory

and methods to the issues.”5 Such statements emphasize the importance of anthropological contribu-

tions to current scientific and political debates.

Anthropologists have become involved in environmental causes around the world. In Brazil, for

example, they have worked with indigenous groups to maintain land claims, prevent deforestation, and

organize against construction of large hydropower projects that threaten the river ecosystems.6 Others

have challenged development of parks throughout the world as a major conservation strategy for bio-

diversity and explored the impacts of those parks on local communities.7 Studies of these diverse topics

benefit from incorporation of an ethnographic perspective that emphasizes the importance of identity

politics, connection to place, and cultural beliefs for understanding how groups of people interact with

their environment. This work also reminds us that environmentalism and conservation are grounded

in sets of beliefs, assumptions, and world views developed in Western Europe and North America and

must be translated as environmentalists work in other cultures.

Environmental anthropology naturally lends itself to use of anthropological perspectives to inform

and engage in public policy decisions, land-use management, and advocacy for indigenous communi-

ties, urban minorities, and other groups that are often under-represented in places of power and in tra-

ditional environmental movements. In that sense, environmental anthropology is a way to inform and

connect with a variety of other disciplines that address similar questions of sustainability. Regardless

of whether you decide to study anthropology, understanding the value of anthropological insights for

environmental questions will allow you to better appreciate and understand the complexity of envi-

ronmental questions in modern society and potential solutions. The next section examines the diverse

ways that anthropologists have historically looked at the human-environmental dynamic, highlighting

some of the key theories, methods, and approaches and how they have developed over time.

CULTURAL ECOLOGY

Early Cultural Ecologists

One of the earliest anthropologists to think systematically about the environment was Leslie White.

His work built on earlier anthropological concepts of cultural evolution—the idea that cultures, like

organisms, evolve over time and progress from simple to more complex. White described how cultures

evolved through their ability to use energy as they domesticated plants and animals, captured the energy

stored in fossil fuels, and developed nuclear power.8 From this perspective, “human cultural evolution

was best understood as a process of increasing control over the natural environment” through tech-

nological progress.9 White’s conclusions are at odds with Franz Boas’ historical particularism, which

rejected theories based on evolution that labeled cultures as more advanced or less advanced than oth-

ers and instead looked at each society as a unique entity that had developed based on its particular his-

tory. Like earlier anthropologists, White viewed anthropology as a natural science in which one could

generate scientific laws to understand cultural differences. His model is useful, however, when explor-

ing the nature of change as our society increasingly harnessed new sources of energy to meet our wants

361

and needs. He was writing at a time when the U.S. economy was booming and our technological future

seemed promising, before the environmental movement raised awareness about harm caused by those

technologies.

How the Future Looked 50 Years Ago How the Future Looked 50 Years Ago This National Public Radio Planet Money episode captures the enthusiasm for technological progress at the 1964 World’s Fair, when little

was known about the environmental damage such technologies would cause. How did people see the future in 1964? How is their idea of the future different ours today?

Anthropologist Julian Steward first used the term cultural ecology to describe how cultures use and

understand their environments. His fieldwork among the Shoshone emphasized the complex ways they

had adapted to the dry terrain of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountain

ranges. He described how a hunting and gathering subsistence economy that relied on pine nuts, grass

seeds, berries, deer, elk, sheep, antelope, and rabbits shaped Shoshone culture. Their detailed knowledge

of various microclimates and seasonal variations in resource availability structured their migration pat-

terns, social interactions, and cultural belief systems.10 Rather than looking for single evolutionary tra-

jectories for cultures as White had done, Steward looked for multiple evolutionary pathways that led to

different outcomes and stressed the variety of ways in which cultures could adapt to ecological condi-

tions.

Both White and Steward were influenced by materialism, a Marxist concept that emphasized the

ways in which human social and cultural practices were influenced by basic subsistence (economic)

needs. Both were trained as scientists, which shaped how they looked at cultural variation. Steward was

also influenced by processual archaeology, a scientific approach developed in the 1960s that focused

primarily on relationships between past societies and the ecological systems they inhabited. The shift

in anthropology represented by White and Steward’s work led to increased use of scientific methods

when analyzing and interpreting data. In subsequent decades, movements in both anthropology and

archaeology criticized those scientific perspectives, challenging their objectivity, a process I examine in

greater detail later in this chapter.

Pigs and Protein

Subsequent anthropologists built on the work of White and Steward, looking for ecological expla-

nations for cultural beliefs and practices. They also drew on newly developed computer science to

think about dynamic feedback systems in which cultural and ecological systems self-regulate to pro-

mote social stability—homeostasis. Some fascinating examples of this work include Roy Rappaport’s

work in Papua New Guinea and Marvin Harris’ work in India.

362 PERSPECTIVES: AN OPEN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Figure 2: Honoring the cow, is a part of Hindu religious tradition.

Marvin Harris examined Hindu religious beliefs about sacred

cattle from functional and materialist perspectives. Among Hin-

dus in India, eating beef is forbidden and cows are seen as sacred

animals associated with certain deities. From the perspective of a

Western beef-loving country, such beliefs may seem irrational.

Why would anyone not want to eat a juicy steak or hamburger?

Rejecting earlier academics who regarded the Hindu practice as

illogical, Harris argued that the practice makes perfect sense

within the Hindu ecological and economic system. He argued that

cows were sacred not because of cultural beliefs; instead, the cul-

tural beliefs existed because of the economic and ecological

importance of cows in India. Thus, Hindu restrictions regarding

cows were an “adaptive” response to the local ecological system

rather than the result of Hindu theology.11 Harris explored the

importance of cattle for milk production, dung for fuel and fertil-

izer, labor for plowing, and provision of meat and hides to the

lowest caste, untouchables, who were able to slaughter and eat

cows and tan their hides because they were already seen as ritu-

ally impure.

Roy Rappaport examined subsistence practices of the Tsembaga in Highland New Guinea, a group

that planted taro, yams, sweet potatoes, and sugar cane and raised pigs. Rappaport used scientific terms

and concepts such as caloric intake, carrying capacity, and mutualism to explain methods used by the

Tsembaga to manage their resources. A population of pigs below a certain threshold provided a num-

ber of benefits, such as keeping villages clean by eating refuse and eating weeds in established gardens

that had relatively large fruit trees that would not be damaged by the pigs. Once the population reached

the threshold, the pigs ate more than weeds and garbage and began to create problems in gardens. In

response, the people used periodic ritual feasts to trim the population back, returning the ecological sys-

tem to equilibrium. Rappaport, like Harris, used ecological concepts to understand the Tsembaga sub-

sistence practices, thus downplaying the role of cultural beliefs and emphasizing ecological constraints.

These early cultural ecologists viewed cultures as trying to reach and maintain social and ecological

equilibrium. This idea aligned with ecological thinking at the time that emphasized the balance of

nature and the importance of the various components of an ecosystem in maintaining that balance.

However, environments and cultures were rapidly changing as colonization, globalization, and indus-

trialization spread throughout the world. In many of those early cases, anthropologists had ignored the

larger processes.

As ecologists began to develop more-complex models of how ecosystems change through long-term

dynamic processes of succession and disturbances (such as storms, droughts, and El Nino events),

anthropological approaches to the environment also changed. The next sections examine those shifts in

anthropology as environmental movements developed in response to increasing degradation of natural

environments.

Early anthropologists were notable for their attempts to understand how different groups of people

interacted with their environments over time. Their work paved the way for future environmental

anthropologists even though they generally were not directly concerned with environmental problems

associated with modernity, such as pollution, tropical deforestation, species extinctions, erosion, and

global warming. As people around the world became more familiar with such issues, environmental

anthropologists took note and began to analyze those problems and accompanying conservation move-

363

Figure 3: Beans and bananas planted in a swidden field in Acre, Brazil. Note the fallen and burnt logs and the proximity of the forest. Photo by Christian Palmer.

ments, especially in the developing world, which was still the primary focus of most anthropological

research.

ETHNOECOLOGY

Slash-and-Burn versus Swidden Cultivation

Traditionally, anthropologists studied small communities in remote locations rather than urban soci-

eties. While much of that work examined rituals, political organizations, and kinship structures, some

anthropologists focused on ethnoecology: use and knowledge of plants, animals, and ecosystems by

traditional societies. Because those societies depended heavily on the natural world for food, medicine,

and building materials, such knowledge was often essential to their survival.

As anthropologists, Harris and Rappaport worked to make the strange familiar by taking seemingly

bizarre practices such as ritual slaughtering of pigs and sacredness of cows in India and explaining the

practices within the context of the people’s culture and environment. This work explains not only how

and why people do what they do, but also the advantages of their systems in the environments in which

they live. An indigenous practice long demonized by the media, environmental activists, and scientists

is slash-and-burn agriculture in which small-scale farmers, mostly in tropical developing countries, cut

down a forest, let the wood dry for a few weeks, and then burn it, clearing the land for cultivation. Ini-

tially, the farmers plant mostly perennial crops such as rice, beans, corn, taro, and manioc. Later, they

gradually introduce tree crops, and the plot is left to regrow trees while they open new fields for crops.

Every year, as the soil’s fertility declines and insects become a problem in the original plot, new land

is cleared to replace it. Environmentalists and developers have decried slash-and-burn cultivation as

a major cause of deforestation, and governments in many tropical countries have prohibited farmers

from cutting and burning forests.

Anthropologists have challenged these

depictions and have documented that slash-

and-burn cultivators possess detailed knowl-

edge of their environment; their agricultural

processes are sustainable indefinitely under the

right conditions.12 When there is a low popu-

lation density and an adequate supply of land,

slash-and-burn cultivation is a highly sustain-

able type of elongated crop rotation in which

annuals are planted for a few years, followed

first by tree crops and then by forest, rebuild-

ing soil nutrients and mimicking natural

processes of forest disturbance in which tree

falls and storms periodically open up small

patches of the forest. They used the term swid-

den cultivation instead of slash and burn to

challenge the idea of the practice as inherently destructive. The surrounding forest allows the fields to

quickly revert to forest thanks to seeds planted in the cleared area as birds roost in the trees and defe-

cate into the clearing and as small rodents carry and bury the seeds. Furthermore, by mimicking natural

364 PERSPECTIVES: AN OPEN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

processes, the small patches can enhance biodiversity by creating a greater variety of microclimates in

a given area of forest.

The system breaks down when cleared forests are not allowed to regrow and instead are replaced

with industrial agriculture, cattle raising, or logging operations that transform the open fields into

pasture or permanent agricultural plots.13 The system can also break down when small-holders are

forced to become more sedentary because the amount of land they control is reduced by arrival of new

migrants or government land seizures. In that case, local farmers must replant areas more frequently

and soil fertility declines. A desire to plant cash crops for external markets can also exacerbate these

changes because food is no longer grown solely for local consumption and more land is put into agri-

culture. Anthropologists’ studies uncovered the sustainability of these traditional practices, which were

destructive only when outside forces pressured local farmers to modify their traditional farming sys-

tems.

Plants, People, and Culture

One branch of ethnoecology is ethnobotany, which studies traditional uses of plants for food, con-

struction, dyes, crafts, and medicine. Scientists have estimated that 60 percent of all of the current med-

icinal drugs in use worldwide were originally derived from plant materials (many are now chemically

manufactured). For example, aspirin came from the bark of willow trees and an important muscle relax-

ant used in open-heart surgery was developed from curare, the poison used on arrows and darts by

indigenous groups throughout Central and South America. In light of such discoveries, ethnobotanists

traveled to remote corners of the world to document the knowledge of shamans, healers, and traditional

medical experts. They have also looked at psychoactive plants and their uses across cultures.

What The People of the Amazon Know That You Don’t What The People of the Amazon Know That You Don’t This TED talk by ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin describes some important cases of knowledge of medicinal plants learned from indigenous peo-

ple in the Amazon.

Ethnobotanical work is interdisciplinary, and while some ethnobotanists are anthropologists, many

are botanists or come from other disciplines. Anthropologists who study ethnobotany must have a

working knowledge of scientific methods for collecting plant specimens and of botanical classification

systems and basic ecology. Similarly, archaeologists and paleobotanists study prehistoric people’s rela-

tionships and use of plants, especially in terms of domestication of plants and animals.

The Kayapó project is a famous ethnobotanical study organized by Darrell Posey and a group of

twenty natural and social scientists who examined how the Kayapó people of Brazil understood, man-

aged, and interacted with the various ecosystems they encountered as the region was transformed from

a dry savanna-like Cerrado to Amazonian rainforest.14 By documenting Kayapó names for different

ecosystems and methods they used to drop seeds and care for certain plants to expand islands of forest

in the savanna, the project illustrated the complex ways in which indigenous groups shape the environ-

ments in which they live by documenting how the Kayapó cared for, managed, and enhanced forests to

make them more productive.

Posey was also an activist who contributed to drafting of the Declaration of Belem, which called

365

for governments and corporations to respect and justly compensate the intellectual property rights of

indigenous groups, especially regarding medicinal plants. He accompanied Kayapó leaders to Wash-

ington, D.C., to protest construction of a large dam using funds from the World Bank. Pressure from

numerous international groups led to a halt in the dam’s construction (plans for the dam have recently

been resurrected). Posey’s identification of the Kayapó as guardians of the rainforest provided a power-

ful symbol that resonated with Western ideas of indigeneity and the moral high ground of environmen-

tal conservation.

In recent years, some anthropologists have questioned whether the idea of indigenous people having

an innate positive connection to the environment—what some call the myth of the ecologically noble

savage—is accurate.

The Myth of the Ecologically Noble Savage

The image of the noble savage developed many centuries ago in Western culture. From the beginning

of European exploration and colonialism, Europeans described the “natives” they encountered primar-

ily in negative terms, associating them with sexual promiscuity, indolence, cannibalism, and violence.

The depictions changed as Romantic artists and writers rejected modernity and industrialization and

called for people to return to an idealized, simpler past. That reactionary movement also celebrated

indigenous societies as simple people living in an Eden-like state of innocence. French painter Paul

Gauguin’s works depicting scenes from his travels to the South Pacific are typical of this approach in

their celebration of the colorful, easygoing, and natural existence of the natives. The continuing influ-

ence of these stories is evident in Disney’s portrayal of Pocahontas and James Cameron’s 2009 film

Avatar in which the primitive Na`vi are closely connected to and defenders of an exotic and vibrant nat-

ural world. Cameron’s depiction, which includes a sympathetic anthropologist, criticizes Western capi-

talism as willing to destroy nature for profit.

Disney’s Pocahontas: Colors of the Wind Song Disney’s Pocahontas: Colors of the Wind Song Disney’s Pocahontas presents many of the stereotypes of the ecologically noble savage. What are these stereotypes? Where else do we see

these kinds of depictions?

Despite its positive portrayals of indigenous groups, the idea of the ecologically noble savage tends to

treat indigenous peoples as an imagined “other” constructed as the opposite of Western culture rather

than endeavoring to understand the world views and complexities of indigenous cultures. Similarly, a

naive interpretation of indigenous environmentalism may merely project an imaginary Western ideal

onto another culture rather than make a legitimate observation about that culture on its own terms.

The Kayapó in the Amazon and another group known as the Penan, who live in the Indonesian rain-

forest, were both confronted in the past by plans to open logging roads in their traditional territories

and build dams that would flood vast amounts of their land. These indigenous communities organized,

sometimes with the aid of anthropologists who had connections to media and environmental organi-

zations, to protest the forest. The combination of two causes—rainforest conservation and indigenous

rights—was powerful, successfully grabbing media attention and raising money for conservation. Their

success led to later instances of indigenous groups joining efforts to halt large-scale development pro-

jects. These movements were especially powerful symbolically because they articulated the longstand-

366 PERSPECTIVES: AN OPEN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

ing Western idea of the environmentally noble savage as well as growing environmental concerns in

Europe and North America.15

Some anthropologists have noted that these alliances were often fragile and rested on an imagined

ideal of indigenous groups that was not always accurate. The Western media, they argue, imagined

indigenous groups as ecologically noble savages, and the danger in that perspective is that the indige-

nous communities would be particularly vulnerable if they lost that symbolic purity and the power that

came with it. The image of ecologically noble savages could break down if they were seen as promoting

any kind of non-environmental practices or became too involved in messy national politics. Further-

more, indigenous groups’ alliances with international activists tended to cast doubt on their patriotism

and weaken their position in their own countries. Though these indigenous groups achieved visibility

and some important victories, they remained vulnerable to negative press and needed to carefully man-

age their images.

It is important to note that depictions such as the ecologically noble savage rely on an overly sim-

plistic portrayal of the indigenous “other.” For example, some indigenous groups have been portrayed

as inherently environmentalist even when they hunt animals that Western environmentalists want to

preserve. Often, the more important questions for indigenous groups revolve around land rights and

political sovereignty. Environmental concerns are associated with those issues rather than existing sep-

arately. The ramifications of these differences are explained in the next section, which discusses the

people-versus-parks debate.

Land Claims and Mapping

One way that anthropologists have successfully used traditional ecological knowledge to advance

indigenous rights is through advocacy on behalf of indigenous groups seeking to establish legal owner-

ship or control over their traditional lands. This was first done in Alaska and Canada in the 1960s and

1970s. Indigenous groups wanted to map their seasonal movements for hunting, gathering, and other

subsistence practices. The maps would demonstrate that they used the land in question and that it was

important for their continued physical and cultural survival.

Since then, communities throughout the developing world have adopted similar strategies with the

help of geographers and anthropologists to demarcate their lands. Often, lands used by indigenous

groups are seen as empty because their population densities are quite low, and developers imagine the

land as unused and open for taking. The production of maps by indigenous communities challenges

those notions by inscribing the landscape with their names, relationships, and the human histories that

mark their claim to the land. The maps become important symbols and tools for organizing local resis-

tance against large development projects.

The non-governmental organization (NGO) Native Lands, for example, assisted in mapping the

Mosquitia region of Honduras. Although the area, which consisted of 20,000 square kilometers,

included 170 communities, most government maps showed it as practically empty. Earlier, in a back-

room deal, the entire area had been granted as a logging concession to Stone Container Corporation,

a Chicago-based company that made cardboard boxes and paper bags.16 When Native Lands became

involved in the early 1990s, mapping was used to bring the diverse communities in the region together

to communicate their presence and advocate for an end to the logging concession. The power of maps

to communicate the presence of indigenous people on the land is critical, especially when the indige-

nous groups lack legal ownership.

367

POLITICAL ECOLOGY

Questioning Science

In the 1960s, theoretical movements in the social sciences and humanities began to challenge the pre-

sumed benefits of modernity and science. These movements were led in part by feminist and post-colo-

nial theorists who saw science as part of a patriarchal system that was complicit in the subjugation of

women and colonized people throughout the world. In environmental sciences, this move to question

the objectivity of science can be seen in political ecology, a diverse field that includes many anthro-

pologists along with geographers, political scientists, sociologists, and other social scientists. Political

ecology’s primary message is the importance of examining environmental questions that seem, at first

glance, to be strictly scientific (i.e., apolitical). Questions of cause and effect, for instance, are comprised

of political and economic agendas that can be masked by a seemingly neutral language of scientific

objectivity. By focusing our attention on the power dynamic in political dimensions of conservation,

principally in the developing world, political ecologists illustrate why conservation efforts so often fail

to achieve the desired goals.

In an early an influential study of political ecology, Piers Blaikie and others argued that soil erosion

was not caused by many of the factors blamed by state governments, including overpopulation, bad

farming practices, and environmental stresses. Instead, they found that state policies such as taxes

forced farmers into capitalist economic systems that encouraged unsustainable farming practices.17

From this perspective, soil erosion, which seemed to be primarily a local problem, was actually con-

nected to national politics and needed to be addressed in that larger context. Once attention had been

drawn to the relationship between state policies and soil erosion, the solution to the problem could no

longer come from simply teaching small-scale farmers better soil conservation techniques. It required

eliminating government practices and economic conditions that provided an incentive to use unsus-

tainable farming practices.

Political ecology often focuses on the impacts of governments and corporations in establishing polit-

ical and economic systems that constrain local behavior and challenges standard narratives regarding

environmental destruction and conservation. Learning about political ecology can be difficult for envi-

ronmentally minded people because it requires them to rethink many of their own positions and the

science that supports them.

Revisionist Environmental History

Some of my favorite work in political ecology challenges the causes and effects of tropical defor-

estation. James Fairhead and Melissa Leach, for example, looked at tropical deforestation in the West

African country of Guinea. 18 The state’s forestry department and later conservation organizations

described the savanna as containing only small fragments of a once extensive tropical forest. Adminis-

trators, foresters, and botanists had created forest policies based on the idea that this degradation was

caused by local villagers as they cleared and burned forests to create fields for agriculture. Through

careful study of historical archives, oral histories, and historical aerial photographs, Fairhead and Leach

challenged these narratives. Instead, they argued that the remaining fragments of forest had been

planted by local villagers who had gradually planted useful species around their villages, improving the

368 PERSPECTIVES: AN OPEN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

soil for planting and generating other positive ecological changes. Rather than being the cause of the

deforestation in areas that was previously forest, the villagers were creating the forest in an area that

had previously been savanna through generations of hard work, turning the colonial narrative on its

head.

Another fascinating tale comes from William Balee’s work in the Amazon. Balee was a friend of Dar-

rell Posey, and their work together got Balee thinking about the extent to which the Amazon rain-

forest is a product of human productive activities and not entirely natural processes. Balee disagreed

with earlier anthropologists who had described how primitive groups were forced to adapt to the con-

straints imposed by fragile tropical ecosystems, such as declining soil fertility, a lack of plants and ani-

mals that provided protein, and other limiting factors that constrained their behavior. Balee examined

a wide variety of ecosystems in the Amazon that seemed to have been created or significantly mod-

ified by human activity, including the forest islands of the Kayapó discussed by Posey, babassu palm

forests, bamboo forests, Brazil nut forests near Maraba, and liana forests. His conservative estimated

was that at least 12 percent of the Amazon, the largest rainforest on the planet, was a product of indige-

nous intervention. This conclusion challenged two major assumptions made about the rainforest and

the people who lived there. First is the notion that indigenous groups were forced to adapt to the harsh

environment of the rainforest. Instead, Balee found that they were resource managers who had devel-

oped ecosystems to better provide for their needs. Second is the notion that the Amazon was primeval,

untouched, and pristine.19 If we extend this analysis to other regions and ecosystems, it challenges the

entire notion of “untouched nature.” If the wildest, least populated, and largest rainforest in the world is

already highly anthropogenic, or shaped by humans, what can we say about supposed ideas of wilder-

ness in other places?

Environmental historian William Cronon tackled this question directly in his essay, “The Trouble

with Wilderness, or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature.”20 Cronon argued that, by celebrating a nature

supposedly untouched by human hands, we tend to forget about preserving the nature with which we

come in contact every day. If we focus exclusively on a concept of wilderness, which excludes humans

and human activities by definition, we may ignore ways to help humans better interact with nature,

leading to conservation policies that try to create parks without anyone inside of them and do not fully

consider agricultural and urban areas. It means that one must leave civilization behind to be in contact

with nature. Cronon ended his essay with a plea:

If wildness can stop being (just) out there and start being (also) in here, if it can start being as humane

as it is natural, then perhaps we can get on with the unending task of struggling to live rightly in the

world, not just in the garden, not just in the wilderness, but in the home that encompasses them both.21

Cronon’s call to action is for humans to consider themselves fully part of nature and to look for ways

to behave responsibly in that relationship. In a way, his message is similar to Bruno Latour’s about the

Anthropocene. By recognizing that nature does not exist outside of human activities, we must come

to terms with the impacts of our lifestyles on the environment. Some may believe that this cheapens

nature, making it less sacred and significant, but understanding the diverse ways in which humans have

affected the environment should make us better able to appreciate and evaluate our interactions with it.

Instead of seeing nature as outside of human activities, we need to consider how our food production,

transportation, and habitation systems affect the environment.

People Versus Parks

Generally, when we think of nature, we tend to think of national parks and other kinds of protected

369

Figure 4: Yosemite Valley, one of the first national parks in the United States, established a precedent of setting aside natural areas for their scenic beauty, recreation, and conservation. Photo by Christian Palmer.

areas set aside for conservation under various categories. In the United States, these include national

and state parks, forests, wilderness areas, recreation areas, and wildlife conservation areas. In most

cases, people are allowed to visit these areas for recreational or scientific purposes but cannot live

directly in them, and regulations control the kinds of activities allowed. Protected areas developed from

the Western vision of nature that separates it from culture and assumes that one must exclude humans

to conserve nature. This model of setting aside protected areas has been exported to the rest of the

world and persists as the most common strategy for numerous environmental goals, including pro-

tection of watersheds, endangered plants and animals, and providing space for people to interact with

nature.

The most common example of a protected area is a

national park. In the United States, national parks are so

popular that they have been called “America’s Best Idea.”

While I am an enthusiastic fan of national parks, I also recog-

nize problems associated with the concept. We often forget,

for example, that the “natural” state of such parks is mostly a

recent phenomenon. Many Native American groups were

systematically removed from parks (and rarely compensated)

to make the parks “natural,” and some parks, such as Mt.

Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota and Devil’s

Tower in Wyoming, are directly on top of sacred sites for

Native Americans. In other areas of the world, especially in

developing countries, most protected areas are occupied by

groups of people who have lived there for decades or cen-

turies and have legitimate claims to the land. Some may not

be aware that their land is being transformed into a park and,

once informed, are shocked by all of the new regulations they

are expected to obey. In worst-case scenarios, they are

evicted without compensation, becoming environmental

refugees. From the perspective of such groups, the govern-

ment seems to value elephants, tigers, or scenic vistas more than the people living on the land.

The conflicts that have developed between local communities in and around protected areas and state

conservation officials and international conservation NGOs that advocate for the parks is referred to

as the “people-versus-parks debate.”22 Communities, rather than seeing parks as preserving a public

good that benefits everyone, view creation of a park as an effort by government officials to extend their

power to remote rural areas. And those negative views can thwart conservation efforts when locals

resent preferential treatment of animals and choose to poach or simply ignore the new regulations.

Conservation groups have begun to recognize that they must support economic development of local

communities to get them on board with conservation efforts. When local residents benefit from jobs as

park guards, tour guides, and research assistants, they recognize the positive economic benefits of con-

servation and support the initiatives. This approach aims to combine conservation and development,

bringing together typically different objectives. Initially, this approach was a response to development

policies associated with building infrastructure such as roads and dams that had huge environmental

impacts and created negative press for the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Develop-

ment (USAID), and other institutions that funded the projects. Now, most conservation projects incor-

porate development objectives, and the environmental impacts of development projects usually must

370 PERSPECTIVES: AN OPEN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

be assessed. In addition, the failure of many of these projects has inspired governments and NGOs to

include local communities in planning and operating conservation and development schemes.

Conservation and Sustainable Development

Since the early 1990s, environmental conservation organizations such as the Nature Conservancy

and Conservation International and development organizations such as the World Bank and USAID

have been working to bring conservation and development together. The structures and success of

these approaches vary widely. Some aim to help local communities develop industries that depended on

rainforests in nondestructive ways, such as non-timber forest products like rattan, rubber, medicines,

and fruit. By assisting local communities in developing and marketing such products, the programs

have provided them with economic alternatives that encourage people to preserve rainforests instead

of chopping them down, a form of sustainable development.

The conservation and development project with which I am most familiar is related to extractive

reserves in the Brazilian Amazon. I spent a summer doing research for my master’s thesis on extractive

reserves established by Brazilian rubber tappers in Acre, which is in the northwestern corner of the

Brazilian Amazon. These rubber tappers live in the rainforest and tap natural rubber by scraping a long

thin cut into the bark of the tree and returning later in the day to collect the sap that had dripped into

a small container hung on the tree. Rubber trees do not grow together; they are spread out through-

out the forest, requiring rubber tappers to walk several trails each day. Many also collect and sell Brazil

nuts, which fall from ancient trees that live for centuries. Brazil nuts cannot be commercially grown so

they must be collected from rainforests. Both of these economic activities require a healthy, mature for-

est. And although rubber can be produced synthetically, natural rubber is stronger, longer lasting, more

flexible, and more resistant to heat than synthetic alternatives, making it ideal for use in medical and

aeronautic industries where high-quality material is essential.

As cattle ranching expanded in the Amazon, rubber tappers were being evicted because they did not

have formal title to the land on which they lived and worked. Led by local activist Chico Mendes, the

rubber tappers organized and petitioned the government for the right to remain on the land. Mendes

was eventually assassinated by owners of some of the cattle ranches who were unhappy about his

activism, but ultimately, the movement was successful. Environmentalists who were worried about

Amazonian deforestation joined forces with the rubber tappers, who were worried about their liveli-

hoods, and together they created extractive reserves—protected areas owned by the federal government

but managed by local communities of rubber tappers who could stay on the land indefinitely as long as

they followed the environmental regulations they established. The model was successful and has since

been expanded to include millions of hectares throughout the Amazon.

As with many conservation and development projects, the economic benefits of the extractive

reserves were slow to accrue. When rubber prices fell in response to international commodity markets,

many families stopped tapping rubber and focused on subsistence agriculture. In fact, some turned to

cattle ranching, mimicking on a smaller scale many of the destructive processes they had originally

protested. Because the regulations were poorly enforced, a number of families gradually turned old

swidden fields into pastures instead of letting the fields revert to rainforest.

Despite these challenges, development of the land was significantly reduced relative to the original

plan of allowing owners of large tracts to move in and convert large areas to pasture and soy plantations.

Likewise, the rubber tappers, though still poor, had access to greater resources than they would if they

have been evicted and forced to move to urban slums. Extractive reserves succeeded because they were

371

implemented across vast areas of the Brazilian Amazon and provided rights to thousands of small-hold-

ers.

Significant challenges remain for organizations working to improve the standard of living of rubber

tappers in Brazil and conserve biodiversity, and this case study illustrates many of the problems asso-

ciated with conservation and development models. Often, the economic gains are limited and require

compromises in terms of conservation benefits. Usually, neither local communities nor environmen-

talists are completely happy with the models and their results but also agree that compromise is better

than the rampant destruction averted by a reserve. Research on political ecology from such case studies

forces us to recognize that the debates are not solely about environmental ethics; they also involve con-

trol over valuable resources such as land, timber, and oil. Political ecology invites us to think about the

local political and cultural processes that shape the outcomes of conservation projects and determine

who benefits from such projects.

First World Political Ecology

A significant challenge for political ecologists is that most of the research so far has been done in the

developing world; relatively few studies have been conducted in the United States and Europe. Some

newer studies are aiming to showcase what political ecology might look like when applied to similar

questions in the developed world. One such study came from the Sierra Nevada foothills in California.

There, a participatory conservation project was being developed that would have included local con-

servation organizations, government offices, and other groups. Their goal was to create an environ-

mental management plan for the region that would limit development and urban growth. They tried to

bring together a variety of environmental and pro-development groups to dialogue but were met with

an intense political backlash. Pro-development forces, rather than participating, mobilized politically

to remove supporters of the plan from county government seats and derail the process. In first world

countries, local groups can mobilize significant political and economic resources to influence the fate

of a project. This is an unlikely scenario in the developing world where conservation organizations are

generally more powerful than local communities.23

Clashes between environmentalists, who are often exurban migrants who moved from urban to

rural areas for outdoor activities and scenic nature, and longtime residents who are involved in extrac-

tive industries such as mining, ranching, and agriculture are common in the western United States. In

many cases, communities are bitterly divided over the importance of nearby public lands and the role

of the federal government in managing those lands. In developing countries, political ecologists as a

group tend to side with local communities and against government intervention. In the United States,

left-leaning and environmental sympathies can push them to side with government intervention at the

expense of local communities. Some political ecologists have noted this contradiction and called for

local movements and their pushes against extension of states power to be taken more seriously, includ-

ing in the United States.24

Another fascinating political ecology associated with the first world is a study by Paul Robbins and

Julie Sharp that looked at the American lawn, noting that 23 percent of urban land in the United States

is dedicated to lawns and that urban areas are growing at a rate of 675,000 hectares a year.25 In addition,

the vast majority of those lawns are sprayed with fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Because these

chemicals wash into waterways, lawns have an enormous collective environmental impact. Robbins

and Sharp analyzed advertisements for lawn care products and interviewed and surveyed households

across the country, leading to some startling discoveries. One of the strongest indicators of intensive

372 PERSPECTIVES: AN OPEN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

and toxic lawn care was not a lack of knowledge about the environmental impacts of the products, but

how well they knew the names of their neighbors. They describe the moral economy of a turf grass

commons in which maintaining a healthy lawn signified important values of being connected to the

community, your family, and nature. The aesthetics and family values associated with lawns outweighed

concerns about environmental impacts, suggesting that water conservation activists must understand

and address underlying cultural ideas about lawns in the United States.

Where’s the Ecology?

Political ecologists Andrew Vayda and Bradley Walters have noted that the field of political ecology

seems to be increasingly political, overemphasizing how different groups use environmental issues to

gain control over land and resources and ignoring important ecological considerations.26 They argue

that political ecologists need to take the limits, constraints, and challenges associated with natural sys-

tems more seriously and research those systems in addition to local cultural and political systems. In

a study of the destruction of mangrove forests in the Philippines, they examined both the role of local

communities in the destruction and management of mangrove ecosystems and the natural limits that

impede replanting in the area. The next section presents examples of anthropologists who thought

creatively about how to integrate theories from the natural sciences back into anthropology while

simultaneously questioning whether science provides unbiased objective results. This requires a careful

balancing act but is necessary to generate an approach that respects the contributions of scientific and

anthropological knowledge.

ADDITIONAL APPROACHES TO ENVIRONMENTAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Eco-Justice: Race, Gender, and Environmental Destruction

Many environmental justice advocates are anthropologists and political ecologists. They examine

environmental questions from the perspective of social equality, identifying impacts and risks associ-

ated with environmental damage that have disproportionately affected socially marginalized groups.

For example, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu the trash incinerator and landfill are on the west side

of the island where many native Hawaiians and other low-income groups live.27 Locating landfills,

incinerators, chemical plants, industrial factories, nuclear waste storage, and other environmentally

hazardous facilities near communities of color, Native American reservations, and relatively poor com-

munities is not accidental. A lack of economic and political power prevents residents of such communi-

ties from influencing the large industries and government agencies that determine where such facilities

are placed.

The same process is at work when environmentally toxic jobs and waste storage facilities are out-

sourced. For example, many computers and other electronic appliances that contain toxic components

made from heavy metals are shipped to West Africa for disassembly and recycling.28 This arrangement

makes economic sense for consumers in relatively rich countries in North America and Europe, but the

workers in Africa are out of sight and out of mind, often working without proper protection from the

toxic metals or even training on their dangers. And as global supply chains have expanded, consumers

in the United States rarely know where the clothes, electronics, and toys they purchase are made, the

373

impacts of that production, or what happens to them after they dispose of them. By looking at these

long complex commodity or supply chains, which cover products from their cradle to grave, social sci-

entists interested in eco-justice can create awareness of these issues.

Anthropologists also work to connect ecocide (environmental destruction) with ethnocide (cultural

destruction). In many indigenous communities worldwide, cultural activities and beliefs are connected

to specific landscapes and ecologies. Consequently, as a logging or mining company moves in, it

destroys both the environment and culture. Eco-justice studies call attention to these connections and

seek to protect both culture and the environment and the relationship between them. Barbara Rose

Johnston’s work with Marshallese Islanders in Micronesia documented the impact of U.S. atomic bomb

testing on the atolls and supported their claims for compensation from the United States for damage by

carefully documenting the relationship between their culture and the contaminated landscapes ruined

by nuclear testing.29

Anthropologists are often involved in these kinds of research projects because they are on the ground

in remote locations around the world and share a disciplinary interest in raising awareness of cultural

differences and inequality. They are also trained to examine categories of race, class, nationality, and

other social factors that differentiate groups of people and are the basis for unequal treatment. While

valuing cultural diversity, anthropologists also argue for a holistic perspective that universally values

human life regardless of such differences.

Science and Technology Studies

The study of science and technology is a diverse field that uses social science methods to analyze the

culture of science in industrialized and modern societies. Like political ecology and ethnoecology, sci-

ence and technology studies question the objectivity of modern science to some extent and view science

as a product of specific cultural understandings. These studies often look to the history of a science to

understand its development in a specific cultural, political, and economic context.

An early developer of the discipline is Bruno Latour, who introduced the idea of the Anthropocene

discussed at the beginning of this chapter. Latour’s earlier work included a study, Laboratory Life: The

Social Construction of Scientific Facts (1979), written with Steve Woolgar, that used the ethnographic tech-

nique of participant observation in a laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences to deter-

mine how scientific knowledge is produced and challenged dominant narratives about the scientific

method.30 Other studies have examined concepts of race and indigeneity in the Human Genome Pro-

ject and how remote sensing technologies shape how anthropologists interact with ecosystems in the

Guatemalan rainforest.31 As science and technology become increasingly important parts of our lived

experiences and our understanding of the environment around us, anthropologists naturally analyze

those connections.

Many anthropologists who study science and technology endeavor to make sure they do not throw

the baby out with the bath water. They do not deny the important contributions of science and the sci-

entific method. However, they also pay attention to the limitations and biases inherent in those meth-

ods.

Multispecies Ethnographies

Multispecies ethnographies challenge the centrality of humans in the world. Most of the stories we

374 PERSPECTIVES: AN OPEN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

tell about ourselves and our place in the world and especially stories told by anthropologists revolve

around Homo sapiens. Increasingly, though, some anthropologists have begun to think about how other

species make decisions and exercise a degree of agency that can influence history. For example, Donna

Haraway writes about dogs and how the relationship between dogs and humans has evolved over time.

She criticizes people who anthropomorphize dogs and challenges her readers to understand dogs on

their own terms.32

We can also think about the role of bacteria in human evolution and cultural development and

remind ourselves that diseases, parasites, and symbiotic gut bacteria that allow us to eat certain kinds of

foods have been very influential in shaping human history and cultural development over time. Other

works have, for example, re-examined plant and animal domestication from non-human perspectives

and explored how forests “think.”33 By carefully considering other species and ecological processes, we

decenter our increasingly human-centered focus. Much of the work on multispecies ethnography has

been done by feminist anthropologists who have already been at work for decades on similarly decen-

tering male-focused histories of our species.

APPLYING ANTHROPOLOGY IN CONSERVATION

Reforestation

Anthropological analyses of the environment may seem overly theoretical and abstract, far removed

from actual practices and the work of learning to live with and within our environment. Anthropolo-

gists may be seen as hidden in ivory towers of academia, disconnected from real world issues and prob-

lems. However, applied and activist anthropology offer avenues for anthropologists to tackle problems

on the ground and make a direct difference. Applied anthropologists often work with conservation and

development organizations to implement projects that depend on an accurate understanding of local

cultures and practices to succeed.

Anthropologist Gerald Murray’s doctoral dissertation examined land tenure among small-holders in

Haiti. After finishing his dissertation work, Murray delivered a presentation to USAID on a Haitian

reforestation project. He joked that if they gave him “a jeep and carte blanche access to a $50,000

checking account” he could prove his “anthropological assertions about peasant economic behavior and

produce more trees on the ground than their multi-million-dollar Ministry of Agriculture charade.”34

USAID program officers accepted his challenge, inviting him to head a $4 million project to reforest

Haiti. Using his understanding of Haitian small-holders, he drastically changed the USAID’s approach.

Instead of trying to convince small-holders that trees were valuable for their environmental services, he

emphasized fast-growing species that could be sold for firewood, charcoal, and lumber. By giving the

trees to the small-holders and allowing them to harvest and sell them whenever they wanted, he moti-

vated them to plant and care for the seedlings like any other valuable cash crop. In prior projects, tree-

cutting was prohibited and the trees belonged to the government. Consequently, no one took care of the

trees and they were eventually destroyed by livestock or neglect and rarely reached maturity. Treating

the trees as a cash crop motivated farmers to plant trees on their own land, thus meeting USAID’s goals

of stabilizing the soil and reducing illegal tree cutting (since farmers had access to stands of their own)

and providing a direct economic benefit from selling wood. The project was a stunning success—20

million trees were planted in the first four years. By understanding local farmers’ perspectives, Murray

375

was able to work with Haitian small-holders instead of seeing them as an impediment to reforestation

efforts.

A number of anthropologists are working with conservation and development organizations to assist

them in understanding local cultures and implementing conservation and develop projects. This work

is often done in teams in which anthropologists join with foresters, conservation biologists, agrono-

mists, and others to implement projects. Because they often speak the local language, understand the

peoples’ perspectives, and are interested in close, on-the-ground observations, anthropologists make

valuable contributions in support of conservation and economic development.

Climate Change

In 2014, the American Anthropological Association’s Global Climate Change Task Force submitted

a report on climate change that summarized anthropology’s engagement with the issue. Currently, cli-

mate change is perhaps the single most important environmental issue worldwide, and our responses

to it will shape the future of our species on the planet. The report identified the human causes and con-

tributions to climate change and emphasized that climate change is already having an impact as ris-

ing sea levels are forcing residents of places such as Kiribati to flee their island homes and melting ice

shelves threaten the subsistence practices and the lifestyle of Inuit groups in Alaska. These examples

illustrate how the impacts of climate change will disproportionately affect groups who have contributed

the least to the accumulation of greenhouses gases, highlighting the social inequality of impacts of cli-

mate change around the world.

The report analyzed drivers of climate change, focusing on consumption, land use, energy, and pop-

ulation growth. An anthropological analysis of consumption reminds us that the categories of “neces-

sities” and “luxuries” are cultural constructs. For example, Western societies now accept cell phones as

necessities despite the fact that humans survived perfectly well for thousands of years without them.

As the global middle class expands and places new demands on ecosystems, a cultural understanding of

social classes and related consumption practices will be increasingly important to analyses the causes of

climate change and potential solutions.

The report also criticized much of the language of climate change and its focus on concepts of adap-

tation, vulnerability, and resilience that elided the differential impacts of climate change on different

groups of people. The task force noted that proposed global solutions focused on top-down manage-

ment strategies that did not take existing social issues of “poverty, marginalization, lack of education

and information, and loss of control over resources” that structure vulnerability of different popu-

lations to the impacts of a warming planet into account. 35 The report also illustrates the power of

language to shape certain debates and potential solutions to problems, an important piece of anthropo-

logical analysis.

At the end of the report, the task force recommended actions anthropologists could take to contribute

to efforts to address global climate change, including reducing the carbon footprint of anthropological

meetings, working with interdisciplinary research teams to continue research, and maintaining a

research agenda that stresses the importance of anthropological contributions to discussions of climate

change. Perhaps most interesting is their conclusion that many of the most innovative and creative

approaches to addressing and mitigating the effects of climate change were occurring at local and

regional levels, recognizing communities’ innovative efforts to bypass national and international grid-

lock and develop approaches that reflect local realities and address local problems. The anthropological

376 PERSPECTIVES: AN OPEN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

focus on local communities is a welcome change of perspective when, by definition, the scale of global

climate change seems to preclude local involvement and solutions.

Anthropologists at Work in Conservation Organizations

Anthropologists work for international conservation organizations like Conservation International,

The Nature Conservancy, and the World Wildlife Fund and with government agencies like the National

Park Service, the Peace Corps, and USAID. They also work for smaller conservation organizations,

urban planning initiatives, environmental education groups, environmental activist networks, and

other initiatives aimed at reducing our negative impact on the planet.

Cultural Resources Management

Management of cultural resources is a growing field of anthropology that catalogs and preserves

archaeological sites and historic places threatened by development, bringing together various principles

developed in anthropology over the years. First, it recognizes the need to preserve both “natural”

ecosystems and ecosystems shaped by past human activities. By connecting natural and human diver-

sity, anthropologists recognize humans’ interdependence with the environment over time. Second, cul-

tural resource managers recognize the need for continuing involvement of indigenous communities

with archaeological sites and seek their input to inform management plans and practices. As cultural

resource management has become standard operating procedure, archaeologists have begun to meet

with members of the local community and others who have a stake in their research. These interactions

improve archaeological research and create the kind of cross-cultural bridges that strengthen the dis-

cipline. Finally, destruction of historical places and archaeological sites is a form of environmental

destruction that, like climate change and species extinctions, requires us to critically examine the cul-

tural values underlying that destruction.

CONCLUSION

The discipline of anthropology provides a unique perspective on human-environmental interactions

and thus generates valuable insights into the social, political, and cultural complexity of modern envi-

ronmental problems. Anthropologists are hard at work with governments, conservation organizations,

and community groups to understand and solve complex environmental problems. I hope this discus-

sion has challenged you to think about the environment and conservation in a new way, allowing you

to help reframe these debates and develop innovative solutions to the complex problems that confront

us.

Discussion Questions Discussion Questions

1. In what ways have anthropologists examined human interactions with the environment over time?

377

2. What is the myth of the ecologically noble savage? What are some recent examples of this myth? What is the impact of this idea on indigenous people?

3. How has research in political ecology challenged traditional conservation efforts? What are some of the problems with promoting parks or ecological reserves as solutions to environmental problems?

4. What is the Anthropocene? How has research in anthropology contributed to an improved understanding of how humans interact with the “natural” world?

5. What insights from anthropology do you think would be most useful to the public, environmental activists, and government offi- cials when considering policies related to current environmental challenges?

GLOSSARY

Anthropocene: a term proposed to describe the current moment (or epoch) in geological time in which

the effects of human activities have altered the fundamental geochemical cycles of the earth. There is

some disagreement about when the Anthropocene period began—most likely, it began with industrial-

ization.

Anthropogenic: environments and pollutants produced by human activities.

Cultural ecology: a subfield of cultural anthropology that explores the relationship between human

cultural beliefs and practice and the ecosystems in which those beliefs and practices occur.

Cultural evolutionism: a theory popular in nineteenth and early twentieth century anthropology sug-

gesting that societies evolved through stages from simple to advanced. This theory was later shown to

be incorrect.

Ecocide: destruction of an environment, especially when done intentionally by humans.

Eco-justice: a movement to recognize and remedy the adverse relationship between social inequality

and the harms and risks that come from environmental destruction and pollutants.

Ethnocide: destruction of a culture, often intentionally, through destruction of or removal from their

territory, forced assimilation, or acculturation.

Ethnoecology: the relationships between cultural beliefs and practices and the local environment.

Components include ethnobiology, ethnobotany, and ethnozoology.

Extractive reserves: community-managed protected areas designed to allow for sustainable extraction

of certain natural resources (such as fish, rubber, Brazil nuts, and rattan) while maintaining key ecosys-

tems in place.

Exurban: migration of generally affluent people from urban areas to rural areas for the amenities of

nature, recreation, and scenic beauty associated with rural areas.

Historical particularism: the theory that every culture develops in a unique way due to its history,

including the interaction of people with the natural environment.

Homeostasis: the movement of a particular system (a human body, an ecosystem) towards equilibrium.

In ecology this is associated with the idea that ecosystems should remain at a climax ecosystem associ-

ated with an area.

Hominin: Humans (Homo sapiens) and their close relatives and immediate ancestors.

Materialism: a Marxist theory emphasizing the ways in which human social and cultural practices are

influenced by basic subsistence (economic) needs.

Multispecies ethnographies: an ethnographic approach in which anthropologists include non-human

species as active participants in a society or culture and study their influence and actions.

378 PERSPECTIVES: AN OPEN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Political ecology: an interdisciplinary field of research that emphasizes the political and economic

dimensions of environmental concerns.

Processual archaeology: a shift in archaeological studies toward scientific methods, testing of hypothe-

ses, quantitative analysis, and theory-driven approaches and away from an earlier emphasis on typolo-

gies and descriptive analysis.

Protected areas: lands set aside for conservation of the environment for their scenic beauty, biodiver-

sity, recreational value, and other reasons.

Succession: changes in types of species in an area over time. For example, it would describe the differ-

ent ecosystems that gradually replace one other after a forest fire.

Sustainable development: development that can meet present needs without damaging the environ-

ment or limiting the potential for future generations.

Swidden: an agricultural practice, also called shifting cultivation and slash-and-burn, in which fields

are cleared, burned, and planted for several seasons before being returned to fallow for an extended

period.

Wilderness: a natural area that is untouched or unchanged by human activities and often seen as a cul-

tural construct of the American West.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I grew up hiking and surfing in Hawaii and became interested in the environ-

ment and conservation. I studied Biology and International Cultural Studies at Brigham Young Univer-

sity-Hawaii as an undergraduate, including research on how traditional Hawaiian healers adapted to

introduced plant species and diseases. My master’s degree is in Environmental Science from the Yale

School of Forestry and Environmental Studies where I researched extractive reserves in the Brazilian

Amazon. My Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz focused on

tourism, urban development, and conservation in a small fishing town in Northeastern Brazil that was

transitioning to a tourist economy.

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379

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380 PERSPECTIVES: AN OPEN INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

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20. William Cronon, “The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,” Environmental History

(1996): 7–28.

21. Ibid., 28.

22. Paige West, James Igoe, and Dan Brockington, “Parks and People: The Social Impact of Protected Areas,” Annual

Review of Anthropology 35 (2006): 251–277.

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31. See for instance Jenny Reardon, “The Human Genome Diversity Project: A Case Study in Coproduction,” Social

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33. See for instance, Eben, Kirksey, ed. The Multispecies Salon (Duke University Press, 2014) and Eduardo Kohn, How

Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology Beyond the Human (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 2013).

34. Gerald F. Murray, “The Domestication of Wood in Haiti: A Case Study in Applied Evolution,” Anthropological

Praxis (1987): 218.

35. S.J. Fiske, et al. “Changing the Atmosphere,” 6.

381