The Ecological Transition. Cultural Anthropology and Human Adaptation

386 Pages·1976·23.29 MB·English

by  John W. Bennett and Cyril S. Belshaw (Auth.)

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EDITOR: Cyril S. Belshaw, University of British Columbia, Canada
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The Ecological Transition:
Cultural Anthropology
and Human Adaptation
JOHN W. BENNETT
Washington University at St. Louis
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WESTGERMANY Pergamon Press GmbH, 6242, Kronberg-Taunus
Pferelstrasse 1, Frankfurt-am-Main, West Germany
Copyright © 1976, John W. Bennett
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Bennett, John William
The ecological transition.
Includes index.
1. Human ecology. 2. Ethnology. 3. Social evolu
tion. I. Title.
GF41.B46 301.31 74-30430
ISBN 0-08-017867-7
ISBN 0-08-017868-5 pbk.
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form, or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of John W.
Bennett.
Printed in Great Britain by A. Wheaton & Co., Exeter
The Author
John W. Bennett (Ph.D., University of Chicago) is Professor of An
thropology at Washington University, St. Louis, where he has served two
terms as Chairman of the Department. He is a Senior Fellow of the Center
for the Biology of Natural Systems and is a member of the Asian Studies
Center of Washington University. Dr. Bennett's primary professional
interests lie in three fields: the ecological and social aspects of agrarian
development, the structure and changes of communal and sectarian
societies, and the nature and change of modern Japanese society. This
book represents his observations of ecological theory in anthropology,
growing out of his work in all three fields.
Dr. Bennett's career in cultural anthropology has centered on the study of
modern rather than tribal societies, and his theoretical views reflect this
orientation. He has done field research in the United States, Canada,
Japan, Israel, Taiwan, and India. He is a member of many professional
societies in the fields of anthropology, sociology, economics, ecology, and
Asian studies and has been President of the American Ethnological
Society and the Society for Applied Anthropology, among others. He is a
member of the Editorial Boards of the Annual Review of Anthropology,
Reviews in Anthropology, and the Encyclopedia Americana. He has been
a consultant to the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Institute of
Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, the Canada Council,
The U.S. Department of State, and has served on committees and
research review panels in these and other organizations. He has published
many articles in professional journals, is the senior author of two books
on Japan, and the author of two books on his agrarian ecology research in
Canada—one of them a treatise on the communal economics and social
life of the Hutterian Brethren. He has taught at Ohio State University, the
University of Puerto Rico, Waseda University, Japan, and the University
of Oregon.
vi
Acknowledgments
The first version of this book was a longish chapter, written in part at the
urging of Morris Freilich, who had in mind a symposium of essays on
problems of application and meaning in anthropology. The volume did not
materialize due to no fault of Dr. Freilich's; believing the issues dealt with
in my contribution deserved a fuller treatment, I continued to work on it,
with this book—really a series of essays—as the result. I am indebted to Dr.
Freilich for the urging and, later, for carefully reading early drafts.
The arguments and frame of reference have been influenced by the
author's research in North American agricultural ecology—in particular,
four studies: first, my continuing work in a 5,000-square mile region of
Western Canada (Bennett, 1969); second, a continuing study of ecology
and socioeconomic change in Hutterian Brethren colonies in Canada and
the United States (Bennett, 1967C); third, a project on farm management
strategies and social organization as they pertain to environmental
pollution in the Illinois corn belt, sponsored by the Center for the Biology
of Natural Systems at Washington University; fourth, a collation of data
on environmental pollution in Japan, and the public and governmental
response to it (Bennett & Levine, 1975). All of these research projects have
dealt with the way human wants and social institutions structure the actions
of men in coping with physical and socioeconomic environments.
Early versions received critical readings by Roy Rappaport and An
drew Vayda. Useful advice on key sections was obtained from Thayer
Scudder, David Sills, John Eaton, Emilio Moran, Carl J. Bajema, E. L.
Jones, Edward Montgomery, Edward Robbins, Mary Bufwack, and Jose
Arrom. Needless to say, the responsibility for all statements and interpre
tations rests with the author.
vii
viii Acknowledgments
The enormous quantity of available materials in the field of human
ecology has required a careful strategy of citation. I have tried to
exemplify key fields and styles of analysis and theory, but I have avoided
any attempt at exhaustive documentation. Most references pertain to the
early- 1970's period when the project was conceived, but a partial up-dating
was done in early 1974.1 have no doubt that by the time this book is in print
nearly every major citation will have been superseded.
Terry Yokota was my principal editorial assistant, and she, Susan
Higgins, and Arline Wyner typed the manuscript. Diagrams were drafted
by William Sawyer. Robert Franklin did the index.
I also thank all the publishers and authors for use of materials from the
various publications cited (acknowledgments for figures are quoted in
captions) and in particular the following:
Doubleday & Company, Inc. Garden City, for quotation from Evolution
and Human Behavior, by Alexander Alland, Natural History Press,
1967.
Columbia University Press, New York, for material from The Human
Imperative, by Alexander Alland, 1972.
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, for material from The Human
Condition, by Hannah Arendt, 1968.
The American Anthropological Association for material from "Ecologic
Relationships of Ethnic Groups in Swat, Northern Pakistan," by
Frederik Barth, American Anthropologist, 1956, 58: 1079-1089.
Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C. for material from En
vironmental Archeology and Cultural Systems in Hamilton Inlet,
Labrador, by William W. Fitzhugh. Smithsonian Contributions to
Anthropology, Number 16, 1972.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science for material
from "Feedbacks in Economic and Demographic Transition," by
Harald Frederiksen, Science, 1969, 166: 837-847. Copyright 1969 by
The American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The Bookhaven National Laboratory, Biology Department, Upton, N.Y.
for material from "Stability in Ecological and Social Systems," in
Diversity and Stability in Ecological Systems, by Crawford S. Hol-
ling. Report of Symposium held May 26-28, 1969.
National Museums of Canada, Ottawa, for material from "!Kung Bush
man Subsistence: An Input-Output Analysis," by Richard B. Lee, in
Contributions to Anthropology: Ecological Essays, Bulletin 230,
Anthropological Series, No. 86, 1969, and Natural History Press,
Acknowledgments ix
New York for same material from A. Vayda (ed.), Environment and
Cultural Behavior, 1969.
Duckworth, Ltd., London, for material from "Work Effort, Group
Structure and Land-Use in Contemporary Hunter-Gatherers," by
Richard B. Lee, in Man, Settlement and Urbanism, Peter J. Ucko,
Ruth Tringham and G. W. Dimbleby, eds., 1972b.
MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., for material from "Population Growth and
the Beginnings of Sedentary Life among the !Kung Bushman," by
Richard B. Lee, in Brian Spooner (ed.), Population Growth, 1972c.
Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, Mass., for material from
The Ecological Approach in Cultural Study, by Robert McC. Netting,
McCaleb Module, 1972.
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, for material from Environment,
Power, and Society by Howard T. Odum, 1971.
Ecology for material from "The Use and Abuse of Vegetational Concepts
and Terms," by A. G. Tansley, Ecology, 16: 284-307.
Oceania for material from "Phases of the Process of War and Peace
among the Marings of New Guinea," by Andrew P. Vayda, Oceania,
1971, 42: 1-24.
University of Washington Press, Seattle, for material from The Mound
Builders: Agricultural Practices, Environment, and Society in the
Central Highlands of New Guinea by Eric Waddell. Copyright 1972
by University of Washington Press.
McGraw Hill Book Company, New York for material from "Man and
Culture" by Leslie A. White, in L. A. White, The Evolution of
Culture, 1959b.
The New American Library, New York, for material from The Aims of
Education, by Alfred North Whitehead, 1951.
Cambridge University Press, New York, for material from Religion and
the Transformation of Society: A Study in Social Change in Africa,
by Monica Wilson, 1971.
W. B. Saunders Co., Philadelphia for material from Fundamentals of
Ecology by Eugene Odum, 1953, 1971.
It must be acknowledged that equality, which brings great benefits into the world,
nevertheless suggests to men ... some very dangerous propensities. It tends to isolate
them from each other, to concentrate every man's attention upon himself; and it lays
the soul open to an inordinate love of material gratification.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Science is a river with two sources, the practical source and the theoretical source. The
practical source is the desire to direct our actions to achieve predetermined ends....
The theoretical source is the desire to understand. I most emphatically state that I do
not consider one source as in any sense nobler than the other, or intrinsically more
interesting. I cannot see why it is nobler to strive to understand than to busy oneself
with the right ordering of one's actions. Both have their bad sides; there are evil ends
directing actions, and there are ignoble curiosities of the understanding.
Alfred North Whitehead
CHAPTER 1
Prologue: Images of Man
and Nature
Anthropologists and their associates in geography have been studying
relationships between humans and the physical environment for a very
long time, and some of the history of that effort will be discussed later in
the book. For most of this period, the topic was handled mainly in terms
of description and classification: what kinds of cultures inhabited what
kinds of environment? When explanation was desired, it took the form of
attempts to measure the amount of influence a particular environment
may have had in shaping particular cultural patterns. This task was
approached from either an environmental bias, in which case the presence
of considerable influence from Nature was assumed; or from a cultural
bias, in which case environmental influence was assumed to be minimal,
with humans in full control of Nature.
Only recently has the problem of relationships between humans and the
physical environment broadened to include quite different questions. For
one, the concept of environment has been extended beyond the physical
into the social. That is, "other people" are seen as a milieu which
influences human behavior and with which humans must cope; hence, the
social environment must be given a weight equal to the physical in our
ecological theory. For another, the question of causation or influence has
become more complex, emphasizing the concept of system, in which both
behavioral (or cultural) and environmental (either/or physical and social)
factors are seen to be in a reciprocal process of interaction.
The use of the word ecology is recent in environmental studies in
anthropology. This word, now almost done to death by its attachment to
the environmental movement of our own time, originated in biology,
1
2 The Ecological Transition
where it continues to connote the work done by researchers on plants and
animals living in natural milieux. In anthropology, cultural-environmental
research was not considered ecological until Julian Steward used the term
"cultural ecology" in the late 1940s. However, there are many ecologies in
anthropology, if we use the word as a general referent for studies of
organism-environmental interrelations.
As we hope to show later, the "ecological" problems associated with
the human species are very large in number and, at this juncture, probably
impossible of synthesis in a general theory or subdiscipline. There is some
question as to whether the term "ecology" should be used at all to
describe these many interests and topics inside of anthropology and in
other disciplines as well. The social sciences have a special problem here:
since they include social phenomena as part of the environment with
which humans cope, their central problem becomes one of distinguishing
the relative influences or functions of social and physical environmental
factors in human behavior and institutions. This problem, in one sense the
central topic of anthropologist Julian Steward's cultural ecology, is not
even close to some general solution, if indeed there is one.
At this time, two tasks need to be performed in this field of study. First,
the work of cultural anthropologists on how social factors are implicated
in human-Nature interrelationships or systems need to be reviewed, and
its accomplishments assessed. This, in essence, is what I attempt to do in
this book, although from a special point of view. The second task consists
of a critique of some converging approaches in cultural anthropology,
including cultural ecology, economic anthropology, social exchange, and
behavioral adaptation. While this second task is not my major objective, it
obtrudes, and many of the concepts and approaches discussed and
proposed in the book are heading in this direction. I have no name for my
approach: I call it simply "human adaptation," or "adaptive dynamics."
Similarly, for want of a rubric for the many approaches concerned with
culture-environment questions, I continue to use the term "ecology"—
and, in the social context, "cultural ecology."
NATURE INTO CULTURE
The central thesis of this book is that the best case for the existence of
something called cultural ecology can be made on the grounds of public
policy. Research data that has significance for shaping environmental
policies (mostly physical, but always including some social) can be
obtained from something less than a comprehensive human ecological