What is Ecology?

28. 28
population can only lead to competition between men and pig. The
role of ancestor is to encourage maximum efforts at pig raising and
at the sometime to see to it that the pigs do not destroy women and
the gardens. The partial taboo is thus an ecologically effective
strategy is that system to maintain long term sustainability.
4.6 GARDENING AND OTHER ANIMALS
This type of gardening farms and animal complex at a symbiotic
and stable equilibrium is not very uncommon in the wooded hills
allover India. In the Western Ghats of India the Areca nut and
coconut gardens are very good examples of a complex ecosystem
very efficiently exploited by the natives. In Uttar Kannad district of
Karnataka a particular community of the Havoc Brahmins practice a
similar gardening and animal husbandry. The care of areca nut
garden is the nucleus around which life revolves in Uttar Kannada.
There gardens are located in the west evergreen forests of the
Western Ghats. Great care is taken to choose a site for the garden.
Red soapy soil is considered the best. The garden is ideally to be
faced earth, on the evening sun is believed to be doing harm. The
garden needs shelter from the direct sun and leaf manure, which is
procured by securing an outer belt of forest and bush wood. The
gardens are fenced with live thorns bushes and bamboo. A ditch
three to four deep surrounds the garden. Inside the garden
trenches run parallel to each other in the direction of the length of
the valley. The garden needs unfailing supply of water, which is
commonly brought from, spring. To keep the gar-den productive the
soil has to be manured once in two years, biological manure from
cattle husbanded mainly for this purpose and dry and wet twigs
branches and leaves are specially collected for this purpose. The
garden's being vegetarian only drink milk from the indigenous short
but study breeds of cattle. The local tribe communities employed as
contract labor however do consume beef and farm. They have
small plots of lands to grow paddy for domestic consumption and
the stalk is fed to the cattle in addition to grazing them in forest
lands. The gardens make use of the micro climatic variations in the
30 to 40 feet fall Areca nut palms. The gardens are interspersed
with banana trees, at the foot of the palms are planned cardamom
bushes and twinning around the palm stems are pepper and battle
leaf wires. Thus the gardens, animal husbanding, paddy farms and
the human communities for a homeostatic ecosystems where the
homeostatic is maintained by human being who act as mediators
for timely intervention in this resource complex and to reap the
profits from it. Their interventions are guided by their belief systems
about the functioning of the eco-systems and are built into their
work practices. This resource complex has existed for the part
several centuries with little or no change (Bapat J 1989)
4.7 SUMMARY

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Thus to conclude the cultural ecology paradigm for the fort time
acknowledges that the Man-environment relationship cannot be
understood using uni-linear causal paradigms. Infact the very idea
of aiming at universal laws on the lines of evolutionary adaptation
and national selection is not appropriate to understand man-
environment relationship. It requires unique methods and unique
paradigms that would take into account the world views of human
being including the role of culture and technology in human
adaptation to their environment. Human being to their environment
by modifying it through culture and technology. Thus there is a
feedback loop a functional interconnectedness that needs to be
incorporated in the theory that captures man environment
4.8 REFERENCES
1) Bapat Jyotsna 1989 Man environment relationship. Towards a
critical human ecology Ph.D dissertation, Dept. of H & SS, NT
Bombay (unpublished).
2) Hanis Marnn 1969, Rise of entomological theory. History of
theories in culture London, Route ledge and Kegan Paul.
Rapport Roy (1971), Flow of energy in an agricultural society,
scientific American 224, 3PP 117-132.
Steward Julian (1955), Theory of cultural change, Urbana
University of Illiois Press.
4.9 QUESTION
1) What are the salient features of cultural ecology ?

5
ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINISM
AND POSSIBALISM
5.0 Objective
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Contribution of early anthropologists
5.3 Relation between anthropology archaeology

30. 30
5.4 Ecological theory and ethnic differentiation among human
population
5.5 Summary
5.6 References
5.7 Question
5.0 OBJECTIVE
1) To makes students aware about the ecological conditions and
direction of human development.
2) To acquaint students technological conditions and its impact on
social organization of society.
5.1 INTRODUCTION
Not only Prehisheria's but anthropologists too have used
archeological remains and linked them to their own discipline to
show the links between cultural and natural areas. The first
question they asked is Did specific ecological conditions stimulate
human development in a certain direction, did it have a limited
force, or if once stimulated, did development proceed on its own
5.2 CONTRIBUTION OF EARLY ANTHROPOLOGISTS
WISSLER
Broker and Clark Wissler were inspired by Otis Mason's 'Migration
and Food Quest". A study in the peopling of America" 1895. They
were convinced there was correspondence between cultural and
natural arras over the entire new world. Wissler indicated "there
was some kind of determinist influence had to be operating from
environment to culture. He was especially surprised by the fact that
when a map of North American 'ecological areas was placed over a
map of the cultural areas, not only did the two line up, but the
centers of the representative areas were the same for both the
cultural and natural features. He was baffled why it was so. Wissler
was convinced that in so far the environment influenced the cultural
areas, it was though the effects of food production. But he qualified,
the influence of the environment appears as a passive limiting
Agency rather than a casual factor in tribal life, and it became
difficult and confusing when he tried to explain the uniformity of
subsistence practices within a cultural area. He explained this by
the alleged advantage which occurs to the tribes of a region when
they all exploit the same resource. Wissler was thus unable to
formulate the essential ingredients in a homothetic approach to the
culture environment relationship. Wissler had no idea how, in
general, the techno-environmental conditions could be
nomothetically related to the social organizations and ideology.

31. 31
Darylt Forde on culture and environment
Forde was convinced that environment had a strong influenced in
shaping a peoples culture but was disinclined to express it in
homothetic terms. His main contribution say Marvin Hauis, was to
warn geographers that they could not hope to understand cultures
as mere reflexes of environment since each culture had the power
to take out of the environment or to stream those aspects of it which
hysterical events inclined to it to take into consideration.
Forde goes on to say that even if he could discover determinist
principles by which techno economic patterns could be related to
the environment, one should still confront an impasas in trying to
relate these patterns to the rest of the culture.
Julian steward, economic and social bases of primitive bands.
The above noted work of Steward is regarded as an important
achievement of anthropology; it is the first coherent statement of
how the interaction between culture and environment can be
studied in casual terms without reverting to the geographical
determination or historical particularize. There is a double focus first
on identification of cross culturally valid forms of social organization,
and secondly his explanation, Bonds occur among widely
separated hunting and gathering people in many different part of
the world. A bond is type of social organization distinguished by its
political autonomy, a small population made up of several nuclear
families whose access to land is controlled by ownership privileges
vested in the larger group. Having established the major type of
several dozen recorded cases, Steward classified them into
patrilineal, composite and matrilineal sub types. He took note of the
low level technologies applied to various types of habitants. His
contribution was to explain how despite the diversity of environment
and technologies associated with band organized societies, there
remained, underlying of ecological commonalties which gave rise to
a general type. This formation surpassed crude environmental
determinism which makes no provision for cultural variables, but it
also imposed human geography known as possibalism.
There were some superflows limitations, Steward had not in one
stroke severed her ties to particularism for instance, among the
many factors responsible for patrilinear Bands Steward noted that
the band size is restricted not by ecological relation but rather by
some social factor which nevertheless brought about the
occupation of small parcels of territory by correspondingly small
groups. Despite such lapses, steward intended to produce a
statement of nonmothetic causality based upon techno
environmental regulaties. It is unfortunate steward operated with a
non-statistical concept of causality. The signifiance of Steward's
analysis of bands is that it showed how the interaction between
technology and environment could explain most of the important

32. 32
structural and ideological features of low energy hunter gathers in
most of the known examples without utilising historical or other
ideographic modes of explanation. In his paper on Mutsib
communities Steward was emphasisng that given a certain set of
environmental and technologies conditions, the transition from band
to sib is highly predicatable in a sufficiently large sample.
Juxtaposing the new world sequences known from northern Peru
and central Mexico with available summaries of events in
Mesopotamia Egypt and North Chine, Steward demonstrated
degree of development parallelism which dwarfed all of the
stupendous phenomena reffered to by sapic. In all the five regions,
steward identified a sequence which involved a roughly paralled
development through the same stages. Stewards trial formulation of
the developmental sequence in the five centres of ancient
civilization was not intended to exhaust all the possible routes
which cultures have followed towards complex, state organization.
Rather the trajectories he outlined were those assumed to be
characteristics sequence of a particular type viz. irrigation or
hydraulic civilization stewards ideas at this point converged with the
theories of Karl Wittfogel.
Wittfogel - in 1926 Wittfogel had began to apply a cultural
ecological approach to the explanations of the pecularities of
Chinese and other 'Asiatic' societies. In Wittfogels early formulation
these system were characterised as mighty hydraulic bureaucracy,
whose despotic control over the densely populated ancient states of
China, India and Egypt arose from the techno-environmental
exigencies of large scale irrigation, and other fours of water control
in regions of scant rainfall. The realisation that the evolution of
oriental societies had followed a path substantially different from
those European was quite common among the scholars of
enlightenment. Wittfogels analysis of functional inter-dependence of
the main features of the social organisation and techno - economic
patterns of irrigation civilization led him to stress the general
importance of environmental parameters in understanding of social
5.3 RELATIONS BETWEEN ANTHROPOLOGY AND
ARCHAEOLOGY
The links between cultural anthropology and archaeology came in
late thirties and early forties with the excavations in Peru carried out
by W.D. strong and his student, Gordon Willey. In the view Valley, a
complex of domesticated beans, squash and cotton were identified
at the based of a large mound, with an estimated date of 2500 B.C.
A continuous evolutionary sequence was obtained in the mound ad
in the adjacent sites leading from incipient agriculture through
several stages of village life upto the lowland irrigation states which
were ultimately absorbed by the Inca empire, Of special interest in

33. 33
this sequence was the phase identified by Steward as the
formative, when maize was introduced and irrigation techniques
took over the main subsistence load. The entire sequence is wholly
intelligible as a product of endogamous forces, increasing
productivity, increasing population density, multiplication of village
sites, warfare inter village and later inter-valley co-ordination of
production processes, increasing social stratification and
bureaucratic control of production and distribution, centralization of
power, feedback to greater productivity, and population density. If
contacts with the old world had occurred during the 2500 to 3000
years which were required for the shift autonomous village to state
organisation, nothing vital to the dynamics of the process seems to
have resulted there from.
The only possible exception was maize, which obviously had not
been domesticated on the Peruvian coast. No wild ancestors of the
plant had been identified, wild ancestors of corn have been
identified in Mexico, but radio carbon 14 daks have confused a
period gradual experimentation with domerticated varieties
extending back to 7000 B.C. in the Tehuachan valley of central
Mexico. The proof that the American domesticated corn is taint
amount to a proof that they were capable of achieving every either
technologies innovation associated with the New world sequence
independently of diffusion from the old. Given the combination
Homo sapiens, a nutritive and hardy grain, semi arid valley, ample
sources of water terrain. Adaptable to irrigation, it was highly
probable that irrigation civilizations would evolve, not once but
again and again.
5.4 ECOLOGICAL THEORY AND ETHNIC
DIFFERENTATION AMONG HUMAN POPULATION.
How relevant is ecological theory to explain human ethnic
differentiation plant and animal ecologists have employed it. William
Abruzzi attempts to do it (Arbuzzi 1982 current anthropology vol.
2.3 P13) Arbuzzi first premises in that ecology is not necessarily a
biological science, rather ecological systems have been modelled
as energy flow system determined by the their odynamic principal
(Margaloff 1968 Odum 1971 pp37-85) Because ecological
principles areindependent of the specific biological communities
and they have structural similarities that suggest the value of their
being analysed from an unified ecological perspective. The
fundamental units of human and non human communities alike are
variables in size and comparison and respond to special and
temporal variation in abundance and distribution of resources. ,
Finally both human and non human transform potential energy into
social organisation, and the process that generate The division of
labour (resources partioning) appears to be important to the
organisation of human committees on they are to the evolution of

34. 34
non human systems. Abruzzin tries to saw the formation and
maintenance of ethnic boundaries may be one area of social
behaviour that could benefit for explicit application of ecological
theory. The traditional authropological use of ethnic unit concepts
resulted in naive oversimplification and is derived from a historical
approach. Traditional approaches based upon a static conception
of discrete ethnic groups proved incapable of dealing with the
dynamics of new concerns. A more faithfull recent approach to the
question of ethnic boundary formation have been those that
employed ecological or material focus and have concentrated upon
competition over scares resources in conjunction with the
application of labour required for efficient resources exploitation.
Ethnic groups are not different species. Species are genetic units
connected by ability to exchange hereditary material, while ethnic
groups are social units with much lesser degree of biological
integrity or meaning. The decisive criterion is not fertility of the
individuals but reproductive isolation of a propulaiton , Defining
species boundaries is by no means clear, fertility is not a criterion of
a species status among local population Population biologist and
ecologist have directly concerned themselves with mechanisms and
processes producting changes in species boundaries among the
local population and with the relation with speciation and species
replacement have to the evolution of encompassing ecological
committees. An ethnic unit is difficult to define. A cultunit defined by
Norot is interms of language, ecological adjustment and loclal
community structure. It is difficult to use socio-cultural traits to
define ethnicboundaries Problems associated with ethnic unit
boundaries arise from the contradiction of imposing a static
classificatory scheme no matter how necessary upon inherently
variable, evolutionary phenomenal. Ethnic units in this specific
committees, like local speries population are prevailing ecological
condition. The discreteness of species and ethnic units alike,
appear greater the more complex and broadly adapted members of
each class, perhaps became of greater breadth of their respective
niches and the evolutionary exclusion of class competition that this
Marriage assumes central importance in the definition and analysis
of an ethnic population. The extent of endogamy indicates the
degree of ethno differentiation within the community. Definition of
an ethnic population serve principally to distinguish that unit from
other less developing social groups. This suggest that the
organisation of an ethic population is more complex and
encompassing than that of other social units. Neither clear species
nor ethnic distinction is accepted by Aleruzzi. Rather, he says the
discreteness of species and ethnic population alike must be
recognized as determined buy the local ecological conditions and
then variable from one community to another and commonly within
the same commonly through time, since both species and ethnic

35. 35
boundaries function to regulate competing populations access to
resources, the recognition that in one care the proximate cause
(mechanism) of behaviour may be largely inherited while in the
other they may be primarily learned should not preclude the
possibility that the ultimate causes (selective pressures) in both
cases may be the same.
Anbuzzi explain the implication of selection theory for the farmation
of ethnic population. In certain human communities it may be
energetically cheaper for distinct population to exploit limited and
non-overlapping sets of resources, with each population trading its
surplus to neighbouring populations centred in different niches, than
one undifferentiated population to exploit the total range of available
resources. The distinct requirement imposed for successful
exploitation for instance of a herding or a hunting (nomadic) niche
contrasts sharply with those needed to occupy a farming niche. The
survival of gazing animal demands the animals be mobile in their
search for pastimes. Human population that exploit there animals
hunt like-wise be mobile. Farmers on the other hand, must remain
stationary to tend their land and crops. Each adaptation demands a
repertoire of supportive behaviour. An energetic advantage thus
clearly exists, under certain conditions, for distinct populations
concentrated in each of these two niches, rathy than one uniform
population exploiting both plant and animal resources.
The demand of extensive trade within pre-industrial communities
are effectively overcome by the concentration of trade in one
distinct population. Again for instance population agriculture
involved the use of large amounts of land for the purpose of raising
labour intensive cash crops. Since the demand for unskilled labour
limits its annual productive value, the labour in plantation system
has historically been obtained primarily through solvey, immigration,
or employment of migrant workers. There three context are
examples in anthropological literature of the evolution of distince
adaptations among pontentially competing population. They also
furnish.instances of pronounced ethnic distinctions within the
human communities. Over competition, while not absent has been
reduced through the development of more or less symbolic
relations, imposed in past by the greater power of the dominant
population, and through the institution of complex regulations
regarding ethnic interactions, particularly intermarriage. Inequility
exists in such relationships however, constant with comparative
energy flows in other ecological communities ethnic interaction with
human communities are asymmetrical and function to maintain,
even increase, the differential organisation and control that exists.
Abruzzi goes on to argue niche diversification through competitive
exclusion may result in human population achieving an equilibrium
in which they exchange the products of their differentiated niches.
The potential for developing symbiotic relationships is perhaps
more charactestics of human competitors than of most other

36. 36
population. This is illustrated by consistent development of
interdependence between contiguous nomadic are sendentary
population throughout much of Africa and the Middle East. As with
non-human population, however competition among human
population's is potentially variable.
In so much as endogamy maintains local ethnic distinction,
selection would specifically favour those mechanisms that reduced
the incidence of inter marriage among the ethnic populations in
communities where ethnic specialisation occurs. Although the
specific cluster of isolating mechanisms varies from one human
community to another, understandable ecological conditions the
number of independent isolating mechanisms separating two or
more local ethnic population should increase with time.
Reproductive isolation underlies the recurring pattern of ethnic
relations associated with the expanding pioneer populations. Initial
flexible interactive evolve into more rigid stereotype exchanges on
the number of immigrants increase and the competition over
resources intensifies Anglo-American relations in the American wert
is said to provide an example of this pattern.
The formation and maintenance of distinct ethnic population is
viewed as function of niche diversification at the community level.
The selective advantage of clear ethnic, boundaries, evolves
primarily from the demands imposed upon labour. Labour demands
inturn are viewed by Abrazzi as a function of the specific pattern
and intensity of resources exploitation imported upon the local
communities, for example by the population or colonial domination.
Where the 0& demands of a specific productive system places a
selective premiums upon discrete populations, the efficiency .of
human information processing and group co-ordination are
increased by the existence of clear and unambiguous boundaries
separating these populations. Clear ethnic boundaries are said to _\
\^function to improve productive efficiency by reducing the
likelihood of competition between members of interacting
population within the community.
Since the organisation of population within any ecological
community is a function of the availability and distribution of
resources, break down in the barriers to marriage betweencthnic
population results from a change in the conditions of resource
exploitation to a situation favouring a different community
organization, perhaps even one uniform population. The
emergence decline, and transformation of socially significant ethnic
units have been ubiquitous and may be seen as adaptive
responses to the change of material demand imposed at the
community level.
5.5 SUMMARY

37. 37
Inspired by the archaeological finding is North and South American,
anthropologists who were probing into the life and living of the local
people were inspires to investigates into the question of
environmental influences on their pattern of growing, starting first
with agriculture. They were by and large careful not to fall into the
trap of environmental determination and struggled hard also to
avoid environmental possiblism or have an geography. These
questions are looked at historically, starting with Clarke Wissler.
The field of investigation has widened out only two instances a
pattern of agricultural change and ethnic differentation of a
population are given as illustrative material in this section.
5.6 REFERENCES
1. Marvin Hawis - Rise of anthropological theory
2. William Abrizzi 1982, Ecological theory and ethnic
differentation among human population current anthropology
vol. 23
3. J. L. Collins 1982, seasonal migration as on cultural response.
Current anthropology vol 24, 1, Feb 1983.
5.7 QUESTION
1) Briefly discuss ecological determination and possibalism.

6
CLASSICAL SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
6.0 Objective
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Environmental changes and rapid degradation of environment
Labor in
6.3 Transition
6.4 Origin of tools
6.5 Anthomy Gidden
6.6 Criticism on the view of Giddens
6.7 Andre Gorz and political economy
6.8 Summary
6.9 References
6.10 Question

38. 38
6.0 OBJECTIVE
1) To make students aware about the environmental degradation
and the perception of classical sociologist on environment.
2) To acquaint students with the view of contemporary thinkers
and classical thinkers on environment degradation.
6.1 INTRODUCTION
Contemporary social thinkers say a lot about environmental
degradation, however this perception is not shared by the classical
sociologist e.g. comte and Spencer consider sociology to be directly
dependent on biology. Weber has shown little concerned with the
natural world. Durkheim did make the u natural world a casual
factor in human history but non-classical theorists raised casual
question on structural origin of environmental degradation.
6.2 ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES AND RAPID
DEGRADATION OF ENVIRONMENT.
What have contemporary social theorists to say about
environmental degradation. The theoretical legacy left by classical
masters like Comte and Spencer, Dukheim and webs have
substantial limitations. U Comte and Spencer consider sociology to
be epistemologically and ontologically dependent on and
subordinate to biology. Comte only draw on biological analogies
and metaphors of from and function and the relationship between
organism and organs to explore the interrelationship of individuals
and institution in modern societies, Spencer would rightly be called
Darwinist although he anticipated Darwin. Weber shows little
concern with the natural world. Though Durkheim did make natural
world a casual factor in human history, none of there classical
theorist raise crucial questions on the structural origins of
environment degradation. Classical sociological theories therefore,
have substantial limitation to explain environmental changes and its
rapid degradation.
Marx, a classical theorist, on the other hand made humans a part of
nature, and he laid the foundation for political economy. Talcott
persons one of the great masters and one of the foremost theorists
of the present Century gives a static model of human society and
has nothing to say on natural environment. In other words, classical
sociological theory does not possess an adequate conceptual
framework to understand complex inter relation between a society
and its environment, how the societies have transferred the natural
environment and the negative consequences of such

39. 39
transformation on society. Marx, also a classical theorist, on the
other hand made human a part of nature and how they enter into
relationship with nature and with one another and the relations are
not only social but simultaneously economic and political. In other
worlds, he was abo making room for political economy.
Labor in transition
The first operations which our ancestors gradually learned to adopt
their hands during the thousands of year of transition could have
been only a very simple one. Even the most primitive are for
superior. Much time must have passed before the human hands
fashioned flint into a Knife. This was decisive step indicating how
the hands become free and would began to attain greater dexterity
and flexibility and this would be inherited from generation to
Engels says that the hands is not only an organ of labor but it is
also a product of labor, gained by repeated effort and passed on to
the progeny. It was not merely the hand that evolved but the rest of
the body too e.g. The feet for the erect gait kept pace with it as a
result of laws of correlation of growth, as Darvin called it. Mastery
over nature began with the development of the hand, with labor,
and widened man's horizon. With every advance he was continually
discovering new, hither to unknown properties in natural objects.
One the other hand, the development of labor necessarily helped to
bring the members of society closes together by increasing the
cases of mutual support and joint activity, by making clear the
advantage of joint activity to each individual. In short, they had
something to say to each other. Necessity creates an organ, the
undeveloped larynx developed modulations, and the organ of the
mouth gradually learned to pronounce one articulate sound after
another. In other words Engels tried to establish the origin of
language through the process of labor. No other animal requires
articulate speech. The dog and the horse through association with
man have developed such a good ear that they easily learn to
understand any language within their range of concepts.
First labor, than with it speech there was the two most essential
stinule under which the brain of the ape changed into that of the
man. Hand in hand with the development of brain went the
development of its most immediate senses and the corresponding
refinement of hearing and the other senses, the eye, smell and
touch. The ape hardly possess the sense of touch. The dog has a
keener sense of smell than man, but it does not distinguish a
hundredth part of the odors that for men are definite signs devoting
different things. The reaction on labor and speech on the
development of the brain and its attendant senses, of the increasing
clarity of consciousness, power of abstraction and conclusion, gave
labor and speech an ever - renewed impulse to further
development. This development did not reach its conclusion when