Environmental Anthropology (a Historical Reader)

Edited by Dove, Michael R.; Edited by Carpenter Carol
Short description/annotation:
Environmental Anthropology: A Historical Reader is a collection of historically significant readings, dating from early in the twentieth century up to the present, on the cross-cultural study of relations between people and their environment.
Description:
Environmental Anthropology: A Reader is a collection of historically significant readings, dating from early in the twentieth century up to the present, on the cross-cultural study of relations between people and their environment.

• Provides the historical perspective that is typically missing from recent work in environmental anthropology
• Includes an extensive intellectual history and commentary by the volume’s editors
• Offers a unique perspective on current interest in cross-cultural environmental relations
• Divided into five thematic sections: (1) the nature/culture divide; (2) relationship between environment and social organization; (3) methodological debates and innovations; (4) politics and practice; and (5) epistemological issues of environmental anthropology
• Organized into a series of paired papers, which ‘speak’ to each other, designed to encourage readers to make connections that they might not customarily make

Table of contents:
List of Figures and Tables.

Editors'' Biographical Information.

Preface.

Acknowledgments.

Text Credits.

Introduction: Major Historical Currents in Environmental Anthropology: Michael R. Dove and Carol Carpenter.

Part I: The Nature-Culture Dichotomy:.

Questioning the Nature-Culture Dichotomy: From Posey’s Indigenous Knowledge to Fairhead and Leach’s Politics of Knowledge.

1. Indigenous Management of Tropical Forest Ecosystems: The Case of the Kayapó Indians of the Brazilian Amazon: Darrell Posey.

2. False Forest History, Complicit Social Analysis: Rethinking Some West African Environmental Narratives: James Fairhead and Melissa Leach.

How Cattle Problematize the Nature-Culture Divide: From Evans-Pritchard’s “Cattle Complex” to Harris’ ''Sacred Cows'' and Beyond.

3. Interest in Cattle: E. E. Evans-Pritchard.

4. The Cultural Ecology of India’s Sacred Cattle: Marvin Harris.

Part II: Ecology And Social Organization:.

Early Essays on Social Organization and Ecology: Mauss and Steward.

5. Seasonal Variations of the Eskimo: A Study in Social Morphology: Marcel Mauss.

6. The Great Basin Shoshonean Indians: An Example of a Family Level of Sociocultural Integration: Julian H. Steward.

Beyond Steward: ''Ecosystems with Human Beings in Them'' in Barth and Geertz.

7. Ecologic Relationships of Ethnic Groups in Swat, North Pakistan: Fredrik Barth.

8. The Wet and the Dry: Traditional Irrigation in Bali and Morocco: Clifford Geertz.

“Natural” Disasters and Social Order: Response and Revelation in Firth and Waddell.

9. Critical Pressures on Food Supply and Their Economic Effects: Raymond Firth.

10. How the Enga Cope with Frost: Responses to Climatic Perturbations in the Central Highlands of New Guinea: Eric Waddell.

Part III: Methodological Challenges And Debates:.

Ethnoecology and the Defense of Swidden Agriculture: Conklin and Carneiro.

11. An Ethnoecological Approach to Shifting Agriculture: Harold Conklin.

12. Slash-and-Burn Agriculture: A Closer Look at Its Implications for Settlement Patterns: Robert L. Carneiro.

Natural Science Models of Resource-Use: From Rappaport’s Cybernetics to the Optimal Foraging of Hawkes, Hill, and O’Connell.

13. Ritual Regulation of Environmental Relations Among a New Guinea People: Roy A. Rappaport.

14. Why Hunters Gather: Optimal Foraging and the Ache of Eastern Paraguay: Kristen Hawkes, Kim Hill and James F. O’Connell.