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THE ENVIRONMENT
AND ANTHROPOLOGY
Judit Farkas
Ecological anthropology has played a leading role in the evolution of the
Environmental Humanities (hereafter EH), and not without reason: this strand
of cultural anthropology (hereafter: anthropology) focuses on the understanding
of the interrelationships among humans, human culture and society, and the
natural environment. Ecological anthropologists study nature use, local
communities traditional ecological knowledge, biological diversity, the motivations
behind and impacts of environmental destruction, contemporary environmental
issues, natural disasters, climate change, Green movements, environmental justice,
etc. Its research field — like that of anthropology in general — ranges from the jungle
to metropolitan centers where nature or its absence can be observed. Its working
methodology (interviews, observation, possibly long stretches of living with the
community under study) allows for a deep dive to explore the given groups
worldview and daily life. It shares with human anthropology the desire to integrate
the knowledge of diverse disciplines and interpret any given question in a broad
context with its help. Not unlike other social sciences, it discards the view that it
has a secondary role behind the natural sciences, and regards itself as an autonomous
and innovative discipline (Latour 2013; Cs. Mészáros 2019).
Ecological anthropology
Anthropology has always been engaged in studying how nature influences human
society and culture, and conversely, how humans shape the natural environment.
This will not come as a surprise if one is aware that one of the discipline’s first
specialties in the field of social science was the examination of tribal cultures,
human communities which live in direct dependence on natural resources. 19%
century researchers focussed mainly on the patterns of subsistence to find out how
people living in the most diverse settings can survive through hunting and gathering,
herding or farming.
Scientific ecology’s closer involvement with anthropology may be attributed to
two factors: the development of ecology as a scientific discipline, and the emergence
of systems theory and attempts to use it (Borsos 2004: 13). The difficulty of the
process is indicated by the key question worded by Balazs Borsos as follows:
“Can culture be included in the sphere of ecological examinations in the scientific sense,
or does it differ from the rest of the pertinent factors to such an extent that a separate
scholarly discipline has to be devoted to examining the relationship between culture
»
and the environment using the scientific apparatus of ecology?” (Borsos 2004: 15)