Ecological anthropology

Ecological anthropology studies how human societies interact with environments, adapt to ecological conditions, and shape ecosystems through culturally organized resource use.

Cultural ecology: An approach that explains cultural practices in relation to environmental conditions and resource use. It examines how cultural patterns mediate societies’ adaptations to their environments.
Julian Steward: An American anthropologist who developed cultural ecology and multilinear evolution. His work established a major approach to studying culture-environment relations.
Tsembaga Maring: A Maring-speaking people of Papua New Guinea studied in influential anthropological work on ritual and ecology. Their pig husbandry and ritual cycle became a prominent case of ecological analysis.
Environmental determinism: The theory that physical environments directly determine the development of societies and cultures. Ecological anthropology examines environmental influence without reducing culture to climate or geography.
Anthropocene: A proposed geological epoch marked by extensive human influence on Earth’s systems. It scales questions about society-environment relations from local communities to planetary change.
Human behavioral ecology: An approach that studies how behavior responds to ecological conditions and affects reproductive or economic outcomes. It models choices such as subsistence and cooperation as adaptations to local conditions.
Leslie White: An American anthropologist who argued that cultural development depends partly on energy capture and technology. His energetic account helped frame early materialist explanations of cultural change.
Iban people: An Indigenous people of Borneo with diverse histories of farming, trade, and forest use. Studies of Iban swidden farming challenged simple claims that shifting cultivation degrades forests.
Possibilism: The view that environments constrain human activity while leaving multiple cultural responses possible. It counters deterministic explanations by emphasizing choice within ecological limits.
Sustainability: The capacity to maintain ecological and social conditions over time without exhausting their foundations. Ecological anthropology examines how cultural institutions shape sustainable resource use.

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