Environmental Anthropology

Anthropology deals with the production and utilization of knowledge pertinent to human cultural and social action within the confines of specific historical and environmental situations and cross-cultural interactions. One area in which it excels, however, has to do with understanding and interpreting cultural diversity in the communal setting and the interaction and sometimes conflict between intercultural and/or inter-population conflict.

Environmental anthropology (formerly known as cultural ecology) and alternatively referred to as ecological anthropology, represents a relatively new subset of applied anthropology and deals most with assisting government and private enterprises with environmental policy development and associated environmental program planning. As such, it represents and amalgamation of various environmental topical areas heretofore contained within the realm of general anthropology.

Those individuals working in the area of environmental anthropology must, by necessity, rely on their knowledge of ecology and efficient social research methodology in order to properly assess and interpret the relationship between a community, its environment, and the consequentiality of changes to this relationship. The tools of the environmental anthropologist include participant observation, surveys, interviews, soc

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g factor, the sizes of native villages remained fairly stable and consistent. Villages, which were more centrally located in the region, however, tended to become larger because peripherally located villages would not permit, further expansion. Thus it became obvious that suppression of the ability to split villages (primarily as a way of resolving societal conflict) was necessary to force growth. Thus inhibiting splitting is a key to the development of human social evolution. Consequently, it is the three factors defined above by Carneiro that need to be in place to start the process of social evolution. Given the foregoing context, the word ôecologyö (from the Greek word meaning ôhabitationö) could therefore be defined as the study of the household (or economy) of animals. This includes the relationship between animals and inorganic as well as organic environments (Netting, 1977, p. 1). Thus, given this context, an ecosystem consists of organisms acting in a bounded environment. In reaction to DarwinÆs theory, some anthropologists turned to environmental determinism that may be described as a deterministic approach that assigns one factor as the dominant influence in explanations. It is based on the assumption that cultu
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Ester Boserup, Amazon Basin, Introduction Anthropology, American Indians, Evolution Malthus, William Balee, Africa Brazil, Change Steward, Roy Rappaport, Tsembaga Maring, ecological anthropology, environmental anthropology, barfield 1997, cultural ecology, cultural anthropology, cultural change, cultural evolution, steward 1955, population density, barfield 1997 138, food resources, barfield 1997 137, human population density, barfield 1997 491, associated population density,
Approximate Word count = 4210
Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page)

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