Environmental Determinism: What It Is, Characteristics And Examples
When trying to explain the differences between cultures and the degree of development between nations, several factors have been taken into account, such as the influences between cultures, their history, genetics and geographical position, among many others.
Environmental determinism is an approach typical of anthropology and geography which has placed special emphasis on the characteristics of the environment, climate and geographical features to try to explain the cultural traits of different human groups.
This approach, whose origins lie in Classical Antiquity, was very popular in the 19th and 20th centuries, although it was not without controversy. Next we will discover what environmental determinism is.
Environmental determinism is an approach typical of anthropology and geography that maintains that the environment, especially physical factors such as geographical features, resources and the type of climate, determines the patterns of the human group that settles in a certain territory, in addition to having a social development directly dependent on the environment in which it has inhabited.
The most radical environmental determinists maintain that all ecological, climatic and geographical factors would explain human cultural differences before social, genetic factors, foreign cultural influences and history. His main argument is that the physical characteristics of an area, especially the climate, profoundly impact psychology Of the inhabitants.
It may also happen that a person develops a behavior that best adapts him to his environment and the rest of the people, seeing that it is advantageous, imitate it, spreading this new cultural trait.
We have a classic example of environmental determinism in the explanation given by several anthropologists of the 19th century. These They associated the fact that a culture was further away from the tropics with a greater degree of cultural complexity and technological development because, according to them, tropical climates were more benign than cold ones, and there were more resources. Tropical cultures, having easier access to such resources, had a more comfortable life and did not have to develop complex survival strategies unlike those who lived in cold places, who developed greater intelligence.
Another example that is also environmentally deterministic is the idea that island cultures have very different cultures from continental ones, mainly due to their physical isolation. Although with the passage of time transportation to the islands has improved, it is easier to enter and leave them and there is, in turn, greater intercultural contact, The inhabitants of any island have the idea of belonging to a more conservative and closed world “pure”, than the inhabitants of continental regions.
Although modern ideas of environmental determinism have their origins in the 19th century, it is worth mentioning that the idea that the environment can influence the culture of a human group is quite old.
Great classical thinkers such as Strabo, Plato and Aristotle They argued that the climatic characteristics of Greece were what had allowed the Greeks to be a more developed civilization compared to societies in warmer or colder territories, having benign climates but not enough to not have to develop a sophisticated society and knowledge.
Other thinkers not only associated the environment with the cultural and psychological aspects of a human group, but also believed they saw in the environment what explained the physical characteristics of races. We have an example of this in the thinker Al-Jahiz, an Arab intellectual who thought that environmental factors explained skin color. He believed that the dark skin of Africans, various birds, mammals and insects was due to a high amount of black basalt rocks in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.
Modern times
Despite their classical antecedents, current environmental deterministic ideas have their rise and origins at the end of the 19th century, established fundamentally by the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel who made them the central theory of his thought. Ratzel’s theory was developed after the publication of “The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin in 1859, a book in which it was revealed how the characteristics of the environment influence the development of a species, the now classic example being of the Galapagos finches or the evolution of the peppered moth in England during the Industrial Revolution.
Environmental determinism would become very popular in Anglo-Saxon countries and would reach the United States at the beginning of the 20th century through Ellen Churchill Semple and Ellsworth Huntington, two students of Ratzel. Huntington is credited with having linked the economic development of a country and the distance it had from the geographic equator indicating that both tropical and overly polar climates are not beneficial for economic development, while temperate climates tending towards colder climates are, coinciding with the Anglo-Saxon countries and their colonies.
Despite its success in the early 1900s, the popularity of environmental determinism progressively declined in the 1920s. The reason for this is that Many of the premises defended by environmental determinists had proven false and prejudiced, closely associated with a racist and imperialist ideology typical of Anglo-Saxon countries. His statements about how climate and/or geography affected culture were made a priori, without properly verifying whether this was true, something typical of pseudosciences such as phrenology.
Although stating that the environment can condition the culture that is established in it is not entirely wrong, ensuring that it totally determines the cultural traits of a certain social group is exaggerated. The most radical environmental determinists completely ignored the influences of other cultures, history, social phenomena and other causes that did not depend on the environment when explaining why a culture was the way it was.
Environmental determinists, biased by white supremacy, ignored that Throughout history there have been countless highly developed cultures that found themselves in climates that, according to them, should not be beneficial Some examples are Ancient Egypt, Mesoamerican civilizations, Japan, India, China and Korea. They also ignored that the fact that the United States, Germany, Australia or South Africa had greater economic development was not due to their geographical position, but rather to being culturally influenced by England, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution.
As a counterresponse to environmental determinism The theory of environmental possibilism or geographical possibilism established by the French geographer Paul Vidal de la Blanche was developed He stated that the environment sets limitations for cultural development but this does not completely define what culture will be like. The culture of a human group will be defined by the opportunities and decisions made by the people who make it up, facing environmental limitations.
Example of scientific research of environmental determinism
Although environmental determinism as it was conceptualized at the end of the 19th century ended up being progressively abandoned, it is considered that the environment can determine certain cultural traits
We have an example of this in the research carried out by the Talhelm and English group in 2020, in which they relate the degree to which social norms are respected with whether the base culture has grown rice or wheat.
Throughout the entire globe There are all kinds of towns that have planted different types of crops, rice and wheat being very common In China there is a rather curious fact which is that there are different cultures that, despite having the same language, being under the same political government and having the same ethnicity, have very different views on what it means to break social norms depending on whether their Ancestral culture grew rice or wheat.
The researchers explain that the cultivation of rice has always been more laborious than that of wheat, therefore, The communities where the first has been cultivated have been forced to exchange tasks between their members to ensure that the crop is not spoiled. Furthermore, growing rice involves more steps and resources than growing wheat, which forced the villages to have a more carefully designed structure.
By having to share tasks, members of rice-growing villages have developed a strong sense of respect for social norms and reciprocity. Not returning a favor or not participating in social events is seen very negatively in China with rice crops than in China with wheat crops.
This has also been seen in Japan, Korea and even in African territories with rice fields, where a collectivist culture prevails. Moving away from the social norm in these countries can make the subject become a social outcast.
On the other hand, in the Western world, such as the United States or Western Europe, there has been a greater tradition of wheat cultivation with some exceptions. In the West, moving away from the social norm, as long as it does not involve a crime or harm to other people, is not as frowned upon as in the Far East, and is perceived more as a simple act of selfishness or vindication of individualism rather than a attack on society.
