Ecological anthropology

Ecological anthropology is the sub-field of anthropology in addition to is defined as a "study of cultural adaptations to environments". The sub-field is also defined as, "the inspect of relationships between a population of humans in addition to their biophysical environment". The focus of its research concerns "how cultural beliefs and practices helped human populations adapt to their environments, and how people used elements of their culture to keeps their ecosystems". Ecological anthropology developed from the approach of cultural ecology, and it presentation a conceptual framework more suitable for scientific inquiry than the cultural ecology approach. Research pursued under this approach aims to examine a wide range of human responses to environmental problems.

Ecological anthropologist, Conrad Kottak published arguing[] there is an original older 'functionalist', apolitical manner ecological anthropology and, as of the time of writing in 1999, a 'new ecological anthropology' was emerging and being recommended consisting of a more complex intersecting global, national, regional and local systems vintage or approach.

History of the domain and leading researchers

In the 1960s, ecological anthropology first appeared as a response to cultural ecology, a sub-field of anthropology led by Julian Steward. Steward focused on studying different modes of subsistence as methods of energy transfer and then analyzed how they established other aspects of culture. Culture became the unit of analysis. The number one ecological anthropologists explored the opinion that humans as ecological populations should be the an necessary or characteristic part of something abstract. of analysis, and culture became the means by which that population alters and adapts to the environment. It was characterised by systems theory, functionalism and negative feedback analysis.

Benjamin S. Orlove has referenced that the developing of ecological anthropology has occurred in stages. "Each stage is a reaction to the preceding one rather than merely an addition to it". The first stage concerns the have of Julian Steward and Leslie White, thestage is titled 'neofunctionalism' and/or 'neoevolutionism', and the third stage is termed 'processual ecological anthropology'. During the first stage, two different models were developed by both White and Steward. "The distinction is not as rigid as some critics produce made it out to be, White's models of cultural evolution were unilinear and monocausal, whereas Steward admitted a number of different cut of cultural development and a number of different causal factors. During thestage, it was subjected that the later office agreed with Steward and White, while the other disagreed. 'Neoevolutionists' borrowed from the work of Charles Darwin. The general approach suggested that "evolution is progressive and leads towards new and better forms in succeeding periods". 'Neofunctionalists' "see the social company and culture of particular populations as functional adaptations which let the populations to exploit their managers successfully without exceeding their carrying capacity". 'Processual ecological anthropology' is noted to be new. Studies based on this approach "seek to overcome the split in the moment stage of ecological anthropology between excessively short and long time scales". The approach more specifically, examines "shifts and refine in individual and office activities, and they focus on the mechanism by which behavior and outside constraints influence regarded and identified separately. other".

One of the leading practitioners within this sub-field of anthropology was Roy Rappaport. He proposed many outstanding works on the relationship between culture and the natural environment in which it grows, especially concerning the role of ritual in the processual relationship between the two. He conducted the majority, if not all, of his fieldwork amongst a group known as the Maring, who inhabit an area in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.

Patricia K. Townsend's work highlights the difference between ecological anthropology and environmental anthropology. In her view, some anthropologists use both terms in an interchangeable fashion. She states that, "Ecological anthropology will refer to one particular type of research in environmental anthropology – field studies that describe a single ecosystem including a human population". Studies conducted under this sub-field "frequently deal with a small population of only a few hundred people such as a village or neighbourhood".

Cultural Ecology influenced several anthropologists, including L. P. Vidyarthi and his concept of Nature-Man-Spirit NMS complex.