Professional Documents
Culture Documents
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2774845?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/
info/about/policies/terms.jsp
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content
in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.
For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Journal of
Sociology.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 07 Mar 2016 17:52:09 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
THE ECOLOGICAL APPROACH IN ANTHROPOLOGY1
JUNE HELM
ABSTRACT
The anthropological view of ecology stresses the adaptive and exploitative relations, through the
agency of technology, of the human group to its habitat, and the demographic and sociocultural con-
sequences of those relations. Descriptive ethnographies and regional archeological histories, considera-
tions of the interplay between the cultural and physical nature of man, comparative studies of social
organization, and inquiries into sociocultural change and levels of development have proceeded from
this perspective, sharpening and modifying anthropological aims and methods in the process of iden-
the development and the ramifications of ecological views in anthropology. The sec-
noid animal ecology, the seeming diversity rapher" Ratzel4 and by his American con-
within that perspective can be resolved into temporary Otis T. Mason5 on the impor-
those problems that involve relationships tance of habitat in effecting cultural di-
tion, and other sectors of sociocultural life thropology, the geographical orientation
ciological Association, 1961, as part of a multi- 'F. Ratzel, The History of Mankind (London:
20 . D. Duncan, "Human Ecology and Popula- nology, Bull. 30 [Washington, D.C.: Bureau of
tion Studies," in P. Hauser and 0. Duncan (eds.), American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution,
3 E. Tylor, Primitive Culture (3d ed., revised; Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1923), and his The Rela-
1926).
Holt & Co., 1877).
630
This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 07 Mar 2016 17:52:09 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
ECOLOGICAL APPROACH IN ANTHROPOLOGY 631
In this vein the circumpolar area and, as of the aims and understandings of archeol-
a specific cultural group, the Eskimo, re- ogy, stressing efficiency in food procure-
ceived perhaps the richest treatment.7 The ment as the base upon which population
aims of these scholars, however, remained density and elaboration of social organi-
In the thirties, there came three influ- Walter Taylor felt justified in attacking
ential, emphatically ecological works that American archeologists for limiting the
proach to the peoples and cultures under ment of the distribution and chronology of
study. One was C. Daryll Forde's survey culture traits and assemblages, instead of
toralists throughout the world;8 another of events against their backgrounds of local
was Kroeber's delineation of the cultural human culture and local natural environ-
and natural areas of native North America, ment."'12 Times were ripe, however, for
in which he chided "a generation of Ameri- within the next ten years the ecologically
can anthropologists" for their inattention contextual study had become an estab-
CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
tive societies.10
ents.
601; G. Hatt, Moccasins and Their Relation to 12 A Study of Archeology ("Memoirs of the
Arctic Footwear ("Memoirs of the American An- American Anthropological Association," No. 69,
LIII.
9A. Kroeber, Cultural and Natural Areas of of Anthropology, 1955 (Baltimore: Lord Balti-
Native North America (Berkeley: University of more Press, 1955), pp. 237-58, and G. Willey,
This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 07 Mar 2016 17:52:09 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
632 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
view has contributed heavily to the rise in is dependent upon the agricultural potenti-
ethnologists and social anthropologists. The temporary archeology has brought signifi-
following paragraphs present a selective cant changes in field techniques and analy-
survey of ecological studies in these fields sis as new kinds of data are now taken into
of anthropology, made during roughly the account. Biotal remains for example, are
Archeology.-That the specific character nological implications and are being sub-
of certain environmental zones may deter- jected to a scrutiny not known in the past.19
archeologists.15 More broadly, an encom- seeks clues concerning the economic and
purview of causal factors in cultural sta- For example, the coverage in time and
bility and change sets forth one class as space that archeology allows has revealed
'ecologically bound' and 'ecologically free' ties present variant city patterns even to
Other archeological studies appraise hab- quirements of urbanism may not be pres-
This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 07 Mar 2016 17:52:09 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
ECOLOGICAL APPROACH IN ANTHROPOLOGY 633
Another delineates neolithic community niche, "the place of a group in the total
societies based on differential community type" that has been identified as "the
tional and evolutionary implications.24 resources of the band consist of other so-
not the gross categories "environment" and range. Such cases suggest that we look at
"technology" per se that are often critical environment in yet another dimension-
in the ecological inquiry, but rather the namely, environment as oecumene, compre-
significant reticulation composed from them hending not only space and habitat but the
Amerind ethnology, for example, focus up- the society but within its experiential field.30
on the primitive exploitative pattern in its Especially may the concept of an altered
relation to the total ecological complex has and expanding oecumene serve as a useful
revealed the role of the exploitative re- perspective when the focus of inquiry is the
new, introduced exploitative activities for Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian In-
ure.26
each society within the same "natural view, at the request of the Arctic Institute, of
2Ibid., p. 1079.
precise information about variabilities and con- s For recent Northern Amerind studies along
sistencies is required ("The Size of Algonkian these lines, see J. Helm and 0. Lurie, The Sub-
Hunting Territories: A Function of Ecological sistence Economy of the Dogrib Indians of Lac
Adjustment," American Anthropologist, LI [19491, La Martre in the Mackenzie District of the North-
This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 07 Mar 2016 17:52:09 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
634 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
the nature and effectiveness of exploitative trast with the survival of a neighboring
size, density, and distribution has been doc- JVorld view and the balanced "ecocultur-
anthropologists have sketched in broad out- ley contains implications of feedback from
of population growth in the history of civi- cultures upon the "realities" of physical
lizations.33 But there has been little inquiry existence. This consideration may most
into the specific "fit" or integration between broadly be subsumed under "world view"-
the size of population and the particular what peoples perceive as their universe, the
cultural patterns of a society. It may be meanings and values they find in it, and
that this focus is readily rewarding only how they define their relations to it. The
when the data make it possible to perceive ecological aspects and consequences of
significant demographic change, thus pro- world view are too broad to be pursued
viding horizons for comparison through here. Some contributions are overviews of
time within the society. C. Wagley has pro- cultural differences in interpretation of the
vided a striking account of the shattering world and its resources by primitive and
effects of heavy depopulation on the social modern man37 and, conversely, the concept
Brazil, a depopulation that created severe shape cultural concepts of time, space, and
imbalances between numbers of appropriate cosmogeny.38 There are also leads concern-
personnel and number of traditional sta- ing the ultimate implications of a society's
tuses.34 In a later paper he proceeded from subsistence base for normative and idea-
the other end of the spectrum, setting forth tional patterns, enculturation techniques
the thesis that "each culture has a popula- and goals, and personality formation.39
tion policy-an implicit or explicit set of From these ecological aspects of world view
cultural values relating to population size," we are led to the encompassing conception
and in these terms explains the social and of cultural stability being based in an eco-
Childe, op. cit., and Steward, Theory of Cul- endon Press, 1940).
34 "The Effects of Depopulation upon Social Or- and His Society (New York: Columbia University
ganization as Illustrated by the Tapirape Indians," Press, 1939); H. Barry, I. Child, and M. Bacon,
Transactions of the New York Academy of Sci- "Relation of Child Training to Subsistence Econ-
ences, Series 2, III, No. 1 (1940), 12-16. omy," American Anthropologist, LI (1959), 51-63.
This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 07 Mar 2016 17:52:09 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
ECOLOGICAL APPROACH IN ANTHROPOLOGY 635
system of human population, culture, and social organization that are broadly con-
habitat in equilibrium. This overview has sonant with the conclusions of the Ameri-
as well as ethnologists.40
dependence of social organization, or cer- tus from parent to child and for them to be
s W. Goldschmidt, "Social Organization in Na- tion and mutual aid elicited under stable condi-
tive California and the Origin of Clans," Ameri- tions" (p. 73); and that clan fission in certain
The Social Organization of the Western Pueblos sure too great to permit continued territorial
'J. Steward, "Ecological Aspects of South- "4M. Sahlins, Social Stratification in Polynesia
This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 07 Mar 2016 17:52:09 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
636 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
of communication). 1
"5Ibid., p. 5.
43.
sent similar integration levels is the historian
(1956), 687-715.
This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 07 Mar 2016 17:52:09 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
ECOLOGICAL APPROACH IN ANTHROPOLOGY 637
Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, VIII e' "The Superorganic," in A. Kroeber, The Na-
a Human Population: A Study of Social Endog- 82R. Redfield, The Folk Culture of Yucatan
amy and Blood Type Distribution among the (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941),
" M. Slater, "Ecological Factors in the Origin York: Henry Holt & Co., 1954), chaps. xxi-xxiii;
of Incest," American Anthropologist, LXI (1959), K. Davis, Human Society (New York: Macmillan
This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 07 Mar 2016 17:52:09 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
638 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
plications of and for the third level tend from archeological data are reliable to the
to be only peripherally pursued in the eco- extent to which they are about matters ex-
ogy in anthropology that is emerging here edged population size and/or density as
is that it is concerned with the adaptive or- indicative of exploitative success, but only
dering of the relations of human groups recently have they begun to rectify their
to the natural environment and with the neglect of attributes of population as co-
that the immediate effects of environment cluster which constitutes the local group
recede from the total picture as techno- community seems especially promising as
the fore. When, however, the touchstone The ecological approach has provided
of "adaptation to environment" is lost from one way to get beyond the tendency of
spect, Steward's viewpoint and uses are sociocultural configuration as mutually de-
consonant with those of other anthro- pendent variables.69 Barth and Wagley's
pologists: the concept of ecology is for papers, for example, demonstrate that the
-Traditionally the ethnologist has gone changing ecological complex. In the long
into the "little community" for his cul- view of the human condition, however,
tural data. However, in the last few dec- there is increasing evidence that environ-
focus explicitly upon the "little commu- ence) factors take primacy as determi-
nity," be it band, village, or town, as the nants.70 In this respect typologies based
logical view in pursuit of their rephrased Asian Pastoralism, Southwestern Journal of An-
This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 07 Mar 2016 17:52:09 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
ECOLOGICAL APPROACH IN ANTHROPOLOGY 639
which correlate and covary with attributes cated upon ecological viewpoint and
the attack on problems of social change or In its greatest scope anthropology at-
evolution, insofar as we may wish to re- tends to man's course, in all its variance
serve the latter term to refer to degrees or and incrementation, from proto-hominid
Anthropological perspectives for humnan point of view has been a unifying and
ecology.-I have not touched on the ques- fruitful theme in these efforts and may
tion of the legitimacy of "human ecology" eventually provide a bridge between the
its existence as an orientation that cuts Whether the immediate contribution of in-
sphere. The traditional anthropological at- matter of level of analysis and of degree of
simple societies has allowed total socio- In the broadest perspective the following
cultural systems and their ecological as- observations can be made: (1) there are
This is undoubtedly why anthropologists with habitat; and (2) through the span
dealing with small societies with primitive of hominid existence there has been the in-
technology are emboldened to speak holis- creasing intrusion of the cultural variable
configurations, would perhaps have been better at a speck plucked from a totality, the
This content downloaded from 130.237.29.138 on Mon, 07 Mar 2016 17:52:09 UTC
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions