historicizing rappaport's pigs for the ancestors

8/2/13 Historicizing Rappaport's Pigs for the Ancestors

classes.yale.edu/02-03/anth500a/projects/project_sites/99_Gil/PaperPFA.html 1/29

Historicizing Roy Rappaport's Pigs for the Ancestors

by

Vladimir Gil

Department of Anthropology Yale University

Paper prepared for the course Seminar in Socio-Cultural Anthropology (Part 2)

Yale University Professor William Kelly

May, 1999

CONTENTS



Introduction

I.The anthropological context of PFA

1.Functionalism and neofunctionalism

2. Cultural ecology, human ecology or ecological anthropology: styles in three ethnographies for environmental

studies in anthropology

2.1 Three ethnographies: Conklin (1957), Geertz (1963) and Rappaport (1968)

2.2 Cultural ecology, Human Ecology and Ecological Anthropology

3. Debate of interpretive emics (native point of view) versus explanatory etics (external observer/"science")

4. Materialism vs. vulgar materialism and interpretive

II.Influences and effects beyond anthropology

1.Postwar context and neomarxism in the critic of ecological approaches

2.Borrowing concepts from natural sciences for the study of environmental relations in anthropology

2.1 Analogies and Concepts in Anthropology

2.2 Concepts borrowed in PFA

3. The anthropological contribution to the critique of modern models of the environment

Conclusions

Bibliography

Introduction

As an undergraduate in Peru[1], I was exposed to works that can be categorized under the tradition of ecological

anthropology[2].In my university I was particularly impressed by the studies of professor John Earls (1989), a

physicist and anthropologist, who attended Michigan as a student of Rappaport.He tried to apply the cybernetic

approach to a research based on an archaeological site called Moray (Earls 1989)[3].I also remember myself

impressed by reading Durkheim's The suicide and Rappaport's Pigs for the Ancestors (PFA) as attempts to

systematically understand and test social order.These issues of scientific method and approach within the

parameters of natural sciences are always discussed in the social sciences.

http://classes.yale.edu/02-03/anth500a/projects/project_sites/99_Gil/PaperPFA.html#_ftn1





At the end of my studies, I participated in a group production of a video ofMoray and Earl's research[4], and as we

tried to explain the complex Earl's hypothesis ("cybernetic" in the mathematical formulations) for the management

of the Andean geographic variety I became curious about the effects of ecological anthropology studies --and

anthropology in general-- as a way to a better understand Andean geographic verticality and also some of the

implications of these kinds of studies, such as for example, making some a case against ethnocentrism.Moreover,

we can take some lessons from that time when they dealt with that kind of environmental risk of droughts and

frozens, and to what extent this could be comparable with the present market framework in that sense.On the other

hand, how could concepts such as adaptation or homeostasis be tools for understanding living in such conditions of

variability and diversity of the environment.

All the interests mentioned above motivated me to work for our course and learn from Rappaport's ethnography

and context.As recognizing the importance of the context in myself, for my research questions in anthropology, I

became aware and interested in the context of PFA.For this paper the major attempt related to the historiography

of our discipline, will be trying to contextualize this "classic" ethnography.This task has two main aspects for

me.First, I tried to approach the most recognized step in the career of a recognized character in the history of our

discipline, who developed anthropology with a cross-subfield and interdisciplinary interest.He made archaeological

fieldwork, before making this ethnography, and his interest of the relationship between society and the environment

is shared by the most of the subfields in our discipline.Nowadays, I can see this alternative approach as a challenge

to have an holistic approach as a valid position facing the superspecialization of careers and techniques.Personally, I

enjoy the freedom of the idea of holistic approach, but also I think that superespecialization has become part

justified by the complexity of the topics in anthropology, say society and culture[5].Second, because as

representative of one of the most important ethnographies within the ecological anthropology paradigm, this

approach could be a key to understand the process of the different models within this label, and its relations to the

discipline in general.Finally, I was convinced to see the underpinnings for our discipline in the problems of culture

and environment that interest me.To see how Rappaport framed this problem, why and how was he criticized could

offer some lessons about the different ways the relation between nature and culture is framed in anthropology.

In the first part I will analyze the context and transcendence of PFA within our discipline.The second part will

present the same aspects beyond explicit academic boundaries and icons in anthropology.I considered this division

of the context and meaning of PFA within and outside anthropology a methodological strategy to better focus and

narrow my topic and implications.In the attempt of historicizing this ethnography, the analytical tools used are the

different accounted impacts on authors and theories.The temporal part refers to the time PFA was written as an

attempt to understand how a book and the author corresponds (or not) to its time.Nevertheless, some considered

pertinent causes and consequences are established to shape the larger context of the making of the book and its

influences within and outside of anthropology.





I.The anthropological context of PFA

1. Functionalism and neofunctionalism

As stated by Rappaport in the epilogue to his revised edition of the book, the criticism of the book raised larger

problems of anthropological theory and method.One of the most important critics were focused on the approach of

the research and the ethnography exemplifying a new type of functionalism.Of course, if we consider paradigms

such as functionalism, we might be conscious of the ramifications of this approach,which go further from

anthropology; but we are going to consider here only the aspects directly related to the discussion of PFA.

Rappaport declares in the first sentence of PFA that the book is a "functional study".As mentioned before, much of

the criticism centered around this aspect (see for example, Ellen 1982; Friedman 1974; and Orlove 1980; in

Rappaport 1968/84: 345).He states that this study was born not merely as a follower of functionalist principles, but

from the "criticism" of this model (Rappaport 1968/84: 345).The approach of PFA was an example of what

Vayda[6] and Rappaport (1967) espoused in an essay, published a year before PFA.On that work they shaped a

sort of "more unified ecological approach" (Vayda and Rappaport 1967: 23) based on concepts from ecology.This

approach is justified with the idea that ecology was in the beginning considered very close to social sciences, and at

that time with a new recognition of the animal behavior as part of that approach, it could be considered also the

human behavior within the boundaries of ecology.In his foreword for the first PFA's version, Andrew Vayda stated

that the functional analysis in social sciences has been criticized in three ways:The first, is because of an

inadequacy for explaining origins of cultural traits and institutions, since more than one trait or institution may fulfill a

specified function, then demonstrating functions of particular traits cannot explain why, rather than some functional

alternatives, these should be present or should have developed in a particular place or time.He founded this as a

logical criticism but irrelevant to blame functionalists for looking for something they did not offered, as

origins[7].Functional anthropologists were looking for phenomenas as a demonstration of how things work,the

"operation of negative feedback systems".One example could be the analysis of rituals functioning to maintain a

number of variables or activities (more the ones related to material aspects) in certain appropriate or advantageous

states despite the action of disturbances tending to remove the variables or activities from those states (Vayda in

Rappaport 1968/84: viii) rather than why or how they come to be.This was the orientation of PFA, in looking for

how rituals operate in relation to various environmental processes and other Maring activities or institutions as land

use, warfare, food distribution. The second major critique was that the research was one-sided analysis, only

focusing on utility, harmony and integration, in the status quo.Vayda argued (in Rappaport 1968/84: viii) that looking

for coherence rather than the opposite is a “defensible” task on “heuristic grounds”.In other words, revealing a





pattern where there seems to be only chaos or irrationality is a defensible task.The third and last main critique

accounted by Vayda was that there was no objective of testing hypotheses in functional analysis because of the

lack of clear empirical import for crucial terms and concepts.Also, the idea of selecting variables and not the

“whole” society was criticized as an invitation to incompleteness.On the other hand, the recognition of this condition

and its limitations on one research framework could be considered as reasonable and realistic attitude, since the

investigator can never deal meaningfully with all of the infinite number of variables confronting him.In this way,

making a selection among the variables and progressively dealing with more systems could lead to a more

comprehensive analysis (Vayda in Rappaport 1968/84: ix, x)[8].

This kind of work, as the one in PFA, was labeled soon as "new ecology" to distinguish it from the older "cultural

ecology" formulated by Julian Steward (1955).According to Friedman (1974: 455-457 in Rappaport 1968:/84:345;

Ellen 1982: 190) the "new ecology" became identified as the "new functionalism" or "neo-functional ecology",

Orlove (1980: 242) called it a "neofunctionalist" ecological anthropology, and Ellen (1982: 190) also mentioned

"ecological functionalism".This term was used by Friedman for relating PFA directly to the "old functionalism",

although recognizing that the difference was in the field of application, which changed to show the rationality of

institutions with respect to their environments rather than to other elements in the society (Rappaport 1968/84: 345;

Ellen 1982: 190).Friedman (1974: 455 in Ellen 1982: 190) argues that in their "modest" form such analyses, of "the

new ecology" and its functionalism, dissolve into pure description and in their more sophisticated attempts are

explanations for adaptation of societies.Rappaport did not like that category assigned (1968/84: 341) saying that this

characterization would imply that values and preferences are explained by being reduced to the ecological functions

they serve.The other major critique, is that this current of thought identifies the rationality of the elements while

ignoring the rationality of systems (Friedman 1974: 459 in Ellen 1982: 190-191).Rappaport's Tsembaga data

described the ritual cycle which kept the pig population below a certain level.The situation does not follow that this

is necessarily a homeostatic mechanism.In other words:"causal statements must follow rational ones" (Ellen 1982:

190).

Rappaport (1968/84) argued that description is in itself worthwhile to ethnography, as a first step to analyze the

relationship of society and environment[9].Also, the statements of how the Tsembaga maintain, order, reproduce,

and transform themselves, as well as their elucidation about the parts of systems, might not merely be considered a

direct outcome of pig sacrifices, but part of a larger complex system (Rappaport 1968/84: 347).This is why terms

such as regulation might be considered external to mere description, and more part of an explanation.For

Rappaport, the "new ecology" was not the same as the old functionalism because when the field of application

changed (to show the rationality of institutions with respect to environments) a fundamental change had taken

place, to show also "organic and adaptive considerations" (Rappaport 1968/84: 352).Methodologically, it is important

to consider that Rappaport thought that "ecological" and "biological" criteria both contain a high degree of

"objectivity".Both are material and often amenable to quantification and viable limits for ecological and biological

variables, with adaptive criteria, "structural" and "quasi-logical" (PFA: 351).Under what can be called an holistic





view, he also stated that ecological, biological and adaptive theories can be organized and related to other

frameworks, such as psychology and humanistic criteria.Rappaport (1968/84: xv) manifested his disappointment by

what he considered the “wastefulness of our discipline” because of the moving on to new approaches without

having assimilated the lessons of older ones.He was against the tendency to claim too much for new ‘paradigms’,

expecting too much of them[10].By presenting his work as a critique of the functionalist paradigm, rather than in

opposition to that model, it is interesting to observe a characteristic of the intellectual work of Rappaport through his

life.He was always worried about fixing paradigms in anthropology, instead of changing paradigms and founding

something completely new.In this way he also manifested his pattern of development of a discipline, with

cumulative knowledge and paradigms.

2. Cultural ecology, human ecology or ecological anthropology: styles in three ethnographies for

environmental studies in anthropology

2.1 Three ethnographies: Conklin (1957), Geertz (1963) and Rappaport (1968)

This section undertakes a comparison of PFA with two other ethnographies, almost contemporary, for analyzing

different styles of research and analysis in environmental studies in anthropology[11].The comparison includes

Harold C. Conklin's Hanunóo Agriculture in the Philippines (1957/75) almost a decade before PFA, and a more

economicist version of Clifford Geertz in his Agricultural Involution (1963/74).The objective of the book in

Conklin's ethnography was to describe analytically the structure and content of a particular system of shifting

cultivation in the island of Mindoro in the Philippines (1957/75: 1).The contexts within offer alternative cultural

solutions to major problems faced by the shifting cultivator was investigated.Conklin recognized that in the literature

shifting cultivation referred to any agricultural system within which the critical limits and significant relations of time,

space, technique, and local ecology were rarely made explicit.Frequently, this kind of agriculture implied unplanned,

nomadic movement the cropping area, the agriculturists, or both.This work presents a detailed ethnography

accounting the agriculture and the cultural aspects around it (property, cycle of activities, social organization,

etc.).For Geertz (1963/74) the scientific task was to investigate the internal dynamics of ecosystems and the ways

in which they develop and change (1963/74: 3) something seen from the title[12] and developed in two periods of

time.In this case he analyzed "how much of the past growth and present state of Indonesian culture and society is

attributable to ecological processes" (Geertz 1963/74: 11).He differentiated two types of ecosystem, with two

different sorts of dynamics, within the system of agriculture as a way to increment the flow of energy to

man.These ecosystems were studied in two periods: the classical and the colonial period.The internal system

equilibrium or homeostasis is seen as the central organizing force, commonly referred to in this context as "the






balance of nature" (Odum 1959: 25 in Geertz 4).For Rappaport, the place of ritual in the Tsembaga ecology has

been the focus of his study (1968/84: 224).How the Maring ritual cycles serve, among other things, to regulate

warfare between adjacent groups and prevent environmental degradation.The regulatory functions of ritual is

explained in the following quote:

"The Tsembaga ritual cycle has been regarded as a complex homeostatic mechanism, operating to maintain thevalues of a number of variables within 'goal ranges' (ranges of values that permit the perpetuation of a system, asconstituted, through indefinite periods of time)" (Rapapport 1968/84: 224).

These three ethnographies have some aspects in common[13].As almost contemporaries[14], they share a tradition

of research of environment in anthropology.All of them have the perception of an stable ecology with the adaptation

of society in the ecosystem as central ideas, concepts borrowed from animal ecology (analyzed with more detail in

the second part of the paper).For Rappaport the regulatory function of ritual among the Tsembaga and other

Maring helps to:

"... maintain an undergraded environment, limits fighting to frequencies that do not endanger the existence of theregional population, adjusts man-land ratios, facilitates trade, distributes local surpluses of pig in the form of porkthroughout the regional population, and assures people of high-quality protein when they most need it" (Rappaport1968/84: 224).

At the level of units of analysis Conklin and Rappaport basically agree and Geertz gets further to the concept of

local population.The Tsembaga is the "local population" in its defined ecosystem.Although, other components of the

external world affect the local group, as they participate in a set of trophic exchanges, within this larger field where

land is redistributed through warfare.These are the "supralocal relations" for Rappaport.Geertz pushed further the

concept of a more political and less biological concept and use of ecosystem, including political frameworks beyond

local communities, as understood in biological places.In the case of Conklin, the study is concentrated in the local

population with some external influences.The aspect shared by the three ethnographies attempts to achieve more

exact specification of the relations between selected human activities, biological transactions and physical processes

by including them within a single analytical system, an ecosystem.However, Rappaport's analysis is more centered

on the quantitative aspects of regulation as the pattern of interchange of energy among the various components of

the ecosystem[15].Conklin is more involved in the native descriptions and classifications of the nature systems,

although he also dealt with exchange of energy within the ecosystem.

Although the three ethnographies contain ideas of change in socioecological systems, Geertz presented and

developed them in a very explicit way, by contrasting two clearly differentiated historical periods in a specific

ecosystem.He searched for "the internal dynamics of such systems and the ways in which they develop and

change” (Geertz 1963/74: 3).Conklin, and Rappaport were dealing with change in terms of the parameters that

allow the ecosystem to continue as viable.Conklin after a detailed native description of terms and taxonomies, also

explained that under the outlined cultural and natural conditions, that system required a minimum amount of

hectares (two) of cultivable land per person to maintain its present average (12-year swidden cycle).






These parameters were made under the consideration that the present land-population ratio is favorable (about 4

ha./person) and gives every evidence (e.g. three or more coconut groves in the vicinity of most settlement sites) of

having remained relatively stable over the last 75 to 100 years.Conklin considered the study of farming practices

over extended periods of continuous and highly significant environmental change an important topic in research of

swidden agriculture.For Rappaport (1968/84: 241) his emphasis was on studying the regulation of systems (how

they maintain their structure) rather than adaptation (how systems change in response to environmental pressures).

It is relevant to consider that each author had a different perception of the style his own work, and a part of a

special tradition.Geertz (1963/74: 6) considered his research might be considered within "cultural ecology", and

definitely did not agree with what he regarded as "human ecology".Conklin viewed his own research and discussion

in terms of the "ethnoecological interpretations" ofalternative solutions to the various general problems which arise

at each stage in the ordered sequence of the swidden cycle (Conklin 1957/75: 154).As mentioned at the beginning

of the paper, for Rappaport PFA was a study which materialized the kind of work proposed in his article with

Vayda (1967: 23) and constituted a sort of "more unified ecological approach" based on concepts from

ecology.Geertz presented his ethnography closer to the type of cultural ecology which he claimed to be adopted

from Julian Steward, who formulated the term “cultural ecology” (1955).According to Geertz (1963/74: 6), the

distinctive feature of his approach is a:

"... strict confinement of the application of ecological principles and concepts to explicitly delimited aspects ofhuman social and cultural life for which they are particularly appropriate rather than extending them, broadly and

grandly, to the whole of it".

Steward maintained that rather than thinking that all aspects of culture are in some indeterminate way, functionally

interrelated, the degree and kind of interrelationship is not the same in all aspects of culture, but varies.The

delimited space for the application of ecological principles was called by Steward "culture core".This center

included certain aspects in which functional ties with the natural setting are more explicit, the interdependency

between cultural patterns and organism-environment relationship is most apparent and more crucial.The cultural

ecology Geertz liked at that time trained attention to the system as equilibrium and change, "rather than the point-to-

point relationships between paired variables of the "culture" and "nature" variety" (Geertz 1963/74: 10).The latter

one was clearly used by Rappaport in the analysis of the Tsembaga rituals and environment.In other words, for

Geertz, different from Rappaport, systems are bounded but do not include everything.The ecosystem is defined

through the parallel discrimination of cultural core and relevant environment, and the question is how it is organized.

What degree and type of stability does it have (Geertz 1963/74: 10).For Vayda (in Rappaport 1968/84) this inclusion

could be an advantage, if we consider how he recognized that the merit of the "human ecologists" (implicitly

recognizing Rappaport's PFA under this category) was on including certain non-cultural variables in the systems

analyzed, something rarely done by most social scientists.He was arguing against the tendency to define cultural

variables as belonging to separate systems and then to ask about the influence of the systems upon one



another[16].Rappaport attempted to reverse this model in PFA: “how and when and to what degree are different

traits or variables, whether cultural or non-cultural, affected by one another” (Vayda in Rappaport 1968/84:

xi).Moreover, for Vayda, Rappaport with his approach of breaking the corporate boundaries, was giving also a

“fresh” approach in the study of religion.More recently, Rappaport (1994) wrote that PFA was expressly written as

a "reaction against the special form of ecology that Steward thought necessary to accommodate the concept of

culture" (Rappaport 1994: 167).

These three ethnographies represent a special moment in the intellectual career of each author.There it is the most

economicist or functional and perhaps materialist Geertz looking more for biological and economic aspects, as he

tend to recognize in an interview (Handler 1991) as one stage of his career, before becoming much more

interpretive[17].Rappaport made several self criticism of the initial publication with an almost new version of PFA,

sixteen years after.In his later works he emphasized his closer approach to meaning in anthropology.

2.2. Cultural ecology, Human Ecology and Ecological Anthropology

Following the history presented by Ellen (1982) we can assert that there were different models proposed within the

last hundred years to explain and examine certain aspects of the relationship between human behavior and

environment in an "anthropological idiom".The most important ones were determinism, possibilism and cultural

ecology.All these ideas derived from modern biology, energetics and systems theory (Ellen 1982: xii)[18].According

to Ellen (1982: 52), Steward has been the greatest single influence on ethnographic ecology to have come from

within anthropology, influenced by Wissler possibilism and Kroeber[19]. Cultural ecology applied to some

contemporary work influenced by explicitly biological concepts is confusing, since Steward rejected the idea ofthat

human ecology should be a kind of animal ecology, and upheld the strict analytical independence of culture as

"superorganic" (Ellen 1982: 281).For Ortner (1984: 132-134) cultural ecology was a new synthesis of the "material

evolutionism" of Leslie White (1949), Julian Steward (1955) and V.Gordon Childe (1942).Roots go back to Lewis

H. Morgan and E. B. Tylor in the nineteenth century, and ultimately to Marx and Engels[20].White[21] investigated

the "general evolution" or the evolution of culture-in-general, in terms of social complexity and technological

advancement.The evolutionary mechanisms derived from relatively fortuitous events: technological inventions that

allowed for the greater "capture of energy" and population growth that stimulated the development of more complex

forms of social/political organization (Ortner 1984: 132).Steward (1955) attacked both the focus on the evolution of

culture in general as opposed to specific cultures and the lack of a more systematically operative evolutionary

mechanism.Instead, he emphasized that specific cultures evolve their unique forms in the process of adapting to









certain environmental conditions, and that the apparent uniformity of evolutionary stages is actually a matter of

similar adaptations to similar natural conditions in different parts of the world (Ortner 1984: 132).

A key concept in cultural ecology was "adaptation" to environmental factors, as the way around such amorphous

factors as culture and historical dialectics could be studied.Internal dynamics were seen as hard to measure,

whereas external factors of natural and social environment were measurable, "independent variables".This aspect

was taken by Rappaport in PFA.Ortner considered variants of cultural ecology, the materialist wing, expressed

most forcefully by Marvin Harris (1966) and most "elegantly" by Rappaport (1968): these drew heavily on systems

theory.It shifted the analytic focus away from evolution and toward explaining the existence of particular bits of

certain cultures in terms of the adaptive or system-maintaining functions of those bits.Thus the Maring kaiko ritual

prevented the degradation of the natural environment (Rappaport 1968), the Kwatiutl potlatch maintained a balance

of food distribution over tribal segments (Piddochke 1969), and the sacredness of the cow in India protected as vital

link in the agricultural food chain (Harris 1966).In these studies, the interest has shifted from how the environment

stimulates (or prevents) the development of social and cultural forms to the question of the ways in which social

and cultural forms function to maintain an existing relationship with the environment.Julian Steward (Vayda and

Rappaport 1968: 9) goes further and sustained that the ecological cultural adaptations are not merely allowed by the

environment, but are creative process through technology, a sort of “technological determinism” (Ortner 1984:

14).For Sahlins the principal strength of cultural ecology is that it avoids circular functionalism (Baker 1962 in Ellen

1982: 58).Nevertheless, it was still "naive" as simple linear determinism and lack of history.

Nowadays, it seems to be clear that the area of anthropology for analyzing the relationships between nature and

culture within the discipline is called the term "general anthropology of environmental relations" or "ecological

anthropology" (see Ellen 1982: xi, 1996).This label is used to discriminate the paradigm of cultural ecology, just

explained (included in its history) and that particular approach to nature usually referred as "human ecology", more

related to biological models.Ellen (1982: xii) explains that the specialization might be "ecological" since the studies of

human population and temporal relations are under terms of spatial and temporal relations involving the exchange or

energy, material and information.It is also "anthropological" in opposition to narrowly "cultural" or "social" and in

contrast to an ecology focused on physiological and genetic relations.Geertz (1963/74: 5) considered human ecology

a "reductionist use of ecology".Instead, he underlines that when he refers an "ecology analysis"; he is concerned

with "determining the relationships which obtain between the processes of external physiology in which man is, in

the nature of things, inextricably embedded, and the social and cultural processes in which he is, with equal

inextricability, also embedded" (Geertz 1963/74: 5-6).In other words, his cultural ecology is more cultural than the

sociological ecology of PFA, that could be framed under this geertzian vision as too much reductionist ecology.

It seems that the emphasis of either ecology and sociology makes the difference on the preference for using one of



these labels.In consequence, within the case of the three ethnographies, we can label Rappaport's study under

human ecology, although he, perhaps, wouldn't accept this label.For the same reasons, Geertz's ethnography could

be labeled as cultural ecology and Conklin's lies under ethnoecology, more influenced by linguistics and the look for

local terms for nature.Vayda and Rappaport (1967: 16), following Conklin (1957/75), called this type of approach

“ethnoecology”[22]. For Vayda and Rappaport (1967: 20) the ethno-ecology approach is marked for understanding

the secret, latent or undercover functions of the environment[23].

3. Debate of interpretive emics (native point of view) versus explanatory etics (external

observer/"science")

To deal with the relationship between "natural law" and "cultural meaning" in human groups Rappaport proposed

(1963, 1968, 1971 in 1984 PFA edition) two models.The first one describe the ecological system through empirical

operations, based on metrical procedures (measures), a construction of the anthropologist.This is was he called the

"operational model".The second class, the "cognized model", "attempts to describe people's knowledge and beliefs

concerning their environments", the people who act in it (Rappaport 1968/84: 337).The operational model is likely to

include material elements, such as disease germs; and the cognized may include nonempirical elements, such as

spirits.Conklin (1957/75) and other "ethnoscientists" are grouped by Rappaport as good contributors to ethnographic

formalization of cognized models of a different sort (Rappaport 1968/84: 337).Rappaport states that ethnoecology is

only a part of his work, the "taxonomic formulations" cannot themselves represent native understandings of

systemic interactions among elements in their environment.

In PFA the account of Maring was "not in essence, taxonomic, although it included taxonomic elements".It did

attempt to illuminate relationships among components of the environment (including spirits), but it fell far short of

formal description.A more "formal" account of Maring’s understandings was presented in an article (Rappaport

1971) after the publication of PFA, accompanied by an elaborate diagram. Following this argument, we could

say that both Conklin's Hanunóo account and PFA are an attempt of a cognized model, but PFA went

further.The "operational model" is "an attempt to represent nature in the terms of Western science", this means

the model of relationships among significant material variables constructed by the analyst (independent of the

understandings of the actors), in accordance with empirical operations stipulated by appropriate methodological

canons(Rappaport 1968/84: 342).A operational model is subject to be discussed by others constructed in the

same portion of reality.Then, PFA could be conceived as an example of operational model, but more the model

presented in the 1971 article as a diagram of flows among the different "hierarchical" levels.

Is interesting to note that these two models were interpreted as something completely separated.Then there was a





question of to what extent control are deliberate or purposeful (Rappaport 1968/84: 320).Bennet (1976:62 in PFA:

320) claimed that "control... is not always, if ever, automatic; frequently, the system must be cognitively objectified

and arbitrarily modified".Rappaport admitted that must have been an error of interpretation in the way the book was

written or maybe read.He wrote:

"I probably did not emphasize sufficiently the role of conscious, pragmatic decision making in the affairs of theMaring.It did not occur to me that they would be noticed by readers in the course of the account even if theyremained, in part, implicit... [Moreover] nowhere in the text is there any suggestion that it is otherwise" (Rappaport

1968/84: 321).

In 1984's PFA Epilogue he states that the false dichotomy of native interpretation and explanation through science

is "unhappy".Rappaport (1968/84) manifested his consideration to the native rationality in rituals.

"... proximate causes [of rituals] are often to be found in the understanding of the actors.It seems to me, therefore,that in ecological studies of human groups we must take these understandings into account" (Rappaport 1968/84:237).

And the two models did not mean a pure supremacy of one over the other:"This is not to say that the cognized

model is merely less adequate representation of reality than the operational model" (Rappaport 1968/84:

238).Moreover, he recognized in the 1984 PFA epilogue that his bias to the operational model had high costs:

"After completing the analysis reported in PFA, I realized that it told me nothing about ritual per se or, for thatmatter, why regulatory functions I attributed to the Maring ritual cycle in particular were embedded in a ritual"(Rappaport 1968/84: 334).

The later works of Rappaport, as the case of his work "Ecology, Meaning and Religion" (1979), moved him closer

to the more interpretive and symbolic position that was the one promoted by Geertz (years later his ethnography in

Indonesia), and for which is more recognized.In 1994 he moved his vision in favor to meaning analysis.He wrote in

1994 that he could:

"... provide an account of the place of ritual in a particular ecological system, but did not know why those functionswere vested in ritual, nor anything about ritual itself.I subsequently became as interested in ritual and related matter(e.g. the concept of the sacred and religion in general) as in ecology and have remained so ever since" (Rappaport1994: 168).

Nevertheless, later on his career, Rappaport transformed his discussion of cognized model vs. operational model

into objective (biological) and subjective (interpretive) traditions in anthropology (Rappaport 1994).This discussion of

models was part of a larger debate in the sixties between cultural ecologists and symbolic anthropologists

considering each other having a useless approach (Ortner 1984).Cultural ecologists considered that more symbolic

ones were "fuzzy-headed mentalists involved in unscientific and unverifiable flights of subjective interpretation", on

the other hand, the symbolic anthropologists considered the cultural ecologists to be "involved with mindless and

sterile scientism, counting calories and measuring rainfall, and willfully ignoring the one truth that anthropology [at



that time] that culture mediates all human behavior" (Ortner 1984: 132).There was a struggle between materialism

and idealism; hard and soft approaches, interpretive emics and explanatory etics[24] until some quarters well into the

seventies.These oppositions may be rooted in "more pervasive schemes of Western thought, such

assubjective/objective, nature/culture, mind/body, and so on, also the practice of fieldwork itself,based as it is on the

paradoxical injunction to participate and observe at one and the same time (Ortner 1984: 133).Unfortunately,

emic/etic struggle of the sixties had the unfortunate effect of prevention of adequate self-criticism on both

sides.Symbolic anthropologists in renouncing all claims to 'explanation' and the cultural ecologists in losing sight of

the frames of meaning.I tend to think that Rappaport and ethnoecology, strongly rooted to meaning and the later in

linguistics were not so much permeable as the interpretive in going for some materialistic measures or hypothesis.

4.Materialism vs. vulgar materialism and interpretive

Rappaport (1994: 166) took one course with Marvin Harris, and admitted that "the materialism he was developing at

the time was something that we all needed to contend with".This is very interesting, since some critics presented

Rappaport and Harris together as part of "vulgar" materialism, in an expression ofFriedman (Ortner 1984, Friedman

1974).This label was made to underline opposition and supposedly contradictory links with the Marxist dialectic

materialism.Harris was a propagandist and critic of Steward (Ellen 1982: 59). For him, cultural ecology and cultural

evolution rest on philosophical foundation of cultural materialism derived from Marx and Engels, although he is not a

Marxist.He rejects Marxism dialectics, crude economic and environmental determinism.The main criticism of this

paradigm was to the great emphasis put upon organic and ecological functions in explanations of cultural

phenomena, so considered as to grant to the possibly adaptive roles of some cultural forms a comprehensive

significance approaching explanatory sufficiency.In other words, social forms were seen as mere epiphenomena of

technologies and environment (Rappaport 1968/84: 304).Is interesting that Rappaport underlined that PFA is not

vulgarly materialistic because "it does not attempt to account for the emergence of the social forms with which it is

concerned” (Rappaport 1968/84: 305).He sustained that the kind of ecological anthropology he is more involved

implies “mutually causal and constraining process”, also seen as “dialectic process”.Also, because the ecological

rationality is not simply an extension of the economic rationality (consciousness of maximizing individual

alternatives), it incorporates the persistence of systems.The economic rationality is actor-oriented whereas

ecological logic is not (Rappaport 1968/84: 308).Sahlins said that ecologic rationalities “exchange... meaningful

content for functional truth” (in Rappaport 1968/84: 308).For Rappaport (1968/84: 309) this made an “unhappy"

polarization in the field into “materialist” vs. “interpretive” or “symbolic”.He responded by saying that the

explanatory power of the general ecological formulations was exaggerated, of course, we have to consider that the

more flexible Rappaport writing in 1984 than the more biological one in 1968, few years after developing his

doctoral thesis, who was the base of PFA.




II.Influences and effects beyond anthropology

1.Postwar context and neomarxism in the critic of ecological approaches

During the sixties anthropology seemed to had at least a period when there were a few principal large categories of

theoretical affiliation, camps or schools and a few simple epithets (Ortner 1984: 126).The three major paradigms in

the sixties were: symbolism, cultural ecology and structuralism.In late sixties began radical social movements in US

and France that affected the academic world: counterculture, antiwar and feminism.Everything that was part of the

existing order was questioned and criticized through this glasses.In anthropology there was a denouncement of

historical links between anthropologists and colonialism, as well as imperialism.The big symbol of the new criticism

was Marx.The absence of Marxist influence before the seventies and the presence in the seventies could be seen

as a reflex of real-world politics[25].Even the cultural ecologists, the only self-proclaimed materialists of the sixties,

hardly invoked Marx at all, as commented before, Harris repudiated him (1968).As mentioned before, with the

exception of White and Childe, this omission also happened among the “evolutionists” in the fifties (Ellen

1982).Later, in the seventies, structural Marxism (Ortner 1984: 139) a paradigm only developed within the

anthropology field, was used to attack or rethink every theoretical scheme at that time.Ecology was considered, but

subordinated to the social, especially political, organization of production.Cultural ecology was thus attacked as

"vulgar materialism", as presented before, reinforcing rather than redoing the classical capitalist fetishization of

'"things", the domination of subjects by objects rather than by the social relations embodied in, and symbolized by,

those objects (see especially Friedman 1974).They looked for the critical social relations perceived asthe mode(s)

of production.Structural Marxists paid attention to cultural phenomena, unlike the cultural ecologists, and did not

subordinate cultural beliefs and native categories as irrelevant to the real or objective operations of society.Culture

was converted to "ideology".It could be counted as a virtue of the fact that there was a place for defining

everything in their scheme.For Ortner (1984) it made sociology, a "fertilized" British social anthropology with

Marxist categories.This was, for the same author a weakness in cultural ecology and interpretive symbolism.The

lack of development of categories and maybe, an intention of trying to discuss their own concepts.The main

problem of the structural Marxist paradigm was the narrowing of the culture concept of "ideology".The

structuralism ofLevi-Strauss dominated by binary oppositions, shared with Marx and Freud the principle ofthinking

of something simple beneath the surface proliferation of forms (Ortner 1984: 136).The early seventies reaction to

structuralism in different fields were basically a denial of an intentional subject, and the claim for the analysis of the

impact of history or "event" upon structure.

2.Borrowing concepts from natural sciences for the study of environmental relations in anthropology




2.1 Analogies from Natural Sciences in Anthropology

Borrowings concepts from naturals for social sciences is something very old, common and useful.Moreover, when

considering the history of the discipline, we can see several examples for understanding the usage of concepts from

animal science in PFA.For some authors, as Geertz (1963/74) or Dove (1996) this phenomena is meaningful also

for showing a borrowing of prestige among the disciplines.In a very radical way, Geertz (1963/74: 1) argued that

the efforts to adapt the biological discipline of ecology to the study of man is one more expression of the common

ambition of social scientists to “disguise themselves as real scientists".Moreover, this act might not be new: “The

necessity of seeing man against the well-out-lined background of his habitat is old, ineradicable to them in

anthropology, a fundamental premise" (Geertz 1963/74: 1).With a more positive opinion of interdisciplinary

borrowing or analogies, Dove (1996) sustains that is an important source of scholarly advancement and authority in

nearly all disciplines, though for some is more common than others (Dove 1996: 7)It is an old source, in social

sciences to borrow models and metaphors from mathematics, biology and physics extending back to the beginning

of the era of modern science (Cohen 1994).One of the founders of modern anthropology, Emile Durkheim

(1933/64), drew heavily on organic metaphors in writing his classic work, "Division of labor in Society" (Cohen

1994:20).It seem to be clear, for what have been exposed in the other sections of the paper, that PFA also

continued this tradition of borrowings, analogies inspired in this durkhemian principle of order.Maybe as mentioned

by some authors, such as Ellen (1982) and Ortner (1984), Rappaport was the most “elegant” in using these

borrowings from biology.

The creative power of analogy as a tool of discovery is based on two related aspects: First, for allowing us to think

about the unthinkable, since "the human intellect proceeds from the known to the unknown" (Cohen 1994: 42 about

Vilfredo Pareto's work).Second, since this principle was articulated in anthropology by Gregory Bateson (1958: 302,

299) as the problem of "logical typing", where to obtain a possible prediction of more complexity of the system, a

scientist can imagine a system one degree more complex, and borrow a next level of complexity form another

system and concepts for this description.In some words, paraphrasing Dove (1996: 8) on his synthesis of Bateson:

one way to obtain "complexity C + 1" is to borrow 1 from another discipline.Transplanting analogies from other

disciplines implies some transformations and usually emphasis on differences, rather than similarities.Sometimes, a

concept may retain validity in its adopted discipline ever after it has been abandoned from the one originally

developed.Even lack of knowledge or misunderstanding of the donor discipline may be not an impediment but an aid

to the success of the borrowing, since it does not diminish the capacity of filling the concept with new

contents.Moreover, the selection of the concepts express different values within disciplines.

Ecological anthropologists are frequent borrowers from other fields: examples over the past 10-15 years include

patch theory, the concept of optimal foraging, vernacular landscapes, complex systems, and global change (Dove



1996: 10).Earlier on in the development of ecological anthropology[26], (we can think of the antecedents as

determinism and possibilism), and in a more implicit manner, the sub-discipline borrowed a general natural science

paradigm that idealized localized, inhuman, climax communities.This process was reflected in the appearance in

anthropology of analytic concepts like ecosystem, carrying capacity and homeostasis which were used to structure

holistic studies of human environmental relations" (Dove 1996: 10).

The subject as a distinct discipline was a product of the twentieth century, developed by botanists and then by

zoologists.From the beginning of their science, animal ecologists have been writing about human ecology, because

they considered themselves as competent or as a consequence of culminating from simple living systems to the

most complex, Homo Sapiens.In this sense, is perhaps paradoxical and interesting for a history of a paradigm and

its relation to anthropology in general, that "ecological discourse concerning animals should have been so dependent

upon terms and concepts of an unashamedly anthropomorphic kind, often drawn directly from the social sciences"

(Ellen 1982: 67).Ellen (1982: 282) quotes some examples such as the definition of an ecosystem provided by

Tansley (1946: 206 in Ellen a1982: 283) refers to organisms as 'naturally living together as a sociocultural unit'.Also

Odum (1959) a principal author in animal and plant ecology uses and abuses terms such as "community", "society",

"culture", "caste" and "currency".All this sociologization of the biology can be considered further as a durkhemian

version of biology, having the organic solidarity in the biotic communities for adaptation.PFA can follow this pattern

but against Durkheim functionalist it goes for breaking the aristotelian barriers of society and nature and the

influences shared between those.

The general ecological approach to Homo Sapiens was early adapted by geographers and prehistoric

archaeologists.By contrast, the social and cultural anthropology of the beginning 1945 was dominated by theories

which were either hostile to ecological perspective or accommodated it only "awkwardly" (Ellen 1982: 68).This was

gradually changing due to the growth of ethnographic fieldwork and information.One good example was Conklin's

Hanunóo ethnography (1957/75) were he demonstrated that swidden cultivation more generally regarded as

intrinsically damaging to the environment, was not necessary the case in the Hanunóo.At the same time

ethnographers were under pressure to enhance the respectability of their discipline by collecting more accurate and

detailed (particularly numerical) data.For the first time attention was paid to "field measurement".This encouraged a

familiarity with the work of various non-anthropological specialists who provided data and collect data by

cooperating in the field with other specialists.This dialogue was very common in the sixties between ethnography

and geography to share techniques and concepts.The later were also interested on small-scale patterns of

population.During the late fifties and early sixties; there was growing dissatisfaction with vague culture-typing and

functionalist approaches which could not be subjected to Popperian canons of scientific testability, or were too rigid

to accommodate change and individual variation.PFA was part of this process of borrowings, and influence of

ecology to ethnography.




2. 2 Concepts borrowed in PFA

Later in his career Rappaport (1994: 166-167) underlined that after coming back to the US from the archaeological

fieldwork in the Society Islands in 1960, there was an important time when he “read widely in biological ecology",

committed to "ecosystem approaches".Although he stated that his interests in ritual in particular and religion in

general owe “something” of both Durkheim and Weber, he underlined more direct influences from: Victor Turner,

Arnold van Gennep, Giambattista Vico, Heraclitus of Ephesus, St. Augustine, Charles Sanders Perice, Gershom

Sholem, J.L. Austin, Herbert Simon, Claude Shannon aand Anthony F.C. Wallace, among others both

contemporary and ancient.We are tempted to underline that when Rappaport wrote he owes only "something" to

Durkheim, this recognition is not enough as reflected on his analysis in PFA, since he has developed a lot of parts

what could be considered an ecological durkhemian dream of social order, although combined with the environment

conception and measurable aspects of Odum, by variables and hypothesis, linked and based on the environment.

Geertz (1963/74: 5) based on Bates (1943 in Geertz 1963/74)underlined that the different manners in which

adaptation of principles of ecological analysis and concepts to the study of man are not equally useful.He wrote that

the simplest method was merely to view the whole of human society as basically a biotic phenomenon like any

other, and to apply ecological concepts to it directly and comprehensively.This approach characteristic of the school

of 'urban', 'social' or 'human' ecology founded by the sociologist Robert Park (1934)[27].

Among the most important borrowed concepts from animal ecology found in PFA are: ecosystem, homeostasis,

adaptation and regulation.A primary concept which historically was instrumental more than any other in altering the

character of ecological work in anthropology is that of "ecosystem" (Ellen 1982: 73).As mentioned before, this

concept is central in the three ethnographies compared from Conklin, Geertz and Rappaport.Ecosystem formally

proposed by A.G. Tansley in 1935 as a general term for both the 'biome' (the total complex of interacting

organisms) and its habitat.Later was redefined with a third element and was understood as a relatively stable set of

organic relationships in which energy, material and information are in continuos circulation.This concept had a

central theoretical role in anthropology for its explanatory power of cultural ecology and as a remedy of

possibilism.In the vanguard although they did not labeled themselves as part of human ecology, were both Clifford

Geertz, Andrew Vayda and Roy Rappaport.They all shared a reaction against the idea of culture as a reified closed

system, and the assertion that culture is an unnecessary concept for understanding human ecology (Vayda and

Rappaport 1968: 493), rejecting the treatment of culture and environment as quite different separate spheres

(Geertz 1963: 3).As implications of this concept they were looking for socio-ecological processes, taking populations




as analytical units, looking for the "trophic" (say energy) relations within the ecosystem which each population

occupy.Ecosystem provided a convenient frame or model for the analysis of trophic exchanges between

ecologically dissimilar populations occupying single localities that can accommodate only by the introduction of

analogy non-trophic material exchanges between ecologically similar populations occupying separate localities. The

Tsembaga has been taken to be an ecological population in an ecosystem bounded by the limits of what is

recognized as their territory.The concept of ecosystem as fundamentally applied for one trophic exchange between

populations occupying different ecological niches within a bounded area, accommodates, only awkwardly, non-

trophic material exchanges between populations in separate localities.To overcome this problem Rappaport in PFA

(1968/84: 226) suggested the concept of "regional population", which could resemble a geneticist's breed population

which may be coterminous with a social formation.The notion of clines may be useful in coping with the difficulty of

boundary demarcation in such groups.This meant that local populations of humans (as other species) participate in

regional systems or "regional populations".The Maring ritual is of great importance in articulating the local and

regional subsystems.In this model the Maring ritual operates as a "homeostat" (maintaining a number of variables

that comprise that total system within ranges of viability) but also as a "transducer" (a cybernetic term),

“translating” changes in the state of one subsystem into information and energy that can produce changes in the

second subsystem.In this scheme, the ritual transducer maintains coherence between subsystems at levels above or

below which the perpetuation of the total system might be endangered.This concept of “homeostasis” is based on

the concept of ultrastability in cybernetics.This means that you can change the parameters of the behavior of the

system, in the case that one or more variables can exceed the critical values.The subsystem that detects this

occurrence and make the corrections is called homeostate (William Ross Ashby 1965, 1970 in Earls 1986: 56) or

the binary aspect of rituals in their role of “transducers” (Rappaport 1968/84: 234).Then the best example of the

application of this concept is the thermostat.In the functional and cybernetic analysis of the ecological relations of

the Tsembaga quantitative values have been assigned to most variables, to see tolerable ranges of values that must

be specified.The mere occurrence of a ritual can be regarded as a signal, where binary mechanisms make suitable

regulators and transducers (Rappaport 1968/84: 233-236).The operation of the entire ritual cycle is "cybernetic"

(Ellen 1982: 225).Rappaport (1968/84: 234) ended comparing the rituals to the mechanism of a thermostat:

"Like thermostats, rituals have a binary aspect.As the thermostat switches on and off, affecting the amount of heatproduced by the furnace and the temperature of the medium, so the rituals of the Tsembaga are initiated andcompleted, affecting the size of the pig population, the amount of land under cultivation, the amount of laborexpended, the frequency of warfare, and other components of the system.The programs that should be undertaken

to correct the deviation of variables from their acceptable ranges are fixed".

This cybernetics means there are signals from the ecosystem that regulates it.For example, women begin to

complain that the pig population is getting too large to look after.This is an indicator for knowing that there are

sufficient beasts for the performance of sacrifices to spirits.These have a corrective effect on the ecosystem

through the reduction of the pig population: the immediate environment is not degrade.This process is understood as

a complex chain of interactions between the cognitive model, the ritual cycle, the regional system and the

ecosystem.If the interrelations are as Rappaport describe them this is system could be a "supremely adaptive

codification of reality" (Ellen 1982: 227).



In PFA Rappaport recognized that cultural ecology borrowed the concept of ecosystem from general ecology

(1968/84: 381).The framing of the relationship between ritual and the ecology of the Tsembaga has been borrowed

from “animal ecology” (Rappaport 1968/84: 224). In the resulting formulation, cultures simply interact with

ecosystems.An ecosystem means a system of matter and energy transactions among and between populations or

organisms and the non-living substances by which they are surrounded.He states culture as an "order of

phenomena distinct from the psychological, biological and inorganic;... an important anthropological contribution to

Western thought “(Rappaport 1968/84: 381).Moreover, he states that culture "obeys laws of its own", distinct from

those governing organic or inorganic processes.He didn't quote Durkheim's formulations of the social sphere of

social facts and their specificity, but seem to be obvious.Also, showing a process of relaxing positions in the revised

book, clearly more closer to the one exposed in Geertz's book, which also states that his cultural ecology is closer to

Steward's, he wrote that "culture is the category of phenomena distinguished from others by its contingency upon

symbols" (Rappaport 1968/84: 381).This could easily be an opinion quoted from Geertz.

It would seem that in PFA, Rappaport resolved the etic or emic dilemma choosing the native terms as a base (or

ethnoecology) for going further to an operational or etic analysis, looking for “scientific” explanations of the

interrelations in the system and discover the “system-destroying” levels of these variables and the “ranges of

viability” (Rappaport 1968/84: 97-98).He sustained that he selected units recognized and named by the Maring

themselves, and thus could claim a sort of "natural validity" (1968/84: 371).More important, he did not want to

generalize, recognizing limits, to his frame of including populations in ecosystems borrowed from 'classic'

ecology.“...that I used units in PFA should not be taken to mean that I advocate that they are universally

appropriate" (1968/84: 371).

The analytic use of populations as environed units distinguishes the "new ecology" from the "cultural ecology" of

Julian Steward (1955).Sahlins (1976: 298 in PFA 380) argued that the translation of a social order into a population

of organisms makes everything that is distinctively cultural to escape.Rappaport responded that he chose cultures

as primary units of analysis to protect the uniqueness of culture against the degrading power of ecological principles

or culture governed by the same laws as those governing animal populations.He underlined that his analysis in PFA

was not merely an analogic operation, but a "deliberate, self-conscious attempt to replace the inappropriate and

deforming analogy underlying 'cultural ecology' (an analogy which takes human cultures and animal populations to

be equivalents) with a homology" (Rappaport 1968/84: 383).This recognizes that culture is central to the adaptive

characteristics of the species (Rappaport 1968/84: 385).

Among the chief difficulties of this approach were some vague and misleading biological analogies.Some writers



have equated mutation with innovation, diffusion with gene flow, cultures with species (Ellen 1982: 67-68).The

advantage of the ecosystem approach, in biology or in ethnography, was the stress on total, interrelatedness and

diversity (Ellen 1982: 90).The reconciliation of theory and practice was a consequence, since ecological analysis in

ethnography is grounded in detailed fieldwork.

3. The anthropological contribution to the critique of modern models of the environment

As characterized in the previous section, the early years of ecological anthropology involved the adoption and use of

a number of influential concepts from ecology and other natural sciences.All these concepts came from a common

paradigm, one of whose defining characteristics was the assumption of stability and homogeneity in the physical

environment (Dove 1996: 1).When these concepts of stability where applied to interpret local human ecologies, they

contradicted them, as the concepts were applied to novel ethnographic contexts in new ways, they were

transformed.This experience caused to rethink these concepts and eventually contribute to a wider critique of the

modern scientific understanding of the environment (Dove 1996).This interaction between ecological anthropology

and the physical sciences can be compared to that currently experienced by the postmodern scholars in

anthropology and elsewhere engaged in their own critique of modern science (Dove 1996).Particularly, Dove

(1996) took grasslands as an example of how it was a model of stability and now is a model of instability, the

change in view accurately reflects the larger transformations in modern science's understanding of the world.He

differences among three terms: "Modern science" to refer the analytic paradigm that presumes a “static, stable,

homogeneous, and readily knowable reality; "Late modern science" in contrast, to refer to a paradigm that assumes

a “dynamic, unstable, and heterogeneous reality that is knowable with difficulty"; finally, "postmodern" to refer to (in

its own terms) that paradigm characterized by "incredulity toward metanarratives (Lyotard 1984: xxiv)...

[particularly that] referred to here as modern science" (Dove 1996: 2).Although, he didn’t mention this, is important

to note that these characterizations can occur simultaneously today, and are not rigid categories or stages on time.

The modern emphasis was on "stability and homeostasis" which became an emphasis on "instability and chaos" in

postmodern critique.The anthropologist Edmund Leach, was one of the earliest scholars in any field to challenge, as

he did in his 1954 study of highland Burma, the then-reigning notion of stability of social systems (Abrahams 1990 in

Dove 1990: 2).The former emphasis was reflected in the study of "climax ecological communities" or a kind of

"comfortable" anthropology, under where PFA could be labeled in its search for equilibrium.The new emphasis

reflected, in contrast, in growing interest in ecological "perturbation" , for example in studies of disasters and the

"uncomfortable anthropology of social breakdown" and the "anthropology of suffering" (Davis 1992 and Scheper-

Hughes 1995, both in Dove 1996).In spatial dimensions there are reflected essentialist views of the environment

and anti-essentialist critique.This is mainly seen in problematized categories of vegetation or examples of ecotypes,



formerly regarded as "real", like "forest vs. grassland".The essentialist view of the environment also was associated

with an essentialist view of human systems for exploiting natural resources.Whereas rural communities were

formerly characterized (by anthropologists and others) as, for example, "swidden cultivators", today it is believed

that most rural communities, even agricultural ones, have composite economies based on the simultaneous

exploitation of many different resources and environmental niches with different intensity.Also interpreting the

dynamics of ecological systems in terms of the dynamics of larger political systems, in opposite of what we could

see in PFA.The modern view dichotomized nature and culture: if culture is present, then nature is not (or at least

not wholly) (Dove 1996).This "romantic vision" abstracted people from their physical environment (Williams 1980:

75) giving the conceptual distancing necessary for the idea of human intervention in nature.The concept of virgin

forest is a result of this dichotomy, disregarding thousands of years of interaction between people and

environment.This vision is critiqued as "rainforest fundamentalism" (Dove 1996).

The concept of homeostasis helped to focus our attention on the dynamic and reciprocal character of relations

between society and environment, as in Rappaport's PFA, and thereby also helped to rebut critiques of community-

based resource-use as "irrational".This concept also bore the weakness of ignoring or obfuscating change and

history (Dove 1996: 30).The anthropologists were among the first to problematize the assumption that indigenous

tropical land-use was inferior to modern scientific models, arguing that manipulation by local communities of

ecological perturbation (for example, clearing and fire) and the dynamics of vegetative succession often represents

a superior system of resource management, considering a permanence or regeneration in the long term.In other

words, the concept of sustainability that is part of all current conservation programs and development in rural

areas.One example of this practice of "integral" swidden agriculture in tropical rain forests could be seen in Conklin

(1957/75) and another is the practice of semi-intensive agriculture and animal husbandry in anthropogenic

grasslands (see references in Dove 1996).Anthropology borrowed from natural sciences a concept of a static

environment, dichotomized between nature and culture, but it developed and gave back to the natural sciences an

understanding of dynamic and often sustainable interaction between society and environment.In this case, the

interdisciplinary borrowing and use of a concept helped to critique it and develop it.

Anthropology's contribution to the critique of the static, "modern" models of the environment came about by doing

something with these models that had not been done before, namely submitting them to an indigenous

critique.Certainly because they were much less interested in transforming (through the use of modern models)

indigenous patterns of environmental relations.Ecological anthropologists showed intimate associations between

local communities and their physical environment and the unique knowledge of the environment that some local

people acquire through this association.Also showed that these associations are not always destructive for the

physical environment.This information was critical to the gradual movement away from the (dichotomized) concept

of nature and culture.Not less important was that ethnographies showed that local environments have social

histories, and that most of what we nowadays consider to be "nature" could be seen as a historical combination of



nature and culture.Finally, anthropological accounts showed how poorly the local ecological systems were

represented by the modern scientific understanding as opposed to the understanding of local peoples.

The ethical implications of anthropological critique through ethnography to modern environmentalism evidenced that

the weakness of the modern scientific understanding has to do not just with epistemological or pedagogical

challenges, but with political and economic challenges.Depending on each context, scientific (un)certainty and

(mis)understanding can often serve power just as well as scientific understanding (Blakie 1985, Colson 1982, Dove

1983, Thomson, Warburton and Hatley 1986, all references in Dove 1996: 11).It is interesting to mention here that

some authors find those well ordered cybernetic totalities suspicious of ideological proposes. Cotgrove (1976 in

Ellen 1982: 92) is emphatic in the case of Rappaport and Bateson.There was suggested some indirect support for

the moral legitimation on political ecological movements of the sixties (Friedman 1974).Something not sufficiently

accounted for the anthropological or scientific literature revised was a not developed debate of knowledge and its

relationship with power.It might be meaningful specifically to the debate of scientific borrowings and ignorings or

forgettings of prior knowledge.I could argue that there seems to be, at least for me, different relationships among

different disciplines.Sometimes asymmetrical relations could be central in where to choose borrowings.Maybe, as

Rappaport chose ecosystems and homeostasis from system and cybernetic frameworks, considered at their time as

high developed exact sciences, in our times, although, with less careful and detailed work, postmodernist critiques

borrowed chaos theory concepts, because it comes from physics to explain complex theories.This could be

considered also as rhetorical tool in the development of a discipline borrowing prestige from another.

1The postmodern critique in environmental sciencehas been borrowing concepts from thermodynamics, quantum

mechanics and chaos theory to find "a logic of things that just happened" (Drummond 1995:4, in Dove 1996: 11).

They want to reveal an indigenous critique of science, but the manifest purpose of the postmodern critique is less to

improve the recipient discipline than to attack the donor discipline.In the modern model dominated by social interest

in the quantitative prediction and dominating control of natural phenomena was the most important topic and the

nowadays interest in chaos is explained historically by Kellert (1993: 154-158 in Dove 1996) as something closely

related with social, economical and political reasons, Worster (1990: 11-12) similarly believes that several different

factors have contributed to the shift in the dominant scientific paradigm from an assumption of order to an

assumption of chaos.This author places special weight on political disinterest in social planning.In his words: "For

some scientists, a nature characterized by highly individualistic associations, constant disturbance, and incessant

change may be more ideologically satisfying than Odum's ecosystem, with its stress on cooperation, social

organization, and environmentalism" (Worster 1990: 11).Moreover, in a subsequent publication, Worster (1995: 77)

suggested that the assumption of chaos fits well with the "logic of late capitalism" (following Jameson 1984).For

some others like Buttel (1992: 20), contemporary conservation movement also fits well into this logic.Maybe

considering better to maintain latent a future market for transnational companies, currently, the only ones capable to

assume on time the higher costs of been ecologically correct, say clean technologies.Nevertheless, the postmodern



science critics have not joined in this "sociological" analysis of the emergence of chaos theory, following their

characterized postmodernistic "ironic lack of reflexivity about their own scholarly project" (Dove 1996).They has

tried to represent the development of chaos theory as the end of science as opposed to just another episode in

science, ironically "... in taking away the historical context of the emergence of indeterminacy as well as

determinacy, postmodernism has mythologized its object", in Barthes (1972: 142 in Dove 1996: 14) terms, where

"myth is constituted by the loss of the historical quality of things: in it, things lose the memory that they once were

made" (Dove 1996: 14).

More recent contribution to environmental studies has been to start to reveal the existence and operation of

"environmental discourses" concerning such topics as developmental "helping", environmental "degradation", and

even, and perhaps especially, "nature".These aspects are important for considering the supposedly beneficiaries

voices, which is also a good strategy that could guarantee a successful project of development in terms of social

change, as based on the necessities as culturally framed, avoiding the intention to promote something that is

completely conceived of as non-useful for the population.

Conclusions

Here I reiterate the basic concepts relating to my attempt to contextualize of Rappaport’s PFA:

1.Although Rappaport argued that PFA was born as part of a critic to functionalism, it has been strongly criticized

for the same arguments elaborated for the functionalist paradigm as a “new ecology”, only with the component of

rationality of institutions with respect to their environments.He defended the legitimacy of the approach of the book

as a method and its theoretical bases for helping collecting data for ethnography and analysis in the model of the

more scientific discipline that Rappaport would like anthropology to be.That discipline might have more models and

hypothesis capable of being tested with empirical data from fieldwork.

2. Conklin, Geertz and Rappaport shared the general objective of understanding the relationships of environment

and society with anthropological idiom and ethnographic accounts.They also shared the main concepts borrowed

from animal ecology, such as ecosystem and homeostasis, and the stability notion.Nevertheless, the usage and the

levels of analysis and approaches of the three differ with the emphasis and consequences.Conklin is more

concerned with terms, classifications and taxonomies than Rappaport is with the equilibrium (homeostasis) of the

ecosystem.Geertz used the same basic theoretical terms to try to understand a bigger political unit, such as



Indonesia, under a clear historical analysis of two periods, which made a difference on the lack of history in PFA

and gathered few mentions in Conklin’s ethnography.

3.Human ecology, cultural ecology and ecological anthropology have been terms that referred to the analysis of

human and environment through ethnographies, beginning at the end of the fifties.Generally, human ecology is

known for being more ecological than humanistic, and cultural ecology had more emphasis on a pure

anthropological stewardian tradition of discrimination

4.The debate of etics and emics was one of the topics in the center of the approach and the methodology of

PFA.Rappaport’s support for an anthropology closer to a model of natural science is also reflected in the general

approach of the book.The objective of discussing an operational model, as a language for science generated by an

anthropologist (an external observer), was the path proposed by Rappaport in PFA.The criticism reflected a debate

during the sixties about the explanatory “scientific” approach versus the interpretive emics based on the native or

local perception of nature.

5.The emic-etic debate was reflected in another controversy between a the materialistic paradigm against and the

more interpretive.The latter was more focused on meaning.The discussion of the materialist paradigm and the

criticism of PFA as a “vulgar” version of this approach was part of a larger debate with other authors who took

ecological and material bases for their cultural studies, such as Marvin Harris.

6.Apparently, these ecological approaches in anthropology had some effects and were influenced by ideological and

political movements after the second world war.This period was marked by the borrowings from natural sciences to

social sciences involved in explaining environment and social relationships.These concepts basically borrowed a

static perception of reality, according to the models constructed by different disciplines for change.Nevertheless,

ecological anthropology, based on ethnography returned these static concepts (such as ecosystem or homeostasis)

with a strong debate on dynamism and change, inspired by trying to apply it to ethnographic cases.This indigenous

critique also meant a discussion of power and science and a strong critique of ethnocentrism in science.

Bibliography



Barfield, Thomas, ed.1997.The Dictionary of Anthropology.Blackwell Publishers:Oxford/Malden.Bateson, Gregory.1958.Naven.Stanford University Press: Stanford.Buttel, Frederick.1992.Environmentalization: Origins, Processes, and Implications for Rural Social Change. RuralSociology 57(1): 1-27. Conklin C., Harold.1957/75.Hanunóo Agriculture: A report on an integral system of shifting cultivation in thePhilippines.Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).Reprinted by Elliot’s Books: NewHaven.Cohen, I. Bernard.1994.Interactions: Some Contacts Between the Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences.TheMIT Press: Cambridge (Mass.).Childe, Gordon.1942.What Happened in History.Penguin: New York.Dove, Michael R.1996.Prophets in a Foreign Land? The Use of Scientific analogy in EnvironmentalAnthropology.Prepared for invited session, "Human Dimensions of Environmental Change: Anthropology Engagesthe Issues", organized by C.L. Crumley, 95th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, SanFrancisco, 20-24, November 1996Durkheim, Emile.1938/82.The rules of sociological method, 8th ed., translated by Sarah A. Solovay and John H.Mueller, and edited by George E. G. Catlin.The University of Chicago press: Chicago.Durkheim, Emile.1933/64.The Division of Labor in Society.George Simpson translation.The Free Press: New York.Ellen, Roy.1982.Environment, Subsistence and System: The ecology of small-scale social formations.New York :Cambridge University Press, 1982.Ellen, Roy and Katsuyoshi Fukui, eds.1996.Redefining Nature: ecology, culture and domestication.Berg: Oxford.Earls, John.1989.Planificación Agrícola Andina: Bases para un manejo cibernético de sistemas de andenes.Cofide:Lima.Friedman, J. 1974.Marxism, Structuralism and Vulgar Materialism.Man (N.S.) 9 (3), 444-69.Geertz, Clifford.1963/74.Agricultural Involution: The process of ecological change in Indonesia.University ofCalifornia Press: Berkeley, Los Angeles and London.Handler, Richard.1991.“An Interview with Clifford Geertz”, Current Anthropology 32(5): 603-613.Harris, Marvin.1966.“The Cultural Ecology of India’s Sacred Cattle”.Current Anthropology, 7:1, 51-64.Harris, Marvin.1968.The Rise of Anthropological Theory.Crowell: New York.Kelly, William.1999.Class notes for the Seminar in Socio-Cultural Anthropology (Part 2): Historicizing the disciplineand theorizing its history.Kroeber, A. L. 1917.The Superorganic.American Anthropologist 19, 163-213.Odum, Eugene.1959.Fundamental of Ecology, Saunders: Philadelphia and London.Orlove, Benjamin.1980.Ecological Anthropology.Annual Review of Anthropology, 9:235-73Ortner, Sherry B.1984. “Theory in anthropology Since the Sixties”, Comparative Studies in Society andHistory.26:126Park, Robert. 1934.Human Ecology.American Journal of Sociology, 42: 1-15.Piddocke, Stuart.1969.“The Potlatch System of the Southern Kwakiutl: A new perspective”.In Environment andCultural Behavior, A. P. Vayda, ed. University of Texas Press: AustinRadcliffe-Brown, A.R.1922/48.“Preface” to the 1932 edition ofThe Andaman Islanders, pp. vii-x.Free Press.Rappaport, Roy.1968/84Pigs of the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People.Enlarged edition.NewHaven: Yale University Press.Rappaport, Roy.1971.Nature, Culture and Ecological Anthropology.In: Man, culture and society, H. Shapiro (ed.).Oxford University Press: London. Rappaport, Roy.1979.Ecology, Meaning and Religion.North Atlantic Book: Berkeley, Nashville. New York Rappaport, Roy.1994. “Humanity’s Evolution and Anthropology Future”.In: Assessing cultural anthropology, editedby Robert Borofsky. : McGraw-Hill, c1994.Steward, Julian.1955.The Theory of Culture Change.University of Illinois Press: Urbana.Vayda, A. P. and Roy Rappaport. 1967.Ecology, cultural and non-cultural, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology.J.Clifton, ed. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin



White, Leslie.1949.The Science of Culture.Farrar Straus: New York.Williams, Raymond.1980.Ideas of Nature.In: Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays, pp. 67-85.NLB: London.Worster, Donald.1990. The Ecology of Order and Chaos.Environmental History Review 14(1/2): 1-18.reprinted inthe Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination, pp. 156-170.1993.New York/Oxford:Oxford University Press.Worster, Donald.1995. Nature and the Disorder of History.In: Reinventing Nature: Responses to PostmodernDeconstruction, Michael E. Soule and Gary Lease (eds.), pp. 65-85.Island Press: Washington D.C.

[1]Examples of this kind of research goes from energy flow and stability through adaptation applied in PeruvianAndes (mainly by Brook Thomas and Bruce Winterhalder) and in the Amazon basin (Robert Carneiro; DonaldLathrap and Betty Meggers ).The ones with the most important impact has been the studies about managementand verticality in the Andean topography, which attempted to understand the relationships between the

population and this diverse and difficult environment.Basically, the studies of John Murra were the first ones in atradition of these investigations of this vertical strategy, continued by Jurgen Golte about time cycles and EnriqueMayer more focused on the conflict and cooperation among sociopolitical units as families, extended families andcommunities.The most recent studies of Andean verticality represented by more focalized studies, and mostimportant example are the researches directed by Bruce Winterhalder with a team of professors and students

from the University of North Carolina.[2]The application of the term "ecological anthropology" will be problematized with more detail in the paper, Ibegin by using this label and not the possible others, such as "human ecology" or "cultural ecology" because I

think it is the one that corresponds to the general context of the study of PFA.[3]The central hypothesis of his research is that the place, constructed with terraces, can replicate the climatevariety of the Andean region and then thus allow the Inca administration to test which seeds might work indifferent environments.[4]This video was presented in the 20th Anniversary of the Margaret Mead Film Festival, in New York, 1996.[5]Clifford Geertz (1963/74) mentioned this idea, arguing that the holistic approach was the only capable way ofunderstandingthe “recently” named “Third World".Later, in 1991(see Handler 1991) he reaffirmed this position

adding the idea of the multiple divisions and paradigms in anthropology is a reflect of the complexity of culture,and the only way to understand that phenomena.[6]It is interesting to note that in the intellectual evolution process of Rappaport, there is a particular relationshipwith Andrew Vayda, his dissertation chairman and mentor, with whom co-authored two articles.In the 1984's

PFA Epilogue Rappaport manifested important differences with his former master.In an account of his"intellectual roots", ten years after revised version of PFA (Rappaport 1994) he did not admit his relationshipwith Vayda as influential as I would have expected.On the contrary, it was surprising for me to find a manifestedrecognition of Gregory Bateson as an intellectual inspiration, which is not directly reflected in Rappaport'sbooks.Rappaport met Bateson in Hawaii in 1968, and the 1984's epilogue of PFA shows some influence of

Bateson's view of evolution and adaptation as informational processes.Referring Bateson, Rappaport wrote thathe was "the most profound of influences upon me" (Rappaport 1994: 167).This influence is reflected more in thelater works of Rappaport, where he developed more interest in meaning in anthropology.[7]In functionalist anthropology, in general, seems to be that the option of not going through history has been achoice taken from functionalists with different degrees of consciousness preference on their work.This case canbe considered from Malinowski's Argonauts as a major marker of dehistoricizacer of anthropology (Stocking1992: 274 in W. Kelly, 1999) and Radcliffe Brown's preface of his ethnography "The Andaman Islanders"

http://classes.yale.edu/02-03/anth500a/projects/project_sites/99_Gil/PaperPFA.html#_ftnref1









(1948).Both admitted that history was consciously not taken for several reasons.The "ethnographic present"

(Chapple and Coon 1942, in Kelly 1999) was one of the important consequences of this kind of illusory freezingeffect of the ethnographertoRappaport's ethnography which doesn't consider history in its parameters.[8]Here Vayda compares this process with the biologists, but I am more tempted to think that a more relevantupdated comparison, might be with the approach to reality used in economics through models which attempt to

test their principles of the selfish agent and individual choice. [9]"Statements of ‘what it does’ and 'how it does it' may well be among the most informative, important andinteresting that can be made concerning an organ, an institution or a convention” (Rappaport 1968/84: 347).Forhim this is one of the main purposes of ethnography and in this way we can see how systems work and how

rituals regulate social life.When he is talking about the “systemic role of ritual in the ecology of the Tsembaga”(Rappaport 1968/84: 230), he took further the functionalist idea of Durkheim’s "mechanic solidarity" as ametaphor for all living species in a local territory, including humans.All equal parts in the environment.This wasopposed to the "organic solidarity" where the the unity of the organism is as great as the individuation of the partsis more marked, andbecause of this analogy, the proposition is to call the solidarity which is due to the division of

labor, organic (Durkheim 1933/64: 130-131).[10]This rapid abandonment of older theories for new ones, instead of trying to fix some aspects of the older onescan also be understood through the dynamics of academic careers within disciplines.There seems to be a

necessity to confront something that is in appearance new to enter in an a respected academic circle and accessto academic positions.For me, it is meaningful the many times I heard this comment from professors andstudents, more when referring the case of the paradigm called "postmodernism critique" and its dynamics withinthe people in academia.[11]This comparison was basically proposed by Professor W. Kelly and is remarked on secondary bibliography.[12]Is interesting to notice that he titled the book as "agricultural involution" (term borrowed from Goldenweiser1936 in Geertz 1963/74: 80-81) to describe and emphasize the changing character of the systems.In his words:"those culture patterns which, after having reached what would seem to be a definitive form, nonetheless fail

either to stabilize or transform themselves into a new pattern but rather continue to develop by becominginternally more complicated" (Geertz 1963/74: 81).[13]In this part our account is only of theoretical similarities but we are tempted also to mention that the three hadpresent the idea of interdisciplinary work in fieldwork.This could be interpreted as a practical reflect of their

holistic approach as a necessity in accordance to the complexity of the task and the breaking of the boundariesof the culture corporate space of understanding.Geertz (1963/74: xviii) mentioned that "the understanding of thenew countries of the 'third world demands that one pursue scientific quarry across any fence-off academic fieldsinto which it may happen to wander".About three weeks ago I attended a conference in the Forestry School at

Yale, by an anthropologist as candidate for a "junior social ecology position".He stated that the interdisciplinarycollaboration was a necessity in his fieldwork, basically, for framing the "good questions" to the populationstudied, directly related to the contrast of the "western science" tradition.[14]Is not casualness that Harold Conklin is thanked in the acknowledgments of both Rappaport's and Geertz's

ethnographies, for providing comments and criticism (Rappaport 1968/84: xiv, Geertz 1957/74: xviii).Also,Rappaport took classes of ethnoscience and ecology with Conklin which and admitted were “very useful”(Rappaport 1994: 166).This recognition could be interpreted as the recognition of Conklin's status as one of theinitiators of the ethnographic research with ecological topics.[15]In this sense, PFA is considered a pioneer work on the preoccupation of energy expenditure in the sense oftotal energy yields (Ellen 1982: 183).Also PFA was criticized because the data required to support analyses insystems terms were considered in too small scale to understand ecological process, a not sufficiently











sophisticated sue of quantitative data, and an incomplete use of systems theory.[16]This characteristic is following a tradition that I consider could be located under durkhemian heritage, where

social facts can only be explained by other social facts (Durkheim 1938/82) and "superorganic" concept ofKroeber (1917).For Kroeber culture was a thing sui generis (the superorganic) while biology (the organic) wasconstant.Causes of cultural phenomena might be primarily other cultural phenomena.[17]Although, in the introduction of his ethnography we can read "...this book is an attempt to apply to the

interpretation of --in this case, economic-- history some concepts and finding of social anthropology" usinginsights from micro-sociology to understand macro-sociological problems, and to "establish a fruitful interactionbetween the biological, social and historical sciences" (Geertz 1963/74: xviii).[18]The determinism was marked by causal correlation.The possibilism based on limiting factors of environmentfor culture, as a negative formulation of geographical determinism.This was best represented by Wissler.Themost recognized objections of environmental determinism within anthropology came more from "cultural orhistorical particularism" (Boas, Kroeber, Lowie) in US.[19]The labels of environmentalism, possibilism and cultural ecology have been inspired in biological parallels, butthe Aristotelian assertion of the uniqueness of human culture was not reflected to an explicitly ecologicalapproach to ethnographic analysis.From the eighteenth century onwards 'normal' natural science had becomeincreasingly non-Aristotelian in its organic view of the relationships between entities.This was dramaticallyreaffirmed in the struggle for survival through Darwinism.The former became the basic meta-concept of a science

of ecology, which included a new definition of environment which included all factors external to the organismand adaptation. Haeckel (1911/1868:793-4, in Ellen 1982: 66) saw this as the universal life triad of environment,function and organism.He was the first to use the term "ecology" (Okologie).Much of the early work was basedon broad natural historical and evolutionary notions and ignorant of the rapidly developing disciplines of animal

and plant ecology (Ellen 1982: 66).PFA can be considered as was one of the first applications of environmentand its influence in ethnographies.[20]According to Ellen (1982: 132), many of the 50's evolutionists "for understandable political reasons" (we caninterpret he was referring to the "cold war"), were not encouraged to emphasize the Marxist connection, with the

exception of White and Childe.In Ellen's account (1982: 15), for Marx the Homo Sapiens is both parts onnature: appropriating it and capable of transforming it; in what could be considered a primigeny act of thepostmodern discussion of the observed and observer.Pushing further the interpretation ofDove (1996) forecological anthropology in the nineties, postmodern critique could be perfectly be seen as compatible withneoliberalism, chaos theory engages perfectly with a sort of anarchism of free market.[21]As a student of anthropology in Columbia, Rappaport (1994) was immersed in a dominant paradigm by LeslieWhite.Although he sustained that he "quickly rejected the Whitian perspective, he admitted was influenced by "thevision of a lawful and unified order underlying the multiplicity of structures", reflected also in PFA.[22]This term comes from William Sturtevant (1964 in Ellen 1982) when he referred to “ethnoscience”, as theknowledge of a certain population about a topic.The first step in this approach is through the methodology of the

construction of taxonomies of the native terms, based on phonemes.Vayda and Rappaport (1967) distinguishedbetween two approaches: “ethno-semantic” or “ethno-taxonomy” and “ethno-ecology”.Ethnosemantic impliesthe discovering of the terms for classification and concepts for a population.But Conklin goes further andindicates that the Hanunóo knows (or say they know) the relationship between the environmental phenomenasand over them as a society.For example, the effects of erosion and the agricultural activities.[23]Sahlins (1976: 298 in PFA: 331) criticized this kind of"empiricism" claimed by PFA as a type of "ecologyfetishism", because it practice "the idea that nothing is in fact what it appears, i.e. culturally, but is translatedinstead into natural coordinates or consequences".Sahlins proposed with irony that then corn, beans and squash

become an unbalanced diet, the ritual pig slaughter and distribution a mode of remaining within "the limits of











carrying capacity", the social order "a population of organisms".But Rappaport responded that any ethnographicaccount is composed of a report, description or interpretation of the meanings, the absence of the latter isinadequate (Rappaport 1968/84: 332).[24]Kenneth Pike (1954 in Barfield 1997) coined the terms emic and etic, by analogy with the conceptsphonemics and phonetics. [25]Although Ortner (1984) and Ellen (1982: 138) did not go further on these statements, since they assumedthat is a common knowledge, we can hypothesize very broadly elements of two periods: the beginning and the

criticism of the cold war, with Vietnam and some repercussions for the youth people in antiwar movements.[26]According to Levi-Strauss, by posing the relationship between the two and using it to legitimate democracy,Rousseau had invented the subject of nature and culture (Ellen 1996:17).Aristotle is recognized by Ellen(1996:4) as the one of the oldest origins for polarizing "environment" versus "culture".Moreover, Ellen (1996: 17)sustains that “the history of anthropology is --in one way or another-- the history of the categories nature andculture”.I agree with the idea that we can understand the anthropology history, or at least part of it, through thehistory of the use and discussion of these important concepts.This was one of the ideas of historicizing PFA as anentrance to the meanings of the larger history of the sub-discipline of ecological anthropology and the discipline. [27] A single scientific theory of assimilating human beings into nature attracted the interest of anthropological andsocial theorists.The vision of "human ecology" as an extension of general ecology was first reworked in sociology

as a tool for empirical analysis by the Chicago school of urbanism.In fact, Park and Burgess (1924:559 in Ellen1982: 67) invented the label "human ecology".The epistemological foundations are due to Alihan (1938 in Ellen1982: 68).The social or human ecology of the Chicago school was essentially spatial sociology employingorganic analogies (Bennet 1976: 71-72 in Ellen 1982).

Photograph: "A medium-sized pig is sacrificed to the Red Spirits. Photo taken by Mrs. Cherry Vayda among the Fungai-Korama, a Maring group living east of theTsembaga in the Simbai Valley". Both, the photograph and the text appeared in the photographic section of Pigs for the Ancestors.

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