Chapter 14 Outline

Introduction

• The Marshall Islands will likely be submerged by the end of the century, but Islanders cannot gain status as refugees because the legal category only applies to people displaced by persecution.
• The environmental problems the Islanders face are not of their own making. They developed sustainable food production methods 4000 years ago.
• They grow taro in holes lined with organic material and coral rubble to conserve water.
• They limit fish and crab harvests.
• They scatter food production sites.
• This chapter explores the question, why do some societies apparently have sustainable relations with the natural world while others seem to be more destructive? Within this question are specific questions around which the chapter is organized:
• Do all people conceive of nature in the same ways?
• How do people secure an adequate, meaningful, and environmentally sustainable food supply?
• How is non-Western knowledge of nature and agriculture similar to and different from science?
• How are industrial agriculture and economic globalization linked to increasing environmental and health problems?
• Do only modern Western societies protect and conserve nature?

• Studying the environmental beliefs, knowledge, and practices of small-scale societies has long been a major concern at the heart of cultural anthropology, particularly the subfield of environmental anthropology.
• In recent years, worldwide environmental challenges have prompted anthropologists to explore the effects of environmental changes globally, within societies small and large, and cross-culturally.

Do All People Conceive of Nature in the Same Ways?

• The short answer is “no.” People conceive of nature and their relation to it very differently, in ways that are reflected in many other aspects of culture. Fundamental ideas about nature are expressed in everything from food to language and from art to religion.
• Compare the indigenous peoples of southern Mexico and Central America and the Spanish who arrived in the 1500s. Some natives were able to avoid the invaders by retreating into the tropical lowlands. The Spanish found this environment oppressive and wondered why the trees weren’t simply cleared.
• This reflects essentially different worldviews: native peoples believed themselves to be part of nature and the Spanish conquerors believed themselves to be dominant over nature.
• Similarly, Itzaj Maya who live in the tropical lowlands of Guatemala, view people and nature as belonging to the same realm; forest spirits punish those who cut down too many trees or overhunt and reward those who show restraint.
• Environmental anthropologists—practitioners of the branch of anthropology that studies how different societies understand, interact with, and make changes to nature—have long insisted that it is important to understand the abstract ideas that influence people’s interactions with landscapes.
• One way to think of these abstract ideas is through the concept of a cultural landscape: the culturally specific images, knowledge, and concepts of the physical landscape that help shape human relations with that landscape.
• The Itzaj Maya view nature as an extension of the social world (rather than the other way around), including the spirits that regulate ecological choices.

• See “Classic Contributions: Roy Rappaport’s Insider and Outsider Models”

• A key to cultural landscapes is the concept that humans perceive their natural environments through the lens of metaphor, and metaphors are connected to actions, thought, and organization.
• Metaphors offer insights into a community’s cultural landscapes and symbolize a society’s environmental values.

How Do People Secure an Adequate, Meaningful, and Environmentally Sustainable Food Supply?

• How people think of their landscapes is also intertwined with how they actually get their living from it.
• Anthropologists consider the idea of foodways: the structured beliefs and behaviors surrounding the production, distribution, and consumption of food
• Cultural anthropologists have long studied modes of subsistence: how people actually procure, produce, and distribute food.
• Modes of subsistence consist of four major modes:
• Foraging, or the search for edible things
• Horticulture, or small-scale subsistence agriculture
• Pastoralism, which means the raising of animal herds
• Intensive agriculture, or large-scale, often commercial, agriculture.
• Chapter 10 discusses foraging: searching for edible plant and animal foods without domesticating them.
• Hunter-gatherers are foragers.
• Most foragers live mobile lives and travel to the food, rather than moving the food to themselves.
• Low population densities ensure minimal impacts on the environment.
• Foraging is often stereotyped as a brutal struggle for existence.
• This is inaccurate because foragers tend to work less to procure their subsistence than horticulturalists or pastoralists.
• Foragers also tend to view their environments not as harsh but as giving.
• Contemporary foragers tend to inhabit extreme environments where horticulture or pastoralism are not feasible.
• Horticulture is the cultivation of gardens or small fields to meet the basic needs of a household.
• It is sometimes referred to as subsistence agriculture, cultivation for purposes of household provisioning or small-scale trade and not investment.
• The most common form of horticulture is swidden agriculture: a farming method in tropical regions in which the farmer slashes (cuts down trees) and burns small patches of forest to release plant nutrients into the soil.
• Horticulture emerged some twelve thousand years ago with domestication and gave humans selective control over animal and plant reproduction.
• Pastoralist societies are groups of people who live by animal husbandry, which is the breeding, care, and use of domesticated herding animals such as cattle, camels, goats, horses, llamas, reindeer, and yaks.
• Pastoralists mainly consume the animal milk and blood and exploit their hair or fur rather than butcher the animal for food.
• Pastoralism also requires the constant movement of herds through a landscape
• Intensive agriculture attempts to increase yields and feed a larger community using intensification: processes that increase yields.
• Intensification includes different processes:
• Preparing the soil, with regular weeding, mulching, mounding, and fertilizers.
• Technology ranging from the simple (using a harness with horses to plow a field), complex (a system of canals or dams to irrigate the landscape) or very complex (such as a combine harvester).
• Using a larger labor force which can sustain the nutritional and energy needs of large populations, and provide employment.
• Water management, ranging from simple systems to large-scale irrigation systems.
• Modifying plants and soils by selectively breeding plants for better yields, reduced time to mature, and creating a more edible product.
• Intensification carries certain trade-offs.
• It solves the problem of how to provide food for a large number of people and provides a relatively steady supply of food.
• Intensification can create environmental problems when rearranged ecosystems result in vulnerability to declining environmental conditions.
• Industrial agriculture is the application of industrial principles and methods to farming.
• Key principles include specialization to produce a single crop, and the obtaining of land, labor, seeds, and water as commodities on the open market.
• Industrial agriculture vastly increases productivity by harnessing sources of energy such as steam power and petroleum.
• One consequence of industrial agriculture is overproduction.
• Foodways are always shaped by cultural beliefs and governed by systematic rules and etiquette particular to a social group.
• These cultural processes have implications for human sustainability because they also shape how people think about and interact with landscapes through foodways.
• Food is spiritually powerful and humans are susceptible to its influences.
• In every society, food communicates symbolic meaning.
• Foodways mark social boundaries and identities.
• Food preferences, etiquette, and taboos also mark social boundaries and identities such as gender difference, ethnic and regional difference, or profession and class status.
• These social markers are closely related to differing notions of taste: a reference to the sense that gives humans the ability to detect flavors as well as a reference to the social distinction and prestige associated with certain foodstuffs.
• The “perfect meal” typically reflects people’s culturally acquired tastes and is closely identified with their social identity and subsistence patterns as a group.
• Foodways are remarkably persistent but can change for many reasons.

How Do Non-Western Knowledge of Nature and Agriculture Relate to Science?

• Anthropologists recognize that all systems of knowledge about nature are culturally based. Even science is ultimately a method developed within cultural contexts.
• Bronislaw Malinowski described how so-called primitive Trobriand Islanders (1915–1918) were aware of natural laws and processes (what we would call “science”) but understood that all cultures include domains of magic, science, and religion.
• In the decades since, it’s become increasingly obvious to anthropologists that most societies have scientific attitudes and practices. A key difference is that many cultures integrate science into spiritual beliefs, social behaviors, and identities, rather than distinguishing it as a special domain of knowledge (i.e., without the strict natural/supernatural boundary Western scientists maintain).
• Early anthropological interest in knowledge systems of non-Western societies was called ethnoscience: the study of how a people classify things in the world, usually by considering some range or set of meanings. During the 1960s, ethnoscientists aimed to describe and understand the conceptual models and rules with which a society operates. They began by comparing the classification systems used by different people. In the case of plants and animals, this is called ethnobiology: the subfield of ethnoscience that studies how people in non-Western societies name and codify living things.
• Based on an ethnobiological study of Tzeltal Maya, Brent Berlin (1973) concluded that all human classification systems basically categorize organisms in ways comparable to Linnaean taxonomy. His conclusions have been challenged by some exceptional systems of classification:
• The Kalam of Papua New Guinea identify the large, flightless cassowary as a close cousin of people but not a “bird.” Also, bats (mammals) are classified as birds, based on the analogous behavior of flight.
• Environmental anthropologists seek to understand traditional ecological knowledge: indigenous ecological knowledge and its relationship with resource management strategies.
• Indigenous peoples have been shown to possess knowledge of ecological relations unknown to Western science. Such knowledge often resides in local languages, songs, or specialized rituals—places outside researchers might not think to look. For example:
• Traditional ecological knowledge is ideal for managing resources because it is customized specifically for particular local environments. For example, Zapotec farmers of Oaxaca plant specific crops together, build soil mounds to plant maize, let plots lie fallow for designated periods of time, and base crop scheduling on the phases of the moon.
• Western scientists have only recently learned what a highly productive and sustainable agricultural system this is. (Western researchers may have been confused by Zapotec systems of measurement and belief that maize has a soul.)
• These examples illustrate why environmental anthropologists must, in addition to developing an etic point of view on a community’s relations with the environment, explore the emic point of view to understand how ecological knowledge guides human behavior in particular communities.

How Are Industrial Agriculture and Economic Globalization Linked to Increasing Environmental and Health Problems?

• Changes in global economics—globalization—are driving unprecedented changes, creating environmental problems and challenging both health and sustainability.
• The complex interplay of social, cultural, natural, and political-economic factors raise two important questions: How do people consume natural resources in their lifestyles and foodways? And who pays the cost of that consumption?
• The interplay between population and environment has been a prominent part of philosophical and environmental discussions for a long time. Malthus in the seventeenth century and Ehrlich in the twentieth century saw overpopulation as the most serious problem we face.
• The problems with this view include the absence of any confirmed case of environmental and social collapse because of overpopulation or mass consumption as well as the uncanny ability of humans to develop new technologies and agricultural methods that increase the land’s carrying capacity: the population an area can support.
• Anthropologists understand that the environmental disruptions that lead to famines are the result of a complex interplay of natural conditions and existing patterns of social inequality.
• Western agencies thought the 1985 Ethiopian famine was caused by over-population but the countries civil war and the government’s land access policies played crucial roles.
• In the Malthusian view, sustainability is a matter of controlling population where it seems to be growing most. But it does not address a simple fact: different societies, as well as people within those societies, consume differing amounts of resources.
• One way to address this issue is by measuring what people consume and the waste they produce, what anthropologists call an ecological footprint: a quantitative tool that measures what people consume and the waste they produce. It also calculates the amount of biologically productive land and water area needed to support those people.
• However, some individuals consume more and others less, usually related to their relative wealth or poverty.
• Consumer capitalism promotes the cultural ideal that people will never fully satisfy their needs, so they continually buy more things in their pursuit of happiness, something that has enormous consequences for sustainability.
• Most Americans do not understand the destructiveness of consumer lifestyles, although signs of it are everywhere.
• Industrial agriculture has important impacts on a landscape, evidenced by the shift in pressures in rural communities from traditional modes of subsistence and agriculture to industrialized agriculture.
• Part of the reason for this shift can be attributed to the Green Revolution: the transformation of agriculture in the developing world through agricultural research, technology transfer, and infrastructure development.
• Global institutions such as the World Bank have encouraged many countries to produce non-traditional exports with the goal of generating foreign revenue through exports in order to make investments in domestic development and pay back loans to those international institutions.
• In small-scale situations, these pressures have generated dilemmas.
• Analyses that focus on the linkages between political-economic power, social inequality, and ecological destruction are typical of the approach called political ecology: the field of study that focuses on the linkages between political–economic power, social inequality, and ecological destruction.
• The industrialization of agriculture around the world is putting new pressures on foodways, with important dietary consequences for many people. These dynamics have contributed to certain health problems, such as the production of obesity and overweight for some and, for others, hunger and malnutrition. Cash crops, tenant farming, and wage labor often undermine local food security: the access to sufficient nutritious food to sustain an active and healthy life.
• See “Anthropologist as Problem Solver: Migrant Farmworker Food Security in Vermont With Teresa Mares.”
• More people in the world now suffer from the effects of overnutrition than of undernutrition.
• While genetics play a role in obesity, social factors are paramount: how much television is watched, learned food preferences, cultural attitudes toward body fat.
• The global rise in obesity is tied to the nutrition transition: increase in energy dense foods and decrease in physical activity.
• It results from industrial agriculture’s production of an abundant and inexpensive food supply that is of low nutritional quality. Also, more people live in urban areas and lead sedentary lives.
• Anthropologists holistic perspective sees climate change as one of a number of environmental influences on people’s lives, altering their livelihood’s and economic and environmental interactions.
• Anthropologists have examined how climate problems are framed and studies by scientists and how reductionist perspectives are prioritized over holistic perspectives.
• Human societies have long dealt with climate change.
• The Mande people of West Africa cope with unpredictable rainfall and shifting river patterns by having individuals who are considered “weather machines” consider long term weather pattern and help shape community responses, which may include migration and shifts in subsistence strategies.
  See “The Anthropological Life: Careers in Sustainability.”

Do Only Industrialized Western Societies Conserve Nature?

• Before considering different approaches to nature conservation, it is important to critically assess the common stereotype that native peoples are “natural environmentalists” in tune with nature.
• In reality, indigenous people are as susceptible to the risk of overexploitation as any other human group. Environmental anthropologists and archaeologists have even documented examples of destructive indigenous relationships with nature.
• In the past, humans most likely contributed to the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna.
• Many landscapes that appear “natural,” or unmodified, to Westerners are actually the result of indigenous manipulation. They are, in fact, anthropogenic landscapes: the idea that landscapes are the product of human shaping. Efforts to “conserve” these areas without people alter that relationship.
• Maasai pastoralists of southern Kenya and northern Tanzania have extensively modified their environment to support cattle. They intentionally burn scrub brush to encourage the growth of nutritious pasture grass, an act that helps support wildlife biodiversity. Compare this to the perception of many outsiders, accustomed to seeing wildfires as a tragic loss of habitat.
• During the twentieth century, park administrators disrupted the transhumant system of the Maasai by preventing access to waterholes within parks (“fortress conservation”). Because of this shift in mobility, the Maasai were forced to overgraze areas outside the park during drought periods.
• Anthropologists recognize that disrupting indigenous people in order to conserve nature is a culturally constructed idea—and one that must be reconsidered. Artifactual landscapes are maintained through active human involvement, in ways that can actually support wildlife biodiversity. This recognition has inspired experiments in “co-management” between international conservation groups and indigenous people.
• In places like Alaska, Australia, and Brazil, indigenous people continue to live in protected areas and contribute to park management. Environmental anthropologists have found that these collaborative approaches create new opportunities for dialogue and shared responsibility between conservationists and indigenous communities.
• Co-management is not a perfect solution. Conservation groups still have extensive control of funding and operations, despite being outsiders. Some critics also wonder if creating preserves is a long-term solution to the bigger problem: social and ideological factors that contribute to environmental destruction.
• At the heart of co-management is a move toward recognizing and redressing how social inequalities and injustices affect possibilities for conservation and environmental sustainability.
• An even stronger approach along these lines is a movement called environmental justice: a social movement that addresses the linkages between racial discrimination and injustice, social equity, and environmental quality.

Conclusion

• Anthropologists agree that we must pay close attention to the social practices and structures that shape the way communities relate to their natural environments. When we do, we see that many societies have deep understandings of—and even sustainable relations with—nature.
• Today’s global ecological crisis—as was the case in past ecological crises—cannot be reduced to any singular cause.