Cultural Ecology: What It Is, What It Studies, And Research Methods
Cultural ecology is a current that studies the relationships between a human group and its environment, focusing on the interaction of the ways of life of that culture and the ecosystems that support it.
Cultural ecology involves the study of people’s behavior, this being its anthropological and social science aspect, and also understands how the characteristics of the environment influence human behavior, this being the part as biological science
Below we will see in more depth this current coming from cultural materialism, related to historical particularism and which has been considered revealing for the anthropology of the 20th century.
Concern about the role and position that humans occupy in nature has been growing during the last century, especially within the natural and social sciences. For this reason It has become essential to find out to what extent the human being is an integral part of nature how it differs from other species and how it varies according to its culture, its development of culture in the environment being very important.
Before talking more in depth about cultural ecology, we must understand what is meant by ecology. This is the biological science that attempts to study and understand the function of systems in which groups of living beings are found, which interact with each other and have a direct relationship with the physical environment. The set of living beings makes up an ecosystem, and the planet’s ecosystems, such as forests, rivers, lakes and reefs, constitute what we call the biosphere.
From the ecological perspective, the human species is considered very important due to the degree of self-awareness it has about its natural impact, however, Within the links that make up an ecosystem, it remains just another species of nature Throughout our history, humans have had a more or less strong impact on the environment, both as tribal cultures and as large industrialized societies. Even so, the human species can be considered as “natural” as the others.
Human beings can be considered a cultural animal for the simple fact that they have the ability to generate culture, something fundamental for their development and survival. Through it we have been able to design tools, strategies and actions that have allowed us to take advantage of the given natural resources, modifying the natural environment based on our needs, no matter how seemingly immutable it may seem. For example, the exploitation of mountains as mines is a direct result of our ability to generate culture and technology.
Once all this is understood, we can begin to explain what cultural ecology is, which deals with the study of the relationship between a culture and its natural and historical environment A specific culture is studied, taking into account their adaptations to the ecosystem in which they have settled and seeing how throughout their history they have been shaped by the obstacles of the environment, knowing how to profitably use those resources that it offered them. The cultural response varies depending on what the environment is like, trying to overcome its limitations.
These cultural adaptations can be represented in many ways: tools, use and utilization of resources, class priority in the exploitation of the environment, expressions in language, belief system, religion… All these elements are known as adaptation mechanisms to ecosystems from culture For example, in a culture that lives in the desert it is likely that special care is taken with water, seen as a very precious and scarce good that should not be wasted.
Characteristics
At a theoretical level, cultural ecology is a current that comes from the non-Marxist materialist school of the 1960s and 1970s It is also related as a discipline of economic anthropology and is considered the first school that begins to study the relationships between societies and their material bases of subsistence.
Cultural ecology can be understood in two ways. On the one hand, diachronically, examining the entities that existed in the same ecosystem at different times, and on the other hand, synchronically, examining the present system and its cultural components.
The central argument of this current is that The environment, both on a small scale and in large societies, is a major contributing factor in shaping social hierarchy and human institutions especially those that are in charge of the distribution of wealth.
Origin of this area of research
The father of this current is Julian Steward, taking historical particularism as a strong basis, was interested in finding general principles or laws that explain how cultures develop in relation to their environment. He laid out not only the foundations for cultural ecology, but also for multilinear evolution, expounding it in his book “Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution” (1955).
Steward argued that, first, Each culture must be understood as an adaptive strategy to the natural and historical environment in which it develops That is, culture is a response to the characteristics of the natural environment, trying to survive it. Secondly, it must be understood that the environmental base conditions cultural development. This introduces the environment as a creative factor and culture as a super organic fact.
The environment is limiting, and the culture must come up with the best tools, ideas or options to overcome the obstacles. That is, adaptations are conditioned to what the environment offers, causing it to vary or be enhanced. For example, in a culture where there is a shortage of water, it is quite likely that technologies will be proposed and designed that try to transport water to distant points, such as aqueducts or irrigation systems, something very common in North African cultures.
For this reason in cultural ecology aims to study the creative processes of adaptation to culture, which have probably occurred in parallel around the world based on the same given environment, with the intention of formulating universal principles that allow predicting and understanding how a culture will develop given a given environment. The two aforementioned premises can be interpreted based on three variables: environment, culture and technological development.
Cultural ecology uses the cultural core approach as a study method, understood as the traits or characteristics related to subsistence, the economic part and the needs of a population to survive, in addition to the appropriation of technology which, naturally, varies depending on each society. Within this method it is proposed to follow three basic procedures:
Techniques used by cultural ecology
To carry out its studies and demonstrate its theories, cultural ecology makes use of all types of tools such as soil analysis, archaeometry, carbon isotopes, the development of maps with geographical and geological elements, geographic information systems, georadars to identify settlements and reduce the risks of excavation by hand.
Among the most important tools that cultural ecology uses is radiocarbon, used to date archaeological sites. With this technique, archaeologists and anthropologists can relate the occurrence of a past environmental event (e.g. flood, climate change, drought…) to how people in the region behaved at that time.
Also It is possible to establish relationships between current traditions and past phenomena with these techniques We have an example of this in the ban on consuming pork in the Middle East. Based on archaeological records, it is known that this animal, when it was first bred in the region, posed a very serious environmental threat. Since the pig could destroy the few green environments in the Middle East, it was said to be a contaminated animal, with the intention of avoiding its livestock breeding.
