Ecological Anthropology

Ecological anthropology is a subfield of anthropology that deals with human-environmental (culture-nature) relationships over time and space. It investigates the ways that a population shapes its environment and the subsequent manners in which these relations form the population s social, economic, and political life (Salzman and Attwood 1996:169). Ecological anthropology applies a systems approach (Ellen 1982; Hardesty 1997; McGee 1996) to the study of the interrelationship between culture and the environment. At the heart of contemporary ecological anthropology is an understanding that proceeds from a notion of the mutualism of person and environment (Ingold 1992:40) and the reciprocity between nature and culture (Harvey 1996). In the 1960s, ecological anthropology first appeared as a response to cultural ecology, a sub-field of anthropology headed by Julian Steward. Steward focused on studying different modes of subsistence as methods of energy transfer and then analysed how they determine other aspects of culture.