Neo-Evolutionism and Cultural Ecology
A major theoretical shift occurred in American
anthropology in the late 1940s and 1950s
antievolutionary perspective of the Boasian school
competes with the new and more sophisticated
evolutionary approaches of Julian Steward and Leslie
White
similarities between cultures could be explained by
parallel adaptations to similar natural environments
not all societies passed through similar stages of
cultural development i.e. unilineal models of evolution
were too sweeping.
Julian Haynes Steward
1902 - 1972
central figure in the
introduction of
ecological concepts into
social and cultural
anthropology
“cultural ecology”
Multilinear Evolution
Cultural Ecology
“Cultural Ecology is the study of
the processes by which a society
adapts to its environment. Its
principle problem is to determine
whether these adaptations initiate
internal social transformations of
evolutionary change” 1968
3 basic steps for a cultural ecological investigation
1. Analysis of the relationship between the material
culture and the natural resources
2. the behaviour patterns involved in the
exploitation of a particular area by means of a
particular technology must be analyzed e.g..
Solitary hunter or group
3. how behaviour patterns entailed in exploiting the
environment affect other aspects of culture
This three step approach identifies the cultural core “the
constellation of features which are most closely related to
subsistence activities and economic arrangements
Shoshone Women with large baskets for carrying gear and
collecting wild foods, flat baskets for preparing seeds and
nuts. In the Great Basin Desert circa 1868.
Cultures that shared similar core features belonged
to the same culture type
Having identified these culture types Steward then
compared and sorted them into a hierarchy arranged
by complexity
Steward’s original ranking was family, multifamily
and state-level societies
These categories were later refined by his followers
into band, tribe chiefdom and state.
Band  Tribe  Chiefdom  Ag. State  Industrial State
Hallmarks of Difference:
-Centralized
Band: -H/G
-mobile
-kinship
-egalitarian
Tribe:
-Hort./pastoralist
-Complex kinship
-Headman
-warfare
Chief: any individual who
held leadership role in a
non-western, stateless
society
-Decentralized
Chiefdom:
-Intermediate b/w tribe
and bureaucratic gov’ts.
-1 (or >1) descent group
gains dominance
-hierarchical  social strata
- 1,000’s  10,000’s
Ag. States:
-bureaucratic gov’t
-dense populations (urban)
-food surpluses
-many economic roles
-writing systems
-public works (labor)
-10,000’s  Million(s)
Multilinear evolution
Cross-cultural parallels in social patterns could be explained
as adaptations to similar environments
Steward proposed cultural parallels due to adaptation rather
than historical diffusion or migration
i.e. Multilinear evolution focuses on the evolution of specific
cultures without assuming that all cultures follow the same
evolutionary process
 Avoids the twin traps of particularism and historicism.
• Particular societies are seen as the product of unique
historical trajectories, while simultaneously recognizing that
similarly-organized social groups in similar physical
environments will often undergo similar evolutionary
processes
Multilinear evolution
compared the development patterns in 5 independent centers of
ancient civilization: Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, Mesoamerica and
the Andes
these centers showed parallels of form, function and sequence
based on having developed in arid and semi-arid environments in
which the economic basis was irrigation and flood-water agriculture
Agriculture produced f ood surpluses which allowed for nonsubsistence activities and population growth
When population growth reached the limits of agricultural
productivity competition over natural r esources intensified, warfare
ensued, and political leadership shifted from temple priest to
warrior king
As some communities prospered and others suffered, empires were
forged that instituted string political controls over vast regions
Leslie White
(1900–1978)
central theorist in the
resuscitation of
evolutionary theory in
anthropology
For White, the predominant themes of cultural
evolution (as manifest in human history) were:
 increasing energy-capture per capita
 increasing complexity of material and social
culture
 increasing predictability and security of life
Hence, culture was, first and foremost, practical and
useful
And this pointed the way to its scientific interpretation, which was utilitarian…
Cultures could be compared objectively in terms of
energy-capture and complexity
Materialism versus Idealism
2 opposite philosophical approaches, underlying 2
corresponding opposed theoretical tendencies in
anthropological theory
MATERIALISTS hold that the proper way to make sense of
human social and cultural phenomena is to analyze them broadly
as natural systems and in terms of their material conditions:
e.g. , how particular social and cultural systems relate to
their environment — i.e. how they transform it, extract energy
from it, distribute the captured energy among their members,
and dominate (encapsulate and absorb) one another
in this analysis, the members’ own mental concepts and ideas
are treated as dependent variables — that is, they are passive
reflections in human consciousness of material processes, and
not autonomous causal forces in their own right
IDEALISM — idealists hold that human cultures are
shaped primarily by processes of shared human
consciousness, ideation, and imagination — processes
which cannot be reduced to purely material causes
1979 Cultural Materialism:
The Struggle for a Science
of Culture
culture = a system of
energy-transfer between
nature and human
populations (use of standard
energy measures: calories,
horse-power
cultures viewed as systems
of energy transfer and
redistribution
By focusing on observable,
measurable phenomena,
cultural materialism presents
an etic approach
Marvin Harris 1927-2001
Cultural Materialism is based on two key
assumptions about societies. First, the various
parts of society are interrelated. When one part
of society changes, other parts must also
change.
This means that an institution, such as the family
cannot be looked at in isolation from the
economic, political, or religious institutions of
a society. When one part changes it has an
effect on other parts of the system.
The second assumption of CM is that the foundation
of the sociocultural system is the environment.
Environment
 Like all living organisms, Humans must draw energy
from their environment.
 The environment is limited in terms of the amount of
energy and raw material it contains.
 The need to draw energy out of the environment in
order to satisfy the biological needs of its people is
the first and central task of any society
 Therefore, each society must ultimately exist within
the constraints imposed by its environment.
Basic Premise
Cultural Materialism is "...based on the
simple premise that human social life is a
response to the practical problems of
earthly existence..."
that a society's mode of production (technology
and work patterns, especially in regard to food)
and mode of reproduction (population level and
growth) in interaction with the natural
environment has profound effects on
sociocultural stability and change.
A good deal of Harris' work, therefore, is concerned
with explaining cultural systems (norms, ideologies,
values, beliefs) and widespread social institutions and
practices through the use of population, production, and
ecological variables.
Throughout his books, Marvin Harris uses cultural
materialist theories to explain a wide variety of cultural
phenomenon
•food taboos,
•Christianity,
•male supremacy and
•warfare.
Example: the “sacred cow” phenomenon in the
Indian subcontinent:
• a firmly-established “culture complex” of ideas and practices
linked to Hinduism, based on the cultural premise of the sacred
status of cattle as symbols of holiness
• cattle are kept and cows dominate the physical landscape, even of
densely populated urban neighborhoods
cattle utilized as a source of
milk, butter, traction, and dung
(fuel) but the meat is not
consumed (“inefficient” usage
of resources, by Western
standards)
Idealist interpretation: a distinctive complex of ideas which grew up
and became institutionalized, following an inner “symbolic logic”
which requires to be understood in (emic) cultural terms
set of related ideas, developed by Brahmans (priestly class),
using the cow as a symbol for an entire social ethic involving
ideas of purity, vegetarianism
the practices follow from the ideas
why for a Hindu is beef
taboo, whereas in Canada and
the U.S.A. and most of the
Western world is it considered
to be a very honorific and
delicious food
it is inadequate to say Hindus
don’t consume beef because
their religion prohibits it.
This is no explanation, you
also have to ask, why Hinduism
has this kind of reverence for
cattle but Islam, Judaism, and
Christianity do not
Materialist interpretation: a cultural complex adapted to a
specific ecological setting characterized by plow agriculture and
vast populations:
 require oxen (castrated male cattle) to draw plows — in
chronic short supply
also, cows convert marginally useful resources (garbage,
odd patches of grass) into useful resources (milk, butter,
dung)
 the ideology grew up to support the practice,
which was ecologically necessary to sustain the
vast population
Materialists place the stress on the analytical priority
of the material factors (“functions”) over the
ideological factors...
 do not deny that an ideology of the “sacred
cow” emerged and flourished
 but take the position that the ideology is the
dependent variable (the “effect”), while the
overall ecological adaptation is the independent
variable (the “cause”)
 “folk models” usually reverse the sequence of
causation and hence folk models are rarely
adequate accounts of any situation
Critique
can we be so dismissive of the informant’s emic viewpoint if
culture is rooted in values and meanings held by
individuals?“
What does it say about individual free will and purpose
oversimplification via reduction
 Is it ethnocentric
Postmodernists view: science is itself a culturally
determined phenomenon that is affected by class, race and
other structural and infrastructural variables
Do all food taboos have functional explanations; are such
explanations intrinsically more satisfying than symbolic ones
CLAUDE
LÉVI-STRAUSS
1908 -
He proposed that the proper study for anthropologists is not how
people categorize the world (not the content of cultures) but the
underlying patterns of human thought that produce those categories
The way we segment things and impose structure on inherently
formless phenomena (like space and time) reflect deeply held
structure from our minds
L-S believes that the underlying logical processes that structure all
human thought operate within different cultural contexts
Consequently, cultural phenomena eg. Kinship, myth, religon, are
not identical but they are the products of an underlying universal
pattern of thought.
His anthropology centres on the search to uncover this pattern.
for Lévi-Strauss, the subject matter of anthropology is “Culture”,
not “cultures (although the fact that there are cultures is useful as a
method to investigate Culture)
compare dozens of variant versions of the ‘same’ basic
narrative collected over a wide area — e.g. the origin of the
sexes; the origin of initiation
look for basic structures, typically expressed as oppositions
— upstream/downstream; sky/earth; dark/light
relate particular oppositions to wider and universal ones
(e.g. nature/culture)
Linguistic Analogy
The important aspects of linguistics for LS were:
1. The shift of linguistic focus from conscious behaviour
to unconscious structure
•
Most speakers of a language cannot articulate the
underlying rules that structure their use of phonemes and
create meaningful communication yet all are able to use
language to communicate
2. The idea of binary contrasts which was fundamental
to structuralism
•
words are built upon contrasts (binary oppositions) between
phonemes rather than simply being groups of sounds. e.g.
the minimal pair bat, pat…
3. The new focus on the relations between terms rather
than on terms.
LS argued that women are a commodity that could be exchanged,
and kinship systems are about the exchange of women
LS argued that one of the most important distinctions a human
makes is between self and others.
Defining the categories of potential spouses and prohibited mates.
This natural binary distinction leads to the formation of the incest
taboo, which necessitates choosing spouses from outside your family
In this way the binary distinction between kin and non-kin is
resolved by the reciprocal exchange of women and formation of kin
networks in primitive societies.
Primary Opposition is Nature versus Culture
Culture
it…
appropriates matter from nature and reorganizes
Culture : Nature : : Raw : Cooked
binary oppositions are reflected in various cultural
institutions

Critique
theories are often very abstract and untestable.
methods imprecise and dependent upon the
observer
As it is primarily concerned with the structure of
the human psyche, it does not address historical
aspects or change in culture
a “psychic unity” of all human minds does not
account for individual human action historically.
lack of concern with human individuality.
Symbolic or Interpretive Anthropology
1960s –1970s general reevaluation of cultural
anthropology as a scientific enterprise
From function to meaning
from materialist theories to idealist theories
shift toward issues of culture and interpretation and
away from grand theories
increased emphasis on the way in which individual
actions creatively shape culture
Most “symbolicists” would agree on these two points:
1. culture is, fundamentally, a symbolic system and
so analysis of cultural symbols provides the
natural point of entrée into a cultural universe
2. If culture is symbolic then it follows that it is used
to create and convey meanings since that is the
purpose of symbols.
 If meanings are the end products of culture then
understanding culture requires understanding the
meanings of its creators and users
Victor Turner
Scottish social anthropologist, 1920–1983
1950-54 fieldwork among the Ndembu of Zambia
but central career interest = symbolic anthropology
mainly concerned with ‘cultural’ symbols or (in his
term) ‘ritual’ symbols
objects which have
more or less generally
shared meanings
within a ‘culture’
•Milk Tree for Ndembu
•Cross for Christians
A `milk tree' growing in the
compound of a Senior Chief in
southern Zambia. Regarded as
feminine by the inhabitants of
the compound, the milk tree
twines as a palpable dependent
on its deciduous `masculine'
host.
Many Bantu peoples strongly
associated this tree with
womanhood because of the
thick white, milk-like sap
which the live wood exudes
when cut. `
A fresh cut in the milk tree showing the milky white sap
that gives the tree its common name
Novices
daubed
with clay
Last day of
mukanda:
initiates don
new clothes
and dance in
public for first
time as men
A fresh, bright scarlet cut on a `blood tree' in Kangaba, Mali
marked that wood as masculine
Clifford Geertz 1926-
1950 Meets Margaret
Mead and decides enrolls in
anthropology at Harvard
1952-54 to Java as part of a
research team with the
explicit goal of improving
economic growth
1973 The Interpretation of
Cultures
Thick Description Toward and
Interpretive Theory of Culture
“The concept of culture I espouse…is
essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with
Max Weber, that man is an animal
suspended in webs of significance he
himself has spun, I take cultures to be those
webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore
not an experimental science in search of
law, but an interpretive one in search of
meaning”. (Geertz 1973:5)
Geertz’ Interpretive Anthropology:
PREMISE: “man is an animal suspended in webs of
significance he himself has spun” and our name for
those webs is culture
CONCLUSION: “the analysis of it therefore is not an
experimental science in search of law but an
interpretive one in search of meaning”
THICK DESCRIPTION
A wink or a twitch
“between what Ryle calls the "thin description" of what
the rehearser (parodist, winker, twitcher . . .) is doing
(“rapidly contracting his right eyelids”) and The "thick
description" of what he is doing ("practicing a burlesque
of a friend faking a wink to deceive an innocent into
thinking a conspiracy is in motion") lies the object of
ethnography: a stratified hierarchy of meaningful
structures in terms of which twitches, winks, fake-winks,
parodies, rehearsals of parodies are produced, perceived,
and interpreted
Unraveling and identifying those context and meanings
requires “thick description:.
Geertz argues that this is precisely what ethnographic
writing does
“...ethnography is thick description. What
the ethnographer is in fact faced with —
except when (as of course, he must do) he is
pursuing the more automatized routines of
data collection — is a multiplicity of
complex conceptual structures, many of
them superimposed upon or knotted into one
another, which are at once strange,
irregular, and inexplicit, and which he must
contrive somehow first to grasp and then to
render...
Deep Play: The Balinese Cockfight
It is not just cocks that are fighting but men
Cocks are masculine symbols
The word cock is used metaphorically to mean bachelor,
lady-killer, tough guy etc
The Balinese
cockfight, is
fundamentally a
dramatization
of status
concerns.
nothing really
happens at a
cockfight.
The conflicts, alliances, wins and losses are all symbolic of
things that happen elsewhere.
In the cockfight all action is symbolic.
The real causes lie elsewhere, presumably in material
circumstances.
Questions
If cultural knowledge is inherently interpretive, how can we
invalidate the truth of an interpretation since there are potentially
as many true interpretations as there are members of a culture?
I.e. If ethnography is interpretation how can we know that
interpretation is correct.
Most of us cannot go to Bali or northern Morocco and check the
interpretation
if all such claims are equally valid, then the most anthropology
can hope for is to create a rich documentary of multiple
interpretations, none denied and none privileged.
This means that it cannot be a science since it cannot generalize
from truth statements or tests the statements against empirical
data; the nature of culture precludes this
Geertz triggered a profound rethinking of the
anthropological enterprise
forced anthropologists to become aware of the
cultural contexts they interpret and the ethnographic
texts they create.
He is also touched off a major debate in about the
fundamental nature of anthropology
These Issues arose against a backdrop of a changing
world and world view
As independence movements transformed former
colonial subjects into new national citizens, intergroup
conflicts intensified as power was reconfigured and new
governments exerted their control
THE DECOLONIZATION DISCOURSE
For the first time, Anthropology directly criticized as
the ‘handmaid of colonialism’...
 assisting in the pacification of peoples
 use of ethnographic information about them in
their own subjugation
 providing justifications for the colonial system
1978 Orientalism
 scathing analysis of Western scholarship on
the Middle East
 this scholarship = an ideological tool of
domination
 the West creates a simplistic stereotype of the
Orient and subsequent scholarship studies
not the Orient but rather reaffirms the
stereotype
 the ‘other’ presented as timeless, changeless,
essentialized (in contrast to Westerners’
concept of themselves as individuals in
Edward Saïd
particular historical contexts)
 the power relationship between the
constructing subject and constructed object
ignored
ORIENTALISM
 ignores the variability of Middle Eastern society and substitutes a
single ‘mentality’ to stand for the Orient
 evidence selected to fit the schema and contrary evidence ignored
 the construction of an ‘Other’, not like ourselves, but
fundamentally different
 The ‘oriental’ of Western scholarship is constructed as exotic,
driven by hidebound Tradition, thinks ‘differently’ from
ourselves, is envious of the West, but at the same time incapable
of shuffling off the (sometimes rather charming) superstitions
which make his society backward
Subtext: he needs our help to attain his full potential
Postmodernism
literally means “after modernity
An extremely diffuse concept
Provided a major focus of debate and commentary
Postmodernists challenge modernist assertions
believe that objective neutral knowledge of another
culture, or any aspect of the world is impossible
Postmodernist view of Fieldwork
Fieldwork is crucial in the creation of ethnographic
texts.
anthropologists can never be unbiased observers of all
that goes on in culture
Fieldworkers must of necessity be in specific places at
specific times.
As a result they see some things and not others
The particular circumstances of fieldwork, the political
context in which it occurs, the investigator’s preferences
and predilections, and the people met by chance or
design all condition the understanding of society that
results.
Postmodernist view of ethnography
Writing ethnography is the primary means by which
anthropologists convey their interpretations of other
cultures
Traditionally written as if the anthropologist was a
neutral, omniscient observer
Postmodernists claim that because the collection of
anthropological data is subjective, it is not possible to
analyze the data objectively.
Postmodernists question the validity of the author’s
interpretations over competing alternatives
And examine the literary techniques used in the
writing of ethnographies
Throughout the history of anthropology anthropologists
have claimed to be authorities on other cultures
this claim fortified with emphasizing the mystique of
fieldwork and by explaining other cultures to their
audiences through written descriptions.
The hermeneutic and deconstructionist approaches led
many anthropologists to ask a variety of questions about
the relationship between the ethnographic texts and the
fieldwork experience upon which those texts are based.
the filtering of exotic otherness through the constructions
of social theory is exposed as a literary excursion disguised
as scientific reportage
Ethnographies have traditionally followed some basic
literary conventions
rather than saying “I am writing my interpretation
of what the natives were doing” authors claim to
represent the native point of view.
But the anthropologist chooses who speaks for the
society and in his or her translation of the native
language decides what words are presented to the
audience.
Writers also claim to describe completely other
cultures or societies, even though anthropologists
actually know only the part of a culture that they
personally experience
Ethnographic authority was characteristic of ‘the Modern’ — it
was the official narrative explaining the significance of the
antecedent cultures out of which the National-State cultures of the
Modern era were composed
Its tools: monographs, museums, and research institutes.
example, at major museums like the American Museum of
Natural History, authoritative accounts of Polynesian cultures are
determined by the curator
The ‘whole’ represented by a few artifacts selected by the
curator, usually with an eye to the predominantly Western
aesthetics of the audience...
James Clifford
Postmodernity in Anthropology
therefore has focused on
1. an examination of the power
relations according to which the Other
has been constructed
2. examinations of the rhetorical
devices and preoccupations of
ethnographers themselves
REFLEXIVITY
With what to replace objectivity?
Consensus solution: reflexivity — not the unintentional
mirroring of the author’s culture in a descriptive work
about the Other, but a self-aware reflexivity:
•detailed disclosure of the terms and conditions of the
fieldwork
•discussion of interpersonal relationships with informants
that led to acquisition of the knowledge reported
•self-analysis of author’s motives, agendas, and self-doubts
•the knowledge presented situated in terms of how the
ethnographer collected it
•reflexive ethnographies tend to read more like diaries or
autobiographies than the conventional ethnographic genre
Renato Rosaldo, Ilongot headhunting, 1883–1974
Ilongot explanation of headhunting:
“He says that rage, born of grief, impels him to kill his fellow
human beings. He claims he needs a place ‘to carry his anger’
The act of severing and tossing away the victim’s head enables
him, he says, to vent and, he hopes, to throw away the anger of
his bereavement... To him grief, rage, and headhunting go
together in a self-evident manner.”
October 1981: Michelle loses
footing on steep trail, falls to her
death...
LUZON, PHILIPPINES
“Immediately on finding her body I
became enraged. How could she
abandon me? How could she have been
so stupid as to fall. I tried to cry. I
sobbed, but rage blocked the tears...
This anger in a number of forms, has
swept over me on a number of occasions
since then, lasting hours and even days
at a time...”
In other words, his own subjective experience (and not
any amount of reasoning) enabled him to grasp the
connection between grief and rage...
and only by alluding to the personal account of Michelle
Rosaldo’s death could he communicate it to the reader
Critiques of Postmodernism
Taken to its logical extreme postmodernism
comes close to turning anthropology into a sub
field of literature.
If all writing is nothing more than
interpretations of interpretations then
ethnography is fiction
And no conclusions can ultimately be reached
about anything
anthropology is a representational genre rather
than a clearly bounded scientific domain
BREAKDOWN OF
NATIONAL SCHOOLS
DEVELOPMENT OF
SPECIALIZATIONS
1940
1950
AMERICAN
CULTURAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
1960
1970
ECOLOGICAL ANTH.
NEO-EVOLUTIONISM
CULTURAL
MATERIALISM
C&P
ETHNOSCIENCE-CUM-COGNITIVE
INTERPRETIVE
BRITISH
SOCIAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
FRENCH
ETHNOLOGIE
NEO-STRUCTURALISM
(LEACH, GLUCKMAN,
BARTH, BAILEY,
STRATHERN)
1980
1990
2000
Schools and
analytical theories
in abeyance
Main duality:
Political Economy
vs.
Interpretive &
Deconstructionist
approaches
MAUSS — LÉVI-STRAUSS:
FRENCH STRUCTURALISM
MODERN PERIOD
POSTMODERN PERIOD
2010