Ecological anthropology

Ecological culture is part of universal culture, a system of social relations, social and individual moral and ethical standards, views, attitudes and values ​​relating to the relationship between man and nature ; harmonious coexistence of human society and the natural environment; an integral co-adaptive mechanism of man and nature, realized through the attitude of human society to the natural environment and to environmental problems in general. From the point of view of the scientific and educational process, ecological culture is considered as a separate discipline within the framework of cultural studies.

Ecological anthropology is a sub-field of anthropology and is defined as the “study of cultural adaptations to environments”. The sub-field is also defined as, “the study of relationships between a population of humans and their biophysical environment”. The focus of its research concerns “how cultural beliefs and practices helped human populations adapt to their environments, and how people used elements of their culture to maintain their ecosystems”. Ecological anthropology developed from the approach of cultural ecology, and it provided a conceptual framework more suitable for scientific inquiry than the cultural ecology approach. Research pursued under this approach aims to study a wide range of human responses to environmental problems.

The activity on the formation of ecological culture is called “environmental education.” Such activity consists of the dissemination of environmental knowledge, as well as fostering a respect for the environment and the rational use of natural resources.

Ecological anthropologist, Conrad Kottak published arguing there is an original older ‘functionalist’, apolitical style ecological anthropology and, as of the time of writing in 1999, a ‘new ecological anthropology’ was emerging and being recommended consisting of a more complex intersecting global, national, regional and local systems style or approach.

Background
Over the course of the 20th century, the development of human civilization increasingly revealed the antagonistic contradiction between population growth and the satisfaction of its growing needs for material resources, on the one hand, and the capabilities of ecosystems, on the other. This contradiction, exacerbated, led to the rapid degradation of the human environment and the destruction of traditional social and natural structures. It became obvious that the trial and error method in environmental management, typical of previous periods of the development of civilization, has completely outlived itself and should be completely replaced by the scientific method, the basis of which is a scientifically based strategy for the relationship of man with the biospherein combination with a deep preliminary analysis of the possible environmental consequences of certain specific anthropogenic impacts on nature.

History of the domain and leading researchers
In the 1960s, ecological anthropology first appeared as a response to cultural ecology, a sub-field of anthropology led by Julian Steward. Steward focused on studying different modes of subsistence as methods of energy transfer and then analyzed how they determine other aspects of culture. Culture became the unit of analysis. The first ecological anthropologists explored the idea that humans as ecological populations should be the unit of analysis, and culture became the means by which that population alters and adapts to the environment. It was characterised by systems theory, functionalism and negative feedback analysis.

Benjamin S. Orlove has noted that the development of ecological anthropology has occurred in stages. “Each stage is a reaction to the previous one rather than merely an addition to it”. The first stage concerns the work of Julian Steward and Leslie White, the second stage is titled ‘neofunctionalism’ and/or ‘neoevolutionism’, and the third stage is termed ‘processual ecological anthropology’. During the first stage, two different models were developed by both White and Steward. “The distinction is not as rigid as some critics have made it out to be, White’s models of cultural evolution were unilinear and monocausal, whereas Steward admitted a number of different lines of cultural development and a number of different causal factors. During the second stage, it was noted that the later group agreed with Steward and White, while the other disagreed. ‘Neoevolutionists’ borrowed from the work of Charles Darwin. The general approach suggested that “evolution is progressive and leads towards new and better forms in succeeding periods”. ‘Neofunctionalists’ “see the social organization and culture of specific populations as functional adaptations which permit the populations to exploit their environments successfully without exceeding their carrying capacity”. ‘Processual ecological anthropology’ is noted to be new. Studies based on this approach “seek to overcome the split in the second stage of ecological anthropology between excessively short and long time scales”. The approach more specifically, examines “shifts and changes in individual and group activities, and they focus on the mechanism by which behavior and external constraints influence each other”.

One of the leading practitioners within this sub-field of anthropology was Roy Rappaport. He delivered many outstanding works on the relationship between culture and the natural environment in which it grows, especially concerning the role of ritual in the processual relationship between the two. He conducted the majority, if not all, of his fieldwork amongst a group known as the Maring, who inhabit an area in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.

Patricia K. Townsend’s work highlights the difference between ecological anthropology and environmental anthropology. In her view, some anthropologists use both terms in an interchangeable fashion. She states that, “Ecological anthropology will refer to one particular type of research in environmental anthropology – field studies that describe a single ecosystem including a human population”. Studies conducted under this sub-field “frequently deal with a small population of only a few hundred people such as a village or neighbourhood”.

Ecological culture of indigenous peoples
Although the indigenous peoples of different regions differ significantly from each other in the culture, history and socio-economic conditions of their existence, they also have much in common. One of these common features is the harmonious coexistence of indigenous peoples and the natural environment in places of residence, the presence of these peoples a rich set of moral and ethical standards relating to the relationship between man and nature, that is, the presence of a high natural ecological culture.

Globalization effects on the discipline
Studies under the discipline are concerned with the ethnoecologies of indigenous populations. Due to various factors associated with globalization, indigenous ethnoecologies are facing increasing challenges such as, “migration, media, and commerce spread people, institutions, information, and technology”. “In the face of national and international incentives to exploit and degrade, ethnological systems that once preserved local and regional environments increasingly are ineffective or irrelevant”. Threats also exist of “commercial logging, industrial pollution, and the imposition of external management systems” on their local ecosystems. These threats to indigenous ways of life are a familiar occurrence in the field of anthropology. Conrad Phillip Kottak states that, “Today’s ecological anthropology, aka environmental anthropology, attempts not only to understand but also to find solutions to environmental problems”. The discipline’s one of the approaches for finding such solutions is contemplating which aspects of human nature lead to environmental degradations. Such features of human nature can include a desire for technological innovations, aspiration for higher social status, and preoccupied or biased inclination to social justice. Another approach to deal with contemporary climate issue is applying a norm of traditional ecological knowledge. Long-term ecological knowledge of an indigenous group can provide valuable insight into adaptation strategies, community-based monitoring, and dynamics between culturally important species and human.

Subject ecological anthropology
1. Groups of hunters and gatherers – areas lacking resources. In these cultures, seasonal migration for hunting animals works well, so they can adapt well. It works here patrilineality and patrilocality. (Africa: Pygmies, Sans; Asia – Rear India, Borneo, Philippines; Australia – Aborigines, Tasmanians, Maori; North America – Shoshoni, Kwakiutl)

2. Agricultural societies – related to the Neolithic revolution (approx. 10 thousand BC), crafts and social inequality arise

Horticulture – tubers, movements (not fertilizing the field), poultry and pig domestication, work in the field is provided by women, hence the functioning of matrilinearity, the society is usually divided into clans.
Intensive agriculture (agriculture) – irrigation systems, plowing, game animals, terraces, plows. Later urbanization and the emergence of states.
Pastoralism – a system of transhumance = moving around the village and leaving during a period of winter and light agriculture, or a system of nomadism – hunting, collecting, trade. Sheep, cattle, horses, camels graze, yaks, reindeer, are dependent on agriculture, live with them in symbiosis.

Current status
At the end of the 20th century, attention to the culture of interaction between man and nature increased significantly; The reason for such attention was primarily the social rethinking of the approach to culture as such and to past achievements of mankind in particular. The internal potential of these achievements in terms of their possible reactivation in the form of preserving or restoring traditions was significantly overestimated, and these achievements themselves were seen as something very valuable: as a tangible result of human self-realization, on the one hand, and, on the other, as continuing to act factor of creative development of mankind.

Environmental Culture and Legislation
In 2000, a draft federal law “On Ecological Culture” was introduced into the State Duma of the Russian Federation, which determined the principles of the relationship between state authorities, local authorities, legal and physical persons both in the field of realization of the constitutional right of a person and citizen to a favorable environment, and in the field of observing everyone’s constitutional obligation to preserve nature and the environment. The bill addressed issues of public administration in the field of environmental culture, including issues of state regulation in this area.

In 2002, the Federal Law on Environmental Protection was introduced. Chapter XIII of this law provides the following principles for the formation of environmental culture:

Environmental education;
Training of heads of organizations and specialists in the field of environmental protection and environmental safety;
Environmental education.

Criticisms
From the beginning various scholars criticised the discipline, saying it inherently was too focused on static equilibrii which ignored change, that it used circular reasoning, and that it oversimplified systems.[attribution needed] One of the current criticisms[by whom?] is that, in its original form, ecological anthropology relies upon cultural relativism as the norm. However, in today’s world, there are few cultures that are isolated enough to live in a true culturally relative state. Instead, cultures are being influenced and changed by media, governments, NGOs, businesses, etc. In response, the discipline has seen a shift towards applied ecological anthropology, political ecology and environmental anthropology.