Cultural ecology

Cultural ecology is a research approach at the interface between culture, earth and life sciences. It examines the extent to which human culture forms are characterized by the exploration of the natural environment and the extent to which human culture forms in turn shape their natural environment. Here, different approaches in cultural anthropology / ethnology and the Anglo-American geography developed.

Definition

The definition in the "New Dictionary of Ethnology " is:

" ... How far human cultural and social forms are influenced by the type of confrontation with their natural ( biotic and abiotic ) environment, and how far back in turn affect culture and society on the natural environment. "

Steward defines the term just " cultural ecology is the study of the processes by which a society adapts to its environment."

Cultural Ecology

The term Cultural Ecology is not equal to the concept of cultural ecology: The Cultural Ecology, as teaching within the cultural ecology goes back to the American anthropologist Julian Haynes Steward. He tried to explain why at different times and in different places structurally similar forms of environmental adaptation occur.

Cooperation and Competition are as processes of mutual influence, so that the social environment is considered. Steward different societies and internally for various types of socio-cultural systems and institutions. He assumes that the adaptation to the environment as well by the technology, the needs, the structure of society and the nature of the environment is dependent.

Steward asks whether the adaptation certain behaviors and whether it is due to inflexible, so only a certain cultural patterns (pattern ) permits or some room for deviation is present. It is based on his analysis at three points, which he summarizes in the term culture core ( Core Cultural ):

• Environmental conditions / economic resources (resources, flora, fauna, climate, diseases, pathogens )
• Nature of the culture / equipment and knowledge / potential usability ( exploiting and adapting technology, internal and external social environment )
• Social organization that emerges from the interaction of the first two components / forms of work organization / real usability ( land use rights, population density, durability and composition of urban areas, cultural values ​​)

He comes to the conclusion that the different application

• The same technique in independent cultures,
• Dependent upon their geographic environment to a
• Different social organization leads. So Steward gives the perception of the environment as merely prohibitive ( preventing, abhaltend ) or permissive ( indulgent, permeable ) and looks into the cultural ecological adaptation processes creative processes.

More coined by Steward terms are: core culture, culture ( areal ) type ( culture [ area ] type ), trans-cultural type ( cross-cultural type ), integration level, organizational level, multi -linear evolution.

Steward has been heavily criticized. For example, from the culture materialist Marvin Harris of rather represents the techno - ecological, or techno-economic determinism. He argued that the same techniques of course too similar occurrences in the division of labor, social structures and value systems lead (cultural materialism ).

Credentials

• Ethnology
• Geography