Cultural ecology: what it is, what it studies, and research methods

Cultural ecology is a current that studies the relationships between a human group and its environment. environment, focusing on the interaction of the ways of life of that culture and the ecosystems that give it medium.

Cultural ecology implies the study of people's behavior, this being its anthropological and social science aspect, and also understands how the characteristics of the environment influence human behavior, this being the part as biological science.

Next we will see in more depth that current from cultural materialism, related to historical particularism and which has been considered revealing for 20th century anthropology.

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What is cultural ecology?

The concern about the role and position that the human being occupies in nature has been growing during the last century, especially within the natural and social sciences. For this reason it has become essential to find out to what extent the human being is an integral part of nature

, how it differs from other species and how it varies according to its culture, its development of culture in the environment being very important.

Before discussing cultural ecology in more depth, we must understand what is meant by ecology. This is the biological science that attempts to study and understand the function of the systems in which They find groups of living beings that interact with each other and have a direct relationship with the environment. physical. The set of living beings make up an ecosystem, and the ecosystems of the planet, such as forests, rivers, lakes and reefs, constitute what we call the biosphere.

From an ecological perspective, the human species is considered very important due to the degree of self-awareness it has about its natural impact, however, within the links that make up an ecosystem, it continues to be one more species of nature. Throughout our history, humans have had a more or less strong impact on the environment, both as tribal cultures and as large industrialized societies. Even so, the human species can be considered as "natural" as the others.

The human being can be considered as a cultural animal for the simple fact that he has the capacity to generate culture, something fundamental for his development and survival. Through it we have been able to design tools, strategies and actions that have allowed us to take advantage of natural resources given, modifying the natural environment according to our needs, no matter how apparently immutable it might be seem. For example, the exploitation of mountains as mines is a direct result of our ability to generate culture and technology.

Having understood all this, we can give way to explaining what cultural ecology is, which deals with the study of the relationship of a culture and its natural and historical environment. A specific culture is studied, taking into account its adaptations to the ecosystem in which they have settled and seeing how Throughout their history they have been molding themselves to the obstacles of the environment, knowing how to profitably use those resources that offered. The cultural response varies depending on how the environment is, trying to overcome its limitations.

These cultural adaptations can be represented in many ways: tools, use and utilization of resources, priority of classes in the exploitation of the environment, expressions in the language, belief system, religion... All these elements are known as the mechanisms of adaptation to ecosystems from culture. For example, in a culture that lives in the desert, it is likely that special care is taken with water, seen as a very precious and scarce asset that should not be wasted.

Characteristics

On a theoretical level, cultural ecology is a current that comes from the non-Marxist materialist school of the 1960s and 1970s. It is also related to the discipline of economic anthropology and is considered the first school who begins to study the relationships between societies and their material bases of subsistence.

Cultural ecology can be understood in two ways. On the one hand, diachronically, examining the entities that existed in the same ecosystem in times different, and on the other hand, synchronously, examining the present system and its components cultural.

The central argument of this current is that The environment, both on a small scale and in large societies, is a major contributing factor in shaping social hierarchy and human institutions., especially those that are in charge of the distribution of wealth.

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Origin of this field of research

The father of this current is Julian StewardTaking historical particularism as a strong base, he was interested in finding general principles or laws that explain how cultures develop in relation to their environment. He laid the foundations not only for cultural ecology, but also for multilinear evolution, exposing it in his book "Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution" (1955).

Steward argued that, first, each culture must be understood as an adaptive strategy to the natural and historical environment in which it develops. That is, culture is a response to the characteristics of the natural environment, trying to survive it. Secondly, it must be understood that the environmental base conditions cultural development. This introduces the environment as a creative factor and culture as a super organic fact.

The environment is limiting, and the culture must devise the best tools, ideas, or options to overcome obstacles. That is, the adaptations are conditioned to what the environment offers, causing it to vary or enhance it. For example, in a culture where there is a scarcity of water, it is quite probable that technologies that try to transport water to remote points, such as aqueducts or irrigation systems, something very common in the cultures of northern Africa.

For this reason, in cultural ecology it is proposed to study the creative processes of adaptation to the culture, which have probably occurred in parallel around the world based on the same specific environment, with the intention of formulating universal principles that allow predicting and understanding how a culture will develop having a given environment. The two mentioned premises can be interpreted based on three variables: environment, culture and technological development.

Cultural ecology uses the cultural core approach as a method of study., understood as the traits or characteristics related to subsistence, the economic part and the needs of a population to survive, in addition to the appropriation of technology which, naturally, varies depending on each society. Within this method, it is proposed to follow three basic procedures:

• Analyze the interrelationships between productive and extractive technology, where material culture is included in a technology-environment relationship.
• Analyze the patterns involved in the exploitation of an area by means of a particular technology.
• Analyze how behavior patterns in the environment affect culture, going much deeper into the components of culture.

Techniques used by cultural ecology

To carry out its studies and demonstrate its theories, cultural ecology makes use of all kinds of tools such as soil analysis, archaeometry, carbon isotopes, development of maps with geographic and geological elements, geographic information systems, georadar to identify settlements and reduce the risks of freehand dig.

Among the most important tools that cultural ecology uses we have radiocarbon, used to date archaeological sites. With this technique, archaeologists and anthropologists can relate the occurrence of a past environmental event (p. g., flood, climate change, drought...) with how people in the region behaved at that time.

Also it is possible to establish relationships between current traditions and past phenomena with these techniques. We have an example of this in the ban on consuming pork in the Middle East. Based on archaeological records, it is known that this animal, when it was first bred in the region, posed a very serious environmental threat. As the pig could end the few green environments in the Middle East, it was said that it was a contaminated animal, with the intention of avoiding its livestock farming.

Bibliographic references

• Garreta, J., Bellelli, C., Bonaparte, R., Abramoff, E., Acosta, A., Cañas, L., Carballido, M., Di Fini, M., Fernández, P., Garreta, M., Gomez, H., Ondelj, M., Pegoraro, A., Sánchez, M. & Scheinsohn, V. (2001). The culture plot. Anthropology and archeology texts. calligraphic editions Buenos Aires, Republic of Argentina, p. 143- 144.
• Harris, M., Bordoy, V., Revuelta, F., & Velasco, H. m. (1998). cultural anthropology. Publishing Alliance, p. 183- 184.
• Prieto, M. (2011). Settlement patterns: a methodological tool for the reconstruction of the past, pp. 1-16. Reading anthropological theories course I, University of Costa Rica, school of anthropology.
• Smith, T. & Smith, R. (2007). Ecology. Sixth edition, Pearson education, Madrid. Chapter 1, p.5.
• Stewart, J. (1955). Theory of culture change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution. Spanish version of the Anthropological Theories I course, University of Costa Rica, School of Anthropology.