Environmental determinism: what it is, characteristics and examples

When trying to explain the differences between cultures and the degree of development between nations, they have taken into account account several factors such as the influences between cultures, their history, genetics and geographical position among others many.

Environmental determinism is an approach of anthropology and geography that has placed special emphasis on the characteristics of the environment, climate and geographical accidents 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.

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What is environmental determinism?

Environmental determinism is an approach specific to anthropology and geography that maintains that the environment, especially physical factors such as geographical features, resources and the type of climate, determine the patterns of the human group that settles in a certain territory, in addition to having a social development directly dependent on the environment that has touched it dwell.

The most radical environmental determinists maintain that all ecological, climatic and geographical factors would explain human cultural differences before their own social, genetic factors, foreign cultural influences and history. His main argument is that the physical characteristics of an area, especially the climate, have a profound impact on its psychology. Of the inhabitants.

It can also happen that a person develops a behavior that better adapts to their environment and the rest of the people, seeing that it is advantageous, imitate it by spreading this new cultural trait.

A classic example of environmental determinism is found in the explanation given by several 19th century anthropologists. These 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, with more resources. Tropical cultures, having easier access to such resources, lived more comfortably and did not have to develop complex survival strategies unlike those who lived in cold places, which developed a greater intelligence.

Another environmental determinist example 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 transport to the islands has been improving, making it easier to get in and out of them and having, 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.

classical background

Although modern ideas of environmental determinism have their origins in the 19th century, it is possible to mention that the idea that the environment can influence the culture of a human group is quite old.

Great classical thinkers like Strabo, Plato and Aristotle they defended that the climatic characteristics of Greece were those that had allowed the Greeks to be a more developed civilization compared to societies in warmer or colder territories, having mild 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 group human, but they also believed they saw in the environment what explained the physical characteristics of the 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.

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Modern times

Despite its classical background, current environmental determinist ideas have their heyday and origins at the end of the 19th century, fundamentally established 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 that revealed how the characteristics of the environment influences the development of a species, being the already classic example of the finches of the Galapagos or the evolution of the peppered moth in the England of the Revolution Industrial.

Environmental determinism would become very popular in Anglo-Saxon countries and would reach the United States in early 20th century by 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 extremely polar climates are not beneficial for development economic, while the temperate ones pulling for cold yes, coinciding with the Anglo-Saxon countries and their colonies.

The decline of environmental determinism

Despite its success in the early 1900s, environmental determinism's popularity gradually declined in the 1920s. The reason for this is that many of the premises defended by environmental determinists had been shown to be false and biased, 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 checking whether this was true, something typical of pseudosciences such as phrenology.

Although affirming that the environment can condition the culture that is based on it is not entirely mistaken, ensuring that it fully determines the cultural traits of a certain social group is exaggerated. The most radical environmental determinists were completely ignorant of the influences of other cultures, history, social phenomena and other causes that did not depend on the environment in explaining why a culture was like was.

Environmental determinists, biased by white supremacy, ignored that Throughout history, there have been countless highly developed cultures that were found in climates that they believed should not be beneficial.. Some examples are Ancient Egypt, Mesoamerican civilizations, Japan, India, China, and Korea. They were also unaware that the fact that the United States, Germany, Australia or South Africa had a greater economic development It was not due to its geographical position, but to being culturally influenced by England, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution.

As a counter to environmental determinism the theory of environmental possibilism or geographic possibilism established by the French geographer Paul Vidal de la Blanche was developed. He stated that the environment sets limitations on cultural development but this does not fully 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.

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Example of scientific investigation of environmental determinism

Although environmental determinism as it was conceptualized at the end of the early 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 the that relate the degree to which social norms are respected with whether the base culture has grown rice or wheat.

All across the globe there are all kinds of peoples who 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 Being of the same ethnicity, they have very different views of 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, with which, the communities where the former has been cultivated have been forced to exchange tasks among their members to ensure that the crop does not spoil. In addition, 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 chores, members of the 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 viewed very negatively in rice-growing China than in wheat-growing China.

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 cause the subject to 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 growing wheat with some exceptions. In the West, moving away from the social norm, as long as it does not imply 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 a claim to individualism rather than an attack on the society.

Bibliographic references:

• Talhelm, T. and English, A. S. (2020). Historically rice-farming societies have tightened social norms in China and worldwide. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117 (33) 19816-19824; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1909909117