Environmental Anthropology

Intermediate

Environmental anthropology is a subfield of anthropology that examines the complex relationships between human societies and their natural environments across time and space. It draws on cultural anthropology, archaeology, biological anthropology, and ecological science to understand how people perceive, interact with, manage, and transform the landscapes and ecosystems they inhabit. Rather than treating nature and culture as separate domains, environmental anthropology investigates how they are mutually constituted, with human practices shaping environments and environmental conditions shaping social organization, belief systems, and livelihoods.

The field emerged from earlier traditions in cultural ecology and ecological anthropology during the mid-twentieth century, pioneered by scholars such as Julian Steward, Roy Rappaport, and Marvin Harris. Steward's concept of cultural ecology examined how environmental factors influenced cultural adaptations, while Rappaport's work among the Tsembaga Maring of Papua New Guinea demonstrated how ritual practices functioned as ecological regulatory mechanisms. Over time, the field moved beyond deterministic and functionalist models toward approaches that foreground political power, historical processes, and Indigenous knowledge systems, giving rise to political ecology and multispecies ethnography.

Today, environmental anthropology addresses urgent global challenges including climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, water scarcity, and environmental justice. Researchers use ethnographic methods to document how local and Indigenous communities experience and respond to environmental transformations, how conservation policies affect marginalized populations, and how traditional ecological knowledge can complement Western science. The field contributes critical perspectives to sustainability debates by insisting that environmental problems are always also social, cultural, and political problems that require attention to power, inequality, and diverse ways of knowing.

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Key Concepts

An approach developed by Julian Steward that examines how environmental conditions influence cultural adaptations and social organization. It focuses on the 'culture core' -- the constellation of features most closely related to subsistence activities and economic arrangements.

Example

Steward's analysis of Great Basin Shoshone bands showed how the sparse, scattered distribution of wild seeds and game shaped small, flexible family units rather than large permanent settlements.

A framework that analyzes environmental issues through the lens of political economy, examining how power relations, economic structures, and institutional forces shape access to and control over natural resources, and how environmental change differentially affects social groups.

Example

Research showing how commercial shrimp aquaculture in coastal Bangladesh displaced subsistence rice farmers, concentrating profits among elites while degrading local mangrove ecosystems that the poor depended on.

The cumulative body of knowledge, practices, and beliefs about the relationships between living beings and their environment, developed by Indigenous and local peoples through generations of direct interaction with ecosystems and transmitted culturally.

Example

Aboriginal Australian fire management practices, sometimes called 'fire-stick farming,' involve controlled low-intensity burns that reduce wildfire risk, promote new plant growth, and maintain habitat diversity.

The cross-cultural study of how different peoples perceive, classify, and interact with their natural environments. It includes sub-disciplines such as ethnobotany, ethnozoology, and ethnosoil science, documenting local systems of ecological knowledge and nomenclature.

Example

The Tzeltal Maya of Chiapas, Mexico, maintain a detailed folk taxonomy of soils with over forty named types, each associated with specific agricultural practices and crop suitabilities.

An emerging approach that extends ethnographic attention beyond humans to examine the entangled lives of humans and nonhuman organisms -- animals, plants, fungi, and microbes -- challenging the anthropocentric boundaries of traditional social science.

Example

Anna Tsing's ethnography of matsutake mushrooms traces how the fungi thrive in human-disturbed forests, connecting Japanese gourmet markets, Hmong and Latino foragers in Oregon, and post-industrial landscapes.

A concept and social movement addressing the disproportionate burden of environmental hazards -- pollution, toxic waste, resource extraction -- borne by marginalized communities defined by race, ethnicity, class, or geography.

Example

The siting of petrochemical plants along the Mississippi River corridor in Louisiana, known as 'Cancer Alley,' disproportionately affects African American communities, illustrating how environmental racism shapes exposure to industrial toxins.

Natural resources -- such as fisheries, forests, pastures, and water systems -- that are shared by a community and are subject to depletion. Anthropologists study how communities develop institutions and norms to manage commons sustainably, often challenging the 'tragedy of the commons' narrative.

Example

Elinor Ostrom's research documented how lobster fishers in Maine self-organized harbor territories and informal rules that prevented overharvesting, without requiring government regulation or privatization.

A concept introduced by Alfred Crosby describing how European colonialism transformed environments worldwide through the deliberate and accidental introduction of Old World species -- crops, livestock, pathogens, and weeds -- that displaced Indigenous ecologies and peoples.

Example

The introduction of cattle, sheep, and European grasses into the Americas and Australasia radically altered grassland ecosystems, while Old World diseases decimated Indigenous populations who lacked immunity.

The capacity of social-ecological systems to absorb disturbance, reorganize, and maintain essential functions. Environmental anthropologists study how communities build resilience through flexible institutions, diversified livelihoods, and cultural practices that buffer against environmental shocks.

Example

Pacific Island communities in Vanuatu draw on traditional knowledge of cyclone-resistant house construction, food preservation techniques, and inter-island exchange networks to recover from increasingly frequent tropical storms.

A proposed geological epoch defined by the dominant influence of human activities on Earth's climate and ecosystems. Environmental anthropologists critically examine the concept, asking which humans bear responsibility and how the narrative of a universal 'human' impact obscures inequalities in who drives and who suffers from environmental change.

Example

Scholars point out that attributing climate change to humanity as a whole obscures the fact that the wealthiest 10 percent of the global population produces roughly half of all carbon emissions, while the poorest bear the greatest consequences.

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Curriculum alignment— Standards-aligned

Grade level

College+

Learning objectives

•Identify how different cultures conceptualize nature-society relationships through indigenous knowledge systems and cosmologies
•Apply ethnographic methods to document how local communities manage natural resources and adapt to environmental change
•Analyze the political ecology of resource conflicts by examining power dynamics between communities, states, and corporations
•Evaluate environmental justice frameworks that integrate anthropological perspectives on displacement, contamination, and indigenous land rights

Recommended Resources

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Books

Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People

by Roy Rappaport

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing

Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900

by Alfred W. Crosby

Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action

by Elinor Ostrom

Courses