Cultural Ecology

MARK Q. SUTTON1 AND E. N. ANDERSON2

1 California State University, Bakersfield, United States
2 University of California, Riverside, United States

Cultural ecology is the study of the relationships between culture and environment. Its
goal is to understand the range of cultural adaptations and to offer solutions to a num-
ber of important contemporary problems, such as deforestation, loss of species, food
scarcity, and climate change. Some of these issues reflect overexploitation of resources
and require conservation measures to correct. In addition, cultural ecologists record
traditional and local knowledge that is of value to the wider world. Thousands of useful
drugs used by Westerners have been derived from traditional medicines; more are being
tested and developed almost daily. Ancient crops of the Andes and Tibet, such as pota-
toes and barley respectively, are becoming important worldwide. Long-established land
management techniques, such as those used in Indonesia and Guatemala, are inspiring
new ideas in the greater arena. The accumulated cultural knowledge of billions of peo-
ple over tens of thousands of years is available and is a tremendous resource for our
resource-short world.

Background

The term “cultural ecology” was coined by Julian Steward and popularized in his
book Theory of Culture Change (1955). He did not provide a concise definition but
emphasized that the field was concerned with cultural adaptations to environment
and the range of choices available to cultural groups—as opposed to environmental
determinism, which he rejected, and which attempts to come up with universal laws
of human ecology which did not interest him as much as local adaptations did. He
saw culture, in all its variety, as vitally affected by environments but endlessly creative
in ways of dealing with them—hence the different ways that cultures cope with
similar environments. He also differentiated cultural from social ecology, which was
concerned with economic and geographical relations between social groups. Steward
saw progressive adaptation to often-changing environments as one driver, perhaps the
major driver, of cultural change.
This became a focus in Steward’s search for paths of cultural evolution, by which
he meant large-scale cultural change over time. He saw many possible pathways, thus
rejecting unilinear evolution models. In his work editing the Handbook of South Amer-
ican Indians, he classified human societies into four types (bands, tribes, chiefdoms,
and states) and these, in Theory of Culture Change, became four basic “levels of socio-
cultural integration.” These four types have been debated and qualified since. Some
The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Edited by Hilary Callan.
© 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea1452
2 C U L T U R A L E CO L O G Y

anthropologists reject the first three entirely, leaving us with simply a contrast of state
and nonstate societies. Most or all who do not reject the categories see them as four
points on a continuum, not four distinctly separate types of society.
Meanwhile, ecological science had come of age in the 1920s and 1930s. Also, concern
about environmental deterioration reached a peak in the American Dust Bowl and the
polluted cities of the post-World War I era.
Steward taught a group of brilliant students at Columbia University and these stu-
dents carried the term forward in many different directions. Marvin Harris (1968) advo-
cated an uncompromising materialism focusing on the human search for calories and
protein. Harris proposed a “research strategy” that attempted to explain human behav-
ior using other motives only if calories and protein were in adequate supply. Marshall
Sahlins (with Elman Service) adopted Steward’s multilinear evolutionary scheme and
also stressed the successful and relatively easy life of band societies but sharply cri-
tiqued Harris’s position. Steward’s colleague Andrew Vayda focused on more philo-
sophic questions of evidence and proof. Roy Rappaport (1984), a student of Steward
and Vayda, looked to functionalism, explaining certain religious institutions as having
the effect—intended or not—of regulating environmental management and conserva-
tion. Rappaport explained the periodic feasts of the Tsembaga Maring of Papua New
Guinea as serving to regulate pig numbers, as well as serving to keep society together,
show off wealth, and otherwise preserve harmony. His student Stephen Lansing studied
the water management system of Bali, showing that it is managed by the temple priests
rather than the state and that it depends on very careful management that is religiously
sanctioned.
Another Stewardian, Eric Wolf, added a serious consideration of larger-scale, inter-
group politics to the field and coined the term “political ecology,” which grew into a
field in its own right. Sidney Mintz, closely associated with Wolf, studied the produc-
tion and consumption of sugar, using it to exemplify the interaction between plants and
people in world history.
Anthropologists outside the Steward group quickly learned the term. Notably
influential was Clifford Geertz (1963), who interpreted the agricultural fate of Java
under Dutch rule in terms of cultural ecology. He saw “agricultural involution” as
agricultural change and intensification that leads to increasing production of food or
wealth per acre but does not make the farmers themselves any better off—they must
work harder but do not make significantly more money. Geertz was more concerned
with culture than biology but his insights into Javanese agricultural ecology were
influential. Charles Frake (1962) connected cultural ecology with linguistics, recording
environment-related words, concepts, ideas, and knowledge.
Others used ecosystem models current in the 1960s to interpret cultural ecology in
terms of systems, modeling nutrient and water flows, energy transformations, and food
webs. This approach has suffered as the difficulty of bounding “systems” and the prob-
lems of chaotic and random events have surfaced. Canadian ecologist C. S. Holling’s
(1973) concept of “resilience” more recently restored interest in functional systems but
the same criticisms are still being made.
Cultural ecology has merged over time with other approaches. Human ecology,
largely a biological field, has taken increasing account of culture—both the depth
 C U L T U R A L E CO L O G Y 3

and extent of cultural learning and the range cultural diversity. Human evolutionary
ecology (HEE) has taken on broad Darwinian theories of human action. Initial focus
on calories and protein, shared with Harris’s materialism, has expanded to concern
for behaviors ranging from mate choice to language history. This has forced HEE
theorists to take account of culture, resulting in biocultural models such as those of
Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd (e.g., 2005) that are conceptually close to Steward’s
but have benefited from recent developments in biology.
A number of other subfields have spun off from cultural ecology: historical ecol-
ogy (and ecological history), spiritual ecology, and ethnoecology, which has since been
influential. It is close to Steward’s vision but with insights from political ecology and
without Steward’s four categories of societies.

Culture as an adaptive mechanism

The primary mechanism by which humans adapt to their environment is culture. Com-
pared to biology, culture is an extremely flexible and rapid adaptive mechanism because
“behavioral responses to external environmental forces can be acquired, transmitted,
and modified within the lifetimes of individuals” (Henry 1995, 1). Since Steward, cul-
tural ecology has studied culture as—among other things—an adaptive system that
encodes useful knowledge on how to get food, shelter, and other needs. Each culture
has a distinct adaptation and individuals in cultures are born into a system operating
within a given environment. Traditional societies tend to be more influenced by the
“natural” environment while in industrialized societies, culture seems more influenced
by socioeconomic and technological environments.
As the environment (abiotic, biotic, and cultural) changes, a culture must adjust and
there is a constant interplay between cultural practices and biological adaptations. Peo-
ple within a culture choose from a variety of solutions to problems and as some solutions
become unavailable, others present themselves. Each culture has institutions and orga-
nizations and any specific solution to a problem must mesh with them. If the solutions
are valid (adequate), the culture survives. Of importance is the fact that there may be
multiple sets of valid solutions. Over time, some solutions fail and are abandoned or
continue with diminished viability for the societies that persist in using them. A com-
mon example today is monocrop agriculture, which goes back to early civilization in
the Near East but is now accompanied by heightened risk from diseases, pests, climate
change, urbanization, and other stressors that are less deadly to diversified systems.
Different cultures will use the same space in different manners and this use will be
reflected in the distribution of their settlements across space and time. People, their
activities, residences, work localities, facilities, and sacred places are located across the
landscape in a culturally significant way. This settlement pattern depends on a variety
of factors—for example, hunter-gatherers would utilize a valley floor quite differently
than a group of farmers.
Technology is the result of need, available materials, innovation, and influence from
other cultures. It is mostly through technology, rather than biology, that humans have
adapted to every ecosystem. Technology can be general (a hammer can be used for
4 C U L T U R A L E CO L O G Y

many tasks) or designed and used for specific tasks (a space suit). Complex technology
had allowed for the colonization of areas that could not previously support human life,
such as Antarctica, the ocean floor, and outer space.
Another important cultural component is storage. While all plants and animals store
energy (e.g., fat) within their bodies and many animals (e.g., squirrels) store food out-
side their bodies, storage by humans differs in two major ways: scale and technology.
Most human groups use storage on a massive scale and technology (e.g., milling, drying,
roasting) plays an important role. Humans also “store” resources that are living, such
as a herd of cattle. People often construct special facilities to store resources, such as
granaries, cairns, silos, and warehouses. The role and scale of storage may have played
a role in the development of complex societies (see, e.g., Binford 1990; Testart 1982).
Humans also have a need to feel in control of their environments—to understand
(or believe they understand) processes and to control them to at least some point. A
great deal of cultural–ecological knowledge is tied up in understandings of natural
processes. Some of these involve wrong inferences (such as the widespread idea that
earthquakes are caused by a giant animal moving underground). Wrong inferences
may not matter—willow bark tea relieves pain whether one believes that the relief is
due to spiritual power or to anti-inflammatory salicylic acid in the bark—but verified
knowledge is apt to be more useful. On the other hand, social and political factors often
influence knowledge and practice at least as much as utility does.

Traditional knowledge systems

All cultures have obtained and categorized knowledge about their environments.
The vast majority of the knowledge held by traditional societies is unwritten, passed
verbally from generation to generation. Many individuals have specialized knowledge
relating to medicine, religion, or other fields. Each culture has a system (a science, in
the sense of being schematized and evidence based) by which knowledge is obtained.
All cultures use considerable empirical science. Many or most do not separate this
from nonempirical knowledge (data that are not physical or objective, cannot be
reproduced, and are not subject to verification by experimentation). Anthropologists
generally call such knowledge “religion” but few traditional societies make the distinc-
tion. Often, nonempirical knowledge is gained by specific individuals under “special”
circumstances, such as while under the influence of a drug. In some cultures, such
knowledge has an equal, and sometimes privileged, status with empirical knowledge.

Controlling the environment

All cultures employ practices designed to exert at least some level of control over their
resources and environment. Management can occur at several scales, from individual
plants to entire landscapes, and for a variety of maximizing interests, short term or long
term. The access to, and exploitation of, resources is determined by some factor, such as
kinship or wealth, with some being individually owned and others being communally
 C U L T U R A L E CO L O G Y 5

owned or open access. Most groups feel that they have some control over their environ-
ment, whether through their ability to influence the supernatural, to change the course
of a river, or through air-conditioning.
Generally, domestication is defined in relation to agriculture. In that context, a
domesticated species is one in which humans have developed some intentional and
detectable genetic control over a species such that the domesticated form is different
from anything in the wild. A more expansive definition of domestication could mean
control in a more general sense. All cultures have methods to exercise some control
over, and so domesticate, their environment (whether these are effective or not is
another matter). Technology is a factor, as someone with a bulldozer can impact the
environment to a greater degree than someone with a stone ax. Some alteration of
the environment is undirected but much manipulation is planned and conducted
for specific purposes. Active environmental manipulation is the purposeful, physical
alteration of groups of species and of ecosystems, essentially the active manipulation
of landscapes (e.g., burning, clearing forests, large-scale cultivation, damming rivers).
Ritual activities designed to maintain the environment in its “domesticated” state
include world renewal ceremonies, fertility rituals, and even human sacrifice.
Resource management is generally on a smaller scale than environmental manip-
ulation. Active resource management includes pruning plant species to enhance pro-
ductivity or beauty. Most species are managed such that they remain “wild” but inten-
sive management can lead to domestication. Some animals are also actively managed.
Another way to manage a resource, such as a water hole, is to limit access to it. Resources
can also be managed through passive means. Some resources are managed ritually as
part of religious activities. In some cases, resources could be managed by social means,
such as special family or clan relationships (e.g., totems) with some resource. In other
cases, certain resources, such as meat or milk, may be avoided at specific times—for
instance, only being consumed during ritual activities—so lessening the demand for
that resource.
Knowledge itself is a resource, managed both actively (through learning and expe-
rience) and passively (encoded into ritual). These skills center on the use of resources
currently in the environment. If the environment occupied by a certain group contained
many different ecozones, considerable skill and knowledge would be needed to exploit
those ecozones. Retention of “old” knowledge may be a safeguard against bad times.
Another way to analyze environmental manipulation and resource-management
techniques is through studies of decision making. All groups and all individuals make
decisions regarding their actions in any given situation. As all systems are dynamic,
constant adjustment is necessary. We somehow assume that the process of decision
making is rational and well thought out but bad decisions are common. People make
poor decisions for a number of reasons, including incomplete information, reliance on
emotion, or just plain error.
Decisions are based largely on information (new or old). However, no one can pos-
sibly take account of all the things in one’s immediate environment. Economic theory
assumes that humans act based on “perfect information” but this is never true. Anthro-
pologists, therefore, must consider decision making under the assumption of imperfect
6 C U L T U R A L E CO L O G Y

information. This, in turn, involves studying our simplifying premises: humans sim-
plify, generalize, and assume that other people are more like us than they really are. In
dealing with people, we routinely believe that they will do about as we would, even if
their circumstances are different.
The knowledge base of traditional peoples is usually very impressive; often greater
than that of professional biologists working in the same area. The sheer quantity of infor-
mation presents a major problem in systematizing, storing, and retrieving information.
Before information can be used to make a decision, it must first be obtained, classified,
and shared with others. To people who make their living on such resources and who
depend on good decisions being made, resource information is a very high priority.
Resource monitoring is one technique that everyone uses. People pay attention to
the status of what is around them, the condition of resources, presence and absence
of things, and opportunities. In many cases, people will gather information on specific
resources. In addition to the data on the actual resource, one could consider information
on travel time, social opportunities, and the like.
Information is gathered constantly, both as an adjunct to what one is doing or by con-
scious effort. Even when traveling to a specific place, hunter-gatherers will rarely travel
in a straight line. By meandering, information regarding a variety of resources, such as
the condition of plants and the movement of animals, can be gathered and processed.
Scheduling, the planning of when to move and which resources to exploit, also
requires good information. If two resources are available at the same time, a decision
on which one to use may have to be made. If schedules are not adhered to, serious
problems could result.

SEE ALSO: Agriculture: Modern Farming Systems; Bartolomé, Leopoldo José

(1942–2013); Bastian, Adolf (1826–1905); Boehm, Brigitte (1938–2005); Cultural
Adaptation; Demography, Prehistoric Human; Disasters, Anthropology of; Ecological
Anthropology; Ecological Modeling; Environmental Anthropology; Ethnoscience;
Geertz, Clifford (1926–2006); Global Environmental Change; Historical Ecology;
Hunter-Gatherers; Indigenous and Local Knowledge and Science: From Validation to
Knowledge Coproduction; Irrigation Systems; Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804): Influence
on the Origins and Development of Anthropology; Material Culture; Rappaport, Roy
(1926–97); Sacred Ecology; Sahlins, Marshall (b. 1930); Social–Ecological Systems;
Steward, Julian H. (1902–72); Therapeutic Landscapes; Urbanism; Wolf, Eric (1923–99)

REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING

Bates, Daniel G. 2005. Human Adaptive Strategies: Ecology, Culture, and Politics. 2nd ed. Boston:
Allyn & Bacon.
Binford, Lewis R. 1990. “Mobility, Housing, and Environment: A Comparative Study.” Journal
of Anthropological Research 46 (2): 119–52.
Dove, Michael, and Carol Carpenter, eds. 2007. Environmental Anthropology: A Historical
Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
Frake, Charles O. 1962. “Cultural Ecology and Ethnography.” American Anthropologist 64 (1):
53–59.
 C U L T U R A L E CO L O G Y 7

Geertz, Clifford. 1963. Agricultural Involution. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Harris, Marvin. 1968. The Rise of Anthropological Theory. New York: Crowell.
Henry, Donald O. 1995. Prehistoric Cultural Ecology and Evolution: Insights from Southern Jordan.
New York: Plenum Press.
Holling, C. S. 1973. “Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems.” Annual Review of Ecology
and Systematics 4: 1–23.
Rappaport, Roy A. 1984. Pigs for the Ancestors. 2nd ed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Richerson, Peter, and Robert Boyd. 2005. Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human
Evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Steward, Julian H. 1955. Theory of Culture Change. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Sutton, Mark Q., and E. N. Anderson. 2014. Introduction to Cultural Ecology. 3rd ed. Lanham,
MD: AltaMira Press.
Testart, Alain. 1982. “The Significance of Food Storage among Hunter-Gatherers: Residence Pat-
terns, Population Densities, and Social Inequalities.” Current Anthropology 23 (5): 523–37.