kay milton-environmentalism and cultural theory_ exploring the role of anthropology in environmental...

ENVIRONMENTALISM ANDCULTURAL THEORY

The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the attention paidby social scientists to environmental issues, and a gradualacknowledgement in the wider community, of the role of socialscience in the public debate on sustainability. At the same time, theconcept of culture, once the property of anthropologists, hasgained wide currency among social scientists. This book showshow an understanding of culture can throw light on the wayenvironmental issues are perceived and interpreted, both by localcommunities and within the contemporary global arena.

Taking an anthropological approach the book examines therelationship between human culture and human ecology, andconsiders how a cultural approach to the study of environmentalissues differs from other established approaches in social science.This book adds significantly to our understanding ofenvironmentalism as a contemporary phenomenon, bydemonstrating the distinctive contribution of social and culturalanthropology to the environmental debate. It will be of particularinterest to students and researchers in the fields of social scienceand the environment.

Kay Milton is Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the QueensUniversity, Belfast.

ENVIRONMENT AND SOCIETYEdited by Steven Yearley

Environmental SociologyJohn Hannigan

Citizen ScienceAlan Irwin

Environmentalism and Cultural TheoryKay Milton

ENVIRONMENTALISMAND CULTURAL

THEORY

Exploring the role of anthropology inenvironmental discourse

Kay Milton

London and New York

First published 1996by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge

29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

Routledge is an International Thomson Publishing Company

1996 Kay Milton

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted orreproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter

invented, including photocopying and recording, or in anyinformation storage or retrieval system, without permission in

writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication DataMilton, Kay

Environmentalism and cultural theory: exploring the role ofanthropology in environmental discourse/Kay Milton.

p. cm.(Environment and society)Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. EnvironmentalismSocial aspects. 2. Culture. 3. Ethnology.I. Title. II. Series.GE195.M55 1996

303.2dc209526822

ISBN 0-203-20544-8 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-20547-2 (Adobe eReader Format)ISBN 0-415-11529-9 (hbk)ISBN 0-415-11530-2 (pbk)

To Morse,who arrived at the beginning

and left at the end

vii

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction: Social science and environmental discourse 1

1 ANTHROPOLOGY, CULTURE ANDENVIRONMENTALISM 8How is anthropology different? 8The concept of culture in anthropology 13Anthropology and environmental discourse 22Exploring environmentalism 27

2 CULTURE AND ECOLOGY 37Culture as mediator 39Environmental determinism 40Cultural determinism 48Leaving culture out 55Bringing culture back in 61

3 ENVIRONMENTALISM IN SOCIAL SCIENCE 69Environmental economics 71Environmentalism in social and political theory 73Environmentalism in anthropology 88What cultural theory can offer 100

4 ENVIRONMENTALISM AND CULTURALDIVERSITY 106The message of the Kogi 107The myth of primitive ecological wisdom 109Diverse cultures, diverse environments 114The lessons of cross-cultural comparison 133

viii

5 GLOBALIZATION, CULTURE AND DISCOURSE 142The study of world systems 144Globalization as a consequence of modernity 150Globalization and cultural diversity 154Globalization and cultural theory 159Globalization as a dual process 164Culture and discourse 166

6 THE CULTURE OF GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTALIST DISCOURSE 172A sense of the global 175The globalist perspective 180Opposing globalism 187Contesting the past, contesting the future 193Casting a vote? 196The discourse beyond the debate 204

7 ANTHROPOLOGY, SOCIAL SCIENCEAND ENVIRONMENTALISM 213Back to culture 213An interdisciplinary approach? 219Cultural theory and environmentalism 222

Notes 227Bibliography 236Index 257

CONTENTS

ix

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many people have contributed to this project in various ways. Inparticular, I should like to thank Michael Redclift for hisencouraging comments during the early preparation of the book;Tim Ingold, Roy Ellen and Hastings Donnan, who kindly suppliedme with pre-publication material; Laura Rival, Peter Rawcliffe andparticipants in the Oxford Centre for the Environment, Ethics andSociety Seminar at Mansfield College, for their helpful commentson various parts of the manuscript; Anne Gee for her patience as Ioverran several deadlines; Steven Yearley for his constructivecriticism of earlier drafts and his editorial encouragementthroughout; my colleagues at Queens University, particularlyElizabeth Tonkin, for giving me the time and space needed tocomplete the project. The extract from the Rubiyt of OmarKhayym (Fitzgerald 1947) is included by kind permission ofHarperCollins Publishers Limited. I am especially grateful to JohnStewart for his comments on various drafts, his constant supportand endurance of many bouts of bad temper. A final word ofthanks is due to the many students whose enthusiastic exchangesand awkward but insightful questions have helped me to developthe ideas expressed in this book.

1

INTRODUCTION

Social science and environmentaldiscourse

More than perhaps any other issue, the environment callsupon the social sciences to develop internationallycomparative and interdisciplinary approaches.

(Jamison et al. 1990:vii)

the interpretation of the environment in the social sciencesassumes territoriality of its own.

(Benton and Redclift 1994:13) Anthropologists are in the habit of storing up their favouriteanecdotes from fieldwork for appropriate occasions. Here is one ofmine. One afternoon during the short dry season of 1979, I wasengaged in participant observation in the Kasigau village ofRukanga, weeding the maize crop under the baking African sunwith a group of neighbours. One of my companions paused in hiswork, spat the dust from his mouth and surveyed the shimmeringlandscape. After some thought, he said, We heard a few years agothat some Americans were going to the moon. Is this true? Did theyreally go? I assured him that it was true, that I had read about it inthe newspapers and seen it on television. He laughed, and thosearound us joined in the laughter: What was the matter with them?he asked, Didnt they have anything to do here on Earth?

At the time, I treated this open and light-hearted derision ofsomething my own society considered to be a pinnacle of humanachievement as a source of insight into the pragmatic character ofthe culture I was engaged in studying. Fifteen years later, I am moreinclined to acknowledge his insight into the follies of my own

INTRODUCTION

2

culture. Today, it seems, we all have a great deal to do on Earth.According to one widely respected British environmentalist, ourtask involves,

nothing less than permanently arresting the deterioration inthe functioning of the biosphere as a viable life supportsystem for the earth. The time limit must permit the biosphereto recover its equilibrium, and to renew its vigour sufficientlyto enable human, animal and plant life to continue to flourishinto the indefinite future.

(Nicholson 1987:193) I experience mixed responses to this challenge. The environmentalistin me wants to get on with the work, to plant trees, lobby politicians,stop pollution, save the whales and the woodlands, halt thedestruction wrought by the blind pursuit of profit and progress. Thetrained anthropologist, irritatingly, wants to stop and ask questions.Why do we believe what the scientists tell us? Why do we considerwhales and woodlands important? What kinds of assumptions underliethe claim that the Earth is in danger? How does this particular way ofunderstanding the world differ from those proffered by other cultures,and why are they different?

These conflicting responses express one of the central dilemmasof social science: how to study that of which we are a part and stillremain part of it. How can we, at the same time, be full, committedparticipants in society and detached observers of it?1 In the past,anthropologists have responded to this dilemma in diverse ways.Some have felt that involvement in moral issues, particularly wherethe rights of indigenous people are concerned (see Paine 1986), is anatural entailment of their role as students of society (Berreman1968:391). Others have preferred to remain detached observers,and have seen any involvement in the course of social change asincompatible with serious analysis. This divergence of views has, attimes, seriously threatened the peace of the discipline (Schensuland Schensul 1978:1245) and created an image of appliedanthropology as a poor relation to mainstream, academicanthropology.2 This view has changed as an increasing proportionof anthropologists has found employment in practical spheresoutside academia.

My own answer to the dilemma is to suggest that anthropologyneither obliges its practitioners to adopt a moral stance on

INTRODUCTION

3

anything, nor precludes them from doing so. I shall argue inChapter 1 that involvement in advocacy is entirely consistent withthe principles of anthropological theory; that there is nothingentailed in our role as analysts of human culture that requires us toremain detached from moral issues. Equally, there is nothing thatrequires us to take up a particular moral stance. Indeed, we shouldbe highly suspicious of any argument that seeks to identifyanthropology with a particular position on anything, for the onething that is entailed in an anthropological approach is that weshould apply systematic doubt (Morgan 1991:224) to all views,including our own.3 Anthropologys tool for doing this is culturaltheory.

In this book I try to show how anthropologists, through their useof cultural theory, can make a distinctive contribution toenvironmental discourse. Some of the arguments are not fullyformed, some have evolved during the process of writing. Thereare, I have no doubt, some contradictions and inconsistencies, but Icomfort myself with the thought that if all arguments were perfectlycomposed there would be little to say about them. The book is notintended as a definitive statement, but as an exploration of thepotential of cultural theory to throw light on environmental issues,and on the nature and content of environmentalism itself, as a wayof understanding the world. It will be clear from the argumentpresented above that I am not trying to tie anthropology to anenvironmentalist position; the insights generated by cultural theorymight just as easily be used in opposing environmentalistarguments as in supporting them. But it may be worth declaringthat I have written this book because, from an anthropologicalviewpoint, the intellectual foundations of environmentalism look alittle shaky, and I consider it important that they be strengthened.In this sense, the analysis in the following chapters is not value free.

Anyone who has just a casual acquaintance with anthropologymay be surprised to learn that it can contribute to environmentaldiscourse. Its popular image, fostered by television documentaries,is of a subject concerned with esoteric rituals and exotic forms ofmarriage, or with the reconstruction of unrecorded histories.Anthropology, it appears, looks back or sideways, but notforwards. What could such a discipline have to say about the futureof life on Earth? Others may dismiss anthropologys claim torelevance as just another arrival on the environmental bandwagon.Everyone, it seems, has something to say on the environment, so

INTRODUCTION

4

why not anthropologists? Either response would be mistaken, foranthropologys popular image is misleading, and the bandwagonmodel of environmental concern, while it may have some basis,obscures an important trend.

There are sound reasons why an increasing range of specialistshas been drawn into environmental discourse. Our perception andunderstanding of environmental problems and their possiblesolutions have shifted over the years. What began (in so far as abeginning can be identified) as problems of nature, haveprogressively been reshaped as problems of technology, ofresource management, of health, of economics, of internationalpolitics and of ideology. Natural scientists still have the role ofexamining the interactions of organisms and substances, to explainthe physical consequences of pollution and predict the ecologicalimpact of environmental change. But technologists are alsoinvolved, to try to make industry and other economic activityconform to environmental constraints; so are legal experts, to adjustnational and international law to the requirements ofenvironmental protection; economists, to bring environmental costsand benefits into the sphere of economic planning; sociologists andpolitical scientists, to examine the patterns of social interactionwhich promote or mitigate damaging practices; philosophers andtheologians to examine conventional values and beliefs for thefoundations of an environmental ethic. Environmental problemsare seen as penetrating all spheres of human activity, so the searchfor solutions has recruited an enormous diversity of expertise.

The contribution of social science has been slow to gainrecognition among policy makers and environmental activists. Thedevelopment of both capitalist and socialist economies was drivenby the view that nature is to be exploited for human benefit, andby an unquestioned confidence in the ability of human ingenuity toovercome difficulties. The firm conviction that environmentalproblems can be solved by technology was a logical consequenceof this underlying ethos, and decision makers assumed that thephysical and biological sciences would identify problems andappropriate responses (Benton and Redclift 1994:1314). In recentyears, the social sciences have gained recognition, initially as toolsfor identifying the impacts of environmental changes and devisingappropriate policies (Benton and Redclift 1994:14), but eventuallyas components in the overall understanding of environmentalproblems. National and international funding bodies now regularly

INTRODUCTION

5

support social scientific research on environmental issues, andprogrammes which span the boundary between the natural and thesocial sciences have become commonplace (Redclift 1992:343).

From the viewpoint of the social sciences, the most significantshifts in the perception of environmental issues (those which havedefined and enhanced their role) have taken place since the early1980s. Gradually, the impact of non-technological (particularlyeconomic and political) factors on the environment has beenrecognized, if not fully understood. Some of the financial policiesof national governments and international funding agencies cameto be recognized as environmentally damaging. In particular, thedevastation caused by major dam projects and by new roadsthrough the rainforests was widely publicized. Through theserevelations, the rights of indigenous peoples have been linked toenvironmental issues (see Cowell 1990, Cummings 1990), adding anew dimension to the efforts to conserve wildlife habitat andbiodiversity. In Britain, the governments fiscal policies wereblamed for the loss of important habitat to commercial forestry innorthern Scotland, and throughout the European Community (EC,now the European Union) the severe environmental impacts of theCommon Agricultural Policy were becoming clear. Environmentalactivists throughout the world turned their attention to matters ofpolicy and financial accounting.

At the same time, consumer choice emerged as a powerful toolin environmental campaigning. For instance, the Europeancampaign to ban the import of baby seal products from Canada,backed by a consumer boycott of Canadian fish products, led to asignificant reduction in seal hunting, and unintentionally damagedthe economies of Arctic communities (Wright 1984, Wenzel 1991).More recently, demands for dolphin-friendly tuna have had animpact on fishing methods. The general rise in green consumerismhas changed the ways in which manufacturers market theirproducts. Environmental claims and messages are nowcommonplace in advertising campaigns (see Yearley 1992a:98ff.).

The combined effect of all these trends has been thatenvironmental activists and policy makers have come to recognizethe importance of understanding all aspects of human thought andaction. It is not simply technology that determines the humanimpact on the environment, but a combination of technology witheconomic values, ethical standards, political ideologies, religiousconventions, practical knowledge, the assumptions on which all

INTRODUCTION

6

these things are based and the activities that are generated by them.Through this recognition, the role of the social sciences inenvironmental discourse has become firmly established.

However, until very recently, and with a few notableexceptions,4 the voice of anthropology in this arena has beenalmost silent, despite the fact that anthropologists have sometimesbecome involved in environmental issues, particularly where theyhave implications for human rights (see, for instance, Cowell1990:169). The relative absence of anthropology fromenvironmental discourse should be a cause for concern, given thata great deal of the knowledge generated by anthropologicalresearch, particularly on the ways in which people understand andinteract with their environments, could be of value in the search forsolutions to environmental problems.

As well as attracting a very wide range of specialists,environmental discourse is characterized by demands forinterdisciplinary approaches. This implies more than abandwagon-load of diverse specialisms. It suggests that the questfor a viable future should be a combined and collaborative effort, inwhich specialists pool their expertise and generate new analyticalmodels. I find it difficult to imagine just what an interdisciplinarysocial-scientific approach might look like, and I shall have more tosay on this in the final chapter. For the moment, it is important tostart from a point of mutual understanding. One of the mainreasons for writing this book was to explore, for anthropologistsand other social scientists alike, what anthropology, in its guise ascultural theory, has to offer.

The argument that cultural theory can contribute to anunderstanding of environmental issues depends on the idea thatculture plays a role in human-environment relations. The first twochapters develop this idea, first by explaining what anthropologistsmean by culture and cultural theory (in Chapter 1), and then byconsidering how anthropologists have related the concept ofculture to human ecology (in Chapter 2). As will be seen,anthropologists are by no means agreed on what culture means,nor on its role in ecological relations. So developing the case forcultural theory is not just a matter of describing what anthropologyis about; it involves distilling an argument out of a number ofdiverse and sometimes contradictory perspectives. The first twochapters also establish a working definition of environmentalismand discuss its status as a cultural phenomenon.

INTRODUCTION

7

In arguing that anthropology can offer a distinctive contributionto environmental discourse, it is important to demonstrate that acultural analysis is different from the approaches offered by theother social sciences. Chapter 3 presents an analysis of existingsocial-scientific studies on environmentalism and compares themwith an approach from cultural theory. The argument is thatanthropology broadens the enquiry by employing concepts whichare more widely applicable than those used by other disciplines,enabling comparisons to be made across the full human culturalrepertoire. Chapter 4 puts this into practice by comparingperspectives on the environment from a range of cultural contexts,including both industrial and non-industrial societies,5 andconsidering how far they can be seen as environmentalist incharacter. The comparison is centred on a popular environmentalistmyth, the assertion that non-industrial societies possess a degreeof ecological wisdom which has been lost in the process ofindustrial development. Chapter 4 also considers the value ofcultural diversity itself as a condition important for the fulfilment ofenvironmentalist objectives.

Chapters 5 and 6 move the discussion into the global arena. It isimportant to do this, because anthropology is often seen as beingtrapped within the local context, incapable of saying anythingsignificant about large-scale processes, and because theenvironment is now widely understood in global terms. Chapter 5discusses the ways in which social scientists have tried tounderstand globalization, and identifies an approach that isconsistent with cultural theory. In Chapter 6, this approach isapplied in an account of the cultural content of globalenvironmental discourse. Chapter 7 presents a selective summaryof what has been learned from this exploratory journey.

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ANTHROPOLOGY, CULTUREAND ENVIRONMENTALISM

While anthropologists perform archaistic studies of odds andends of humanity, municipal authorities struggle with thechemical, geological, economic and political problems oftoxic wasteswith little help from social scientists.

(Bennett 1990:435) Boundaries in social science are not permanent fixtures; they comeand go according to context. Sometimes they appear in the arena ofacademic politics, as the practitioners of each discipline stake outtheir territories in the contest for student allegiance and financialresources. Sometimes they acquire significance in scientific debate,as specialists in one discipline strain to grasp the subtleties ofanothers jargon. Illusions of similarity are created by the tendencyto use the same terms (structure, function, culture) for differentthings, and illusions of diversity are created by the oppositetendency to call the same thing by different names. If social scienceis to meet the challenge of providing interdisciplinary approachesto the environment, we need to know first what each discipline hasto offer. Since my main purpose in this book is to explore whatanthropology has to offer to environmental discourse, it isimportant to begin by establishing what is distinctive aboutanthropology, what makes it different from the other socialsciences.

HOW IS ANTHROPOLOGY DIFFERENT?

The most obvious and well-known distinguishing feature isanthropologys interest in non-industrial indigenous andtraditional societies,1 the study of which was initially fostered

ANTHROPOLOGY, CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENTALISM

9

by colonial expansion. It is this heritage that has givenanthropology its exotic public image. This image is notunfounded, but it is misleading because it conceals the fact thatan increasing number of anthropologists are studying variousaspects and consequences of industrialism,2 writing about majorissues of public concern,3 and commenting on the implicationsof contemporary technological change.4 I t also masksanthropologys deep concern with what is general in the humancondition, as well as with what is particular to specific societies.Other societies have always been held up as mirrors to our own(however we might be defined), and the wealth of humandiversity has been treated as a source from which to drawinsights into the nature of social processes. The minute analysisof ritual, for instance, exemplified in the work of Turner (1967,1968), is conducted in the context of a broader understanding ofwhat ritual is, how it operates and why people engage in it, builtup through knowledge of the diversity and similarity exhibitedin a range of human societies. The theories that emerge fromsuch studies are often about humanity in general and, as Turnerhimself demonstrated (1969, 1974), are just as enlightening onthe processes at work among political revolutionaries or crowdsat a football match as on the traditional motivations andconcerns of a central African community. Thus, anthropologistsoften share the concerns of sociologists and political scientistsbut have come to them through a different route. Anthropologystraditional interest in the full range of human societies isimportant in shaping its contribution to environmentaldiscourse, as future chapters will demonstrate.

Equally important, but less accessible to public gaze, is thedistinctiveness of anthropological theory, where the most enduringand consistent presence has been the concept of culture. This is notto say that culture has been the exclusive territory ofanthropologists, far from it, especially in recent decades as culturalstudies has acquired an identity as a discipline.5 But there is nodoubt that culture has had a more central position inanthropological thought than in any other social science, at leastuntil the emergence of cultural studies, and that anthropologistshave accorded it a great deal of analytical significance. Indeed, incontrast with what anthropologists have written over the years, themanner in which other social scientists view culture sometimesseems rudimentary. As recently as 1992, Featherstone observed,


10

The last decade has seen a marked increase in interest inculture in the social sciences. For many social scientists,culture has been seen as something on the periphery of thefield as, for example, we find in conceptualizations whichwish to restrict it to the study of the arts. Even when this viewbecame extended to incorporate the study of popular cultureand everyday life, culture was still regarded by many asesoteric and epiphenomenal.

(1992:vii) It is distressing and frustrating for an anthropologist to read thesewords, for it is as if the last hundred years or so of anthropologicaltheory had never happened. What many social scientists havebecome aware of only during the last decade or so (if Feather-stones observation is accurate), that a concept of culture,appropriately defined, can offer fundamental insights into thehuman condition and can challenge the viability of our existingmodes of conceptualization (Featherstone 1992:vii), has beenunderstood and taken for granted by anthropologists for manyyears (cf. Robertson 1992:32).

The shifting centre

It is one thing to state that the use of culture as a central analyticalconcept distinguishes anthropology from other social sciences. It isquite another to state what that concept is or how it is used inanthropology, for the level of inconsistency, disagreement anddebate that has surrounded it is as great as for any key concept insocial science. Wallersteins comment is pertinent, even though heprobably was not thinking of anthropology when he made it:Culture is probably the broadest concept of all those used in thehistorical social sciences. It embraces a very large range ofconnotations, and thereby it is the cause perhaps of the mostdifficulty (1990a:31). At least part of the difficulty with culture inanthropology stems from a dilemma over whether culture is itselfan object of analysis, or whether it is part of a broad framework forthe analysis of something else, usually something that is seen as apart of culture and therefore as cultural in nature. In other words,do anthropologists consider the question of how culture isconstituted, how we should theorize culture (Featherstone1992:vii), or do they study the functions and meanings of more


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specific phenomena which fall within the broad category ofculture? This dilemma was neatly expressed by Bohannan:

Culture is a black box for most anthropologists. We defineculture by whatever purpose we ascribe to it in ourtheorizing, and are hence allowed to continue on our waywithout examining it. Anyone who needs a black box namedculture in order to carry out his activities should have it. Butone mans black box is another mans field of investigation.

(1973:358) Anthropological theory has tended to shift between the twoenterprises. For much of the time, anthropologists have studiedcultural things, rather than culture itself. The nature of the blackbox has been glimpsed from time to time, as the theoreticalspotlight has focused on its contents: kinship, symbolism, systemsof exchange, religious beliefs. Periodically, however, the spotlighthas been turned on culture itself, and the shape and dimensions ofthe black box have been redrawn. This has tended to happen, notsurprisingly, during important fundamental shifts in social sciencetheory, in which anthropology has participated. It happened, forinstance, during the 1960s and 1970s. At this time, anthropology,like the other social sciences, was shedding the cloak of positivismwhich it had worn conspicuously throughout its domination byvarious forms of structuralist theory, and moving towards a moreinterpretative approach. Pronouncements about the nature ofculture (Geertz 1966, Goodenough 1957, 1981 [1971]) werefollowed by publications which assessed the contemporary state ofthinking on culture (Bohannan 1973, Keesing 1974).

There are signs that social science theory is currentlyexperiencing another fundamental shift, the nature of which is notentirely clear as yet, but which appears to be characterized by threeprominent trends. First, there is dissatisfaction with the culturalrelativist perspective which has characterized anthropology in thepost-structuralist era, but which, it is felt by some, has largelyoutlived its usefulness (see Descola 1992:108). Second, there is awidespread reaction, both within and outside anthropology,against the Cartesian dualisms of mind-body, thought-action,nature-culture, which are seen as obstructing progress inanthropological theory. In particular, the conceptual oppositionbetween nature and culture, which was the mainstay of some forms


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of structural anthropology (most famously in the work of Lvi-Strauss) and remained firm through the post-structuralist phase, isunder serious attack as a framework for understanding the humancondition (see Croll and Parkin 1992:3, 13; Ingold 1996). Thisdevelopment echoes fundamental questions that are continuallyraised in environmentalist discourse about the role of humankindwithin the natural order (Grove-White 1993:24), and is thereforelikely to be highly significant for anthropologys contribution toenvironmental discourse.

Third, and perhaps most important, social scientists are payingincreasing attention to globalization, which is characterized by thespread and exchange of ideas, practices and technologies on aworld-wide scale. Some degree of exchange among societies hasalways been a part of human history, but the ability ofcontemporary communications to transcend the barriers of timeand space has led social scientists to ask whether it is appropriate tospeak of a global culture. The focus on world systems is far fromnew in social science (see, for instance, Wallerstein 1979, Nash1981, Chirot and Hall 1982). What is relatively new is theconceptualization of such systems in terms of culture.Anthropology is in danger of being confined to the margins of thisdiscourse, despite its long history of cultural theory, for the imagesof culture being imported into social-scientific thinking onglobalization are drawn, not from anthropology, but from thedisciplines which, as Featherstone observed (1992:vii), used todefine it as esoteric and epiphenomenal. The spectre of a globalculture would seem to offer a direct challenge to anthropologicaltradition, whose central analytical practice, cross-culturalcomparison, would be difficult to sustain in the absence ofboundaries between cultures. The nature of this challenge will beexamined more closely in Chapter 5.

Environmental discourse appears to be characterized by a highdegree of globalization. This is expressed, for instance, in thetendency for environmentalists in industrial society to borrowphilosophies and practices from non-industrial peoples, in thecreation of international arenas for negotiating agreements andsetting environmental standards (most notably, through the UnitedNations, the European Union and other such alliances), and in theimposition, through these mechanisms, of western concepts ofscience, value and nature in countries where such concepts are notindigenous. More than any other important contemporary


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discourse, the debate on the environment has adopted the conceptof the global as both motive and motif.6 Environmental problemsare represented as global in their extent and consequences, andthis image is used as a spur both for local effort (through suchslogans as think globally, act locally) and for internationalnegotiation. The global motif thus might be said to fuel theglobalization of environmentalist ideas. However, globalization isan ambiguous and contested concept in social science and itsrelevance to an understanding of environmental issues needs to beexplored rather than assumed. The question of whether a conceptof globalization provides a useful framework for developing ananthropological perspective on environmental discourse will bediscussed in Chapter 5.

THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE IN ANTHROPOLOGY

The argument of this book will shift, as anthropological thoughtitself has done, between a focus on culture itself, as an analyticalconcept, and a focus on cultural things. I shall argue thatanthropologys contribution to environmental discourse dependson environmental issues being seen as cultural in character. Thisrequires some attention to what it means, in anthropology, to labelsomething as cultural.

Any attempt to describe anthropologists shared understandingof culture very quickly runs into difficulties. Probably most wouldagree that culture is something that all human beings have, that itenables them to live in social groupings and that it is acquiredthrough association with others. Beyond this, however, one is indangerous territory. Even the apparently innocent declaration thatculture is shared (Nanda 1987:68; Peoples and Bailey 1988:19;Ferraro 1992:19) raises awkward questions about the manner of thesharing, and conjures up images of group mind and commonconsciousness, which many anthropologists find difficult to livewith (see Goodenough 1981 [1971]:51ff.). If it is impossible to stateprecisely what anthropologists mean by culture (since there is nouniversal agreement on this), it is at least possible, and useful, toexplore the concept by focusing on some of its ambiguities andshifts in meaning.


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Culture is general, culture is specific

Culture, however it is defined, is used in two main senses inanthropology, a general sense and a specific one. In its generalsense, culture is a phenomenon that is part of all humanexperience. In its specific sense, a culture is an entity associatedwith a particular society or category of people. In the first sense, werefer simply to culture; in the second sense, we refer to Japaneseculture, Irish-American culture or youth culture. Anthropologistshave not always acknowledged the distinction between the two, asthe following definitions indicate: Cultureis the patterned way oflife shared by a group of people (Nanda 1987:68, emphasisadded); Culture is the socially transmitted knowledge shared bysome group of people (Peoples and Bailey 1988:18, emphasisgiven). Howard appears to avoid the confusion: Culture itself is themanner in which human groups learn to organize their behaviourand thought in relation to their environment (1986:5). But in doingso he has deprived culture of its substance and turned it into amanner in which something is done (in this case, in which certainskills are learned). In this form, it is no longer a category, and is oflittle use as a black box.

Culture operates as a black box in anthropological analysis inboth its general and its specific senses. It is in terms of a generalunderstanding of culture that we identify phenomena (such asmarriage, ritual, classifications of plants and animals) as culturaland proceed to examine their detailed characteristics. The morespecific understanding of culture provides countless black boxesfor the purpose of ethnographic description and analysis. Irishculture, for instance, becomes the framework within which, say,Irish traditions of hospitality are described and their relations withother Irish cultural items examined.

As long as we stay within the box, we do not need to worryabout its dimensions. In the more general sense, and as Bohannanimplied (1973:358), as long as we are concerned only with thingscultural, we do not need to worry about what it is that makes themcultural. We can treat culture as the category that encompassesreligious beliefs, political systems and kinship obligations, anddiscuss the relationships among these things, even drawingexamples for comparison from different societies, without worryingabout what culture itself is. Similarly, in the more specific sense, aslong as we are writing about Irish culture, we do not need to be


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concerned about whether the things we describe are exclusivelyIrish, or whether some things are shared with other cultures. Wemight, for instance, analyse the relationship between religion andpolitical ideology in Irish culture without concerning ourselveswith parallels that might be drawn with, say, British or Americanculture. In many contexts, anthropologists can get away with failingto indicate whether they are referring to culture in its general or itsspecific sense, either because it is obvious which is intended orbecause it does not matter. In some contexts, however, it isimportant to bear the distinction in mind, as will become clear inthe discussion on culture and globalization (in Chapter 5).

The more specific understanding of culture, apart from providingblack boxes for ethnographers, has had fundamental implications forthe development of anthropology. Cross-cultural comparison, whichis present, either explicitly or implicitly, in most anthropologicalwriting, depends on cultures being seen as boxes of some kind;comparing cultures means comparing the contents of differentboxes. There have also been many analyses of how specific itemsmove between cultures, through processes such as culturalintegration and acculturation. However, although the study ofcultural change, and of cultural exchange, have formed a significantfield within anthropology, the discipline has suffered from anotorious inability, or reluctance, to produce models for the analysisof macro-processes. Anthropology has become famous foranalysing the minutiae of cultural change, but equally famous forignoring the big picture, for failing to cope with large-scale socialmovements and worldwide communications systems. Notsurprisingly, this failing has meant that, with a few exceptions,anthropologists have played little part in the debate overglobalization. The failure to develop models of large-scale culturalchange can be attributed in part to two prevailing features ofanthropological thought: the assumption that cultures are systems,and the spectre (Holy and Stuchlik 1981:28) of cultural relativism.

Cultures as systems

One of the most pervasive anthropological assumptions aboutcultures (in the specific sense) is that they are systems. This imagepersists, regardless of how the contents of cultures are defined.Keesing, for instance, represented cultures in turn as adaptivesystems, cognitive systems, structural systems, symbolic systems


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and ideational systems (1974:7483). The important questionsabout cultures have been taken to be whether they are adaptive,cognitive, structural and so on; that they are systems has been takenfor granted. There is considerable variation in what social scientistsmean by the term system. Wuthnow pointed out that, in its strictestsense, it implies only relationships (1983:61). It is unlikely that anyanthropologist would disagree with the characterization of culturesas systems in this minimal sense. But many would assume thatsystem implies more than relationships, and would take it toindicate a significant degree of order and boundedness.7

Thus to represent a culture as a system is, for many analysts, tosee it as something more than a mere box with contents. It impliesthat the contents are organized, that the relationships among themare structured. This, in turn, gives cultures a degree ofboundedness which mere boxes with contents do not have. If aculture is nothing more than a box with contents, then it is arelatively easy matter to remove or copy something from it and putit in another box. Cultural exchange and integration appearrelatively straightforward processes. This is not the case if a cultureis a system. Any cultural item cannot be easily removed withoutdisrupting the set of relationships into which it is locked. And itcannot be imported into another culture without bringing with itsome of the trappings of those former relationships and disturbingits new surroundings. One of the most apt illustrations of this kindof complication is the borrowing of marriage systems amongneighbouring Australian aboriginal peoples (see Keesing 1975:83).When a society adopts the marriage rules of its neighbours, the newrules do not always fit the extant pattern of relationships, with theresult that some existing marriages are rendered illegal!

Because many analysts treat it as an assumption, there has beenlittle attempt to justify the view that cultures are structured systems.Any attempts that have been made tend to take a rather dogmatic,it must be so form. It is argued that social life would not makesense if cultures were not structured systems. Leach asserted thatlogical relations between the parts of a culture must exist, at somedeeply abstract level (1976:11). It is important to recognize thecontribution that this model of culture has made to anthropology;the intricate ethnographic analysis that has characterized muchanthropological writing has made good use of it. But it is importantalso to understand the limitations of this view. The assumption thatcultures are structured systems has led anthropologists to


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exaggerate the problematic nature of cultural change. This does notmean that they have shied away from analysing it, but it has meantthat their analyses have tended to focus on the minutiae; they havebeen more inclined to use the microscope than the wide-anglelens. While communication across cultural boundaries has beenhappening in the world around us, anthropologists have continuedto puzzle over how such a thing is possible.

Culture is broad, culture is narrow

Cultural relativism, the second feature which, I have suggested, hasprevented anthropologists from developing models of large-scalecultural change, has been a part of anthropological thinking formany decades, but it acquired a new dominance following thetheoretical shift away from structuralist perspectives in the 1960sand 1970s. Before exploring the concept, it will be helpful tooutline the course of this shift, particularly as it forms a basis for theconcept of culture developed in Chapter 2 as the most useful inconsidering anthropologys contribution to environmentaldiscourse.

Early definitions of culture, in its general sense, saw it asallinclusive. It was that complex whole (Tylor 1871), and wasoften described as consisting of three kinds of phenomena: actions,ideas and material objects. Introductory texts in anthropologysometimes still define culture in this way. Ferraro, for instance,defined culture as, everything that people have, think and do asmembers of a society (1992:18; cf. Hicks and Gwynne 1994:46),and Howard stated that culture has three different aspects:behavioural, perceptual and material (Howard 1986:5, emphasisgiven). This broad concept of culture was appropriate whenanthropologists were mainly concerned with describing andunderstanding whole ways of life, whole systems. Once thisapproach to anthropology began to be questioned and replaced bysomething different, the concept of culture needed to be adjusted.8

From the late 1950s, anthropologists began to split the materialthey studied into two different kinds of phenomena: things which,it was assumed, can be observed more or less directly (consistingmainly of what people do and say and discernible patterns ofactivity),9 and things assumed to exist in peoples minds, whichtherefore can only be inferred from what they do and say (materialobjects were often left out of the picture altogether). The terms


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used to label these two types of data are often confusing. In thework of American anthropologists, the observable category wasoften glossed as social structure, a misleading term given that, forsome anthropologists, the distinction was made as part of a moveaway from structuralism. Other labels for this category of datainclude actions, interactions, social processes and socialorganization. But none of these is entirely satisfactory since eachexcludes a part of what is intended to be included. The termsactions and interactions cannot be applied with ease to thesustained trends and patterns (in, for example, marriage orresidence choices, or religious observance) which can be observedas prevalent over time or throughout a population. But the termssocial processes and social organization, which readily describethe more prevalent or sustained patterns, do not apply easily toindividual actions. One widely accepted solution is to use the termsociety to refer to the category of observable data, but this is alsoconfusing since society is more often used to refer to a group ofpeople who share the same culture.

The term culture came to be reserved for the category ofphenomena assumed to exist in peoples minds (Kroeber andParsons 1958, Goodenough 1961, Kay 1965). Again, there is aconfusing range of terms used to gloss this category of phenomena,including ideas, knowledge (Holy 1976) and folk models (Holyand Stuchlik 1981). Again, none of these is entirely appropriate,since the category is intended to include everything that exists inpeoples consciousness: the sum total of perceptions, assumptions,values, norms, theories and any other mechanisms through whichthey understand their experiences.

The value of distinguishing between what people do and whatthey think, feel and know was that it opened up the possibility ofstudying the relationship between them. This relationship was seenas characteristically dialectical (Keesing 1971:126). Whateverpeople hold in their minds forms a basis for their actions, which,through being observed and interpreted, feed back into theirconsciousness, reinforcing and modifying their understanding ofthe world. By using the term culture to refer only to what peoplehold in their consciousness, anthropologists were narrowing itdown in order to give it more analytical power (Geertz 1973:4).Instead of assuming a one-to-one relationship between whatpeople do and what they think, feel and know, or focusing entirelyon one level while ignoring the other (both of these having been


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characteristic of various types of structuralist analysis),anthropologists were now asking how the observable patterns ofsocial organization were generated (Barth 1966, Keesing 1971), andhow peoples actions changed their understanding of their ownsociety (Stuchlik 1977) and generated new norms (Holy 1986).

Cultural relativism and its consequences

It was the narrowing down of culture (in both its general and itsspecific senses) to the things people hold in their minds that gaveprominence to the principle of cultural relativism, which hasappeared to dominate anthropological thought during the pasttwo decades. Instead of being different ways of life, culturesbecame different ways of knowing, different ways of perceivingand understanding the world. Locked away in peoples minds,cultures could no longer be seen, and ethnographers could nolonger feel confident that their accounts were accuratedescriptions of the cultures of those they studied. Although it isnot always clear what anthropologists understand by culturalrelativism, it is often taken to mean that cultures can only beproperly understood in their own terms (Holy and Stuchlik1981:29). This claim has in turn been taken to imply that cross-cultural comparison is impossible, and that a societys culture canonly be satisfactorily interpreted by its own native members (asuggestion which, if widely accepted, might threaten to kill offanthropology altogether!). If this were so, it would be difficult toconceive of the transmission of knowledge across culturalboundaries. Most anthropologists would not wish to take theargument this far, but the implications of cultural relativism haveled them to exaggerate the problems of cross-culturalcommunication, and this, like the assumption that cultures arestructured systems, has restricted our ability to understand large-scale cultural change, and particularly to develop frameworks foranalysing the emergence of worldwide communications. Onceagain, it appears to have been going on around us while we havebeen asking ourselves how such a thing can happen.

Cultural relativism carries other implications: that all cultures areequally worthy of respect (see Herskovits 1949:76), and that allcultures are equally valid interpretations of reality. These ideashave had considerable influence both within anthropology and inthe wider world, and have helped to shape anthropologists views


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on how their own specialist knowledge should be applied(Schensul and Schensul 1978:128). It is important to address thisissue, albeit briefly, since the central tenet of this book, thatanthropology can make a valuable contribution to environmentaldiscourse, rests on the assumption that it is appropriate to useanthropological knowledge to influence the direction of culturalchange, and that anthropologists can do this without violating anyof the disciplines theoretical principles.

Both the idea that all cultures are equally worthy of respect andthe idea that all cultures are equally valid interpretations of reality,have been important weapons against ethnocentrism anddiscrimination, and have made many anthropologists advocates forcultural pluralism and the rights of minorities (Schensul andSchensul 1978, Paine 1986). Paradoxically, they have also had theopposite effect of lending support to the view that anthropologistsshould not be advocates for anything (see Smith, quoted inSchensul and Schensul 1978:128), and that active involvement incultural reform is not a proper activity for anthropologists.Involvement in reform means making judgements, and the viewthat all cultures are equally worthy of respect and equally validinterpretations of reality has made some anthropologists reluctantto make judgements, where this means favouring one culturalperspective over another. This view depends on a sharp separationbetween anthropological analysis and involvement in social life. Itimplies that the practice of social science can be detached from thepractice of social activity, or at least from social (or cultural) reform(Berger 1963). Although this view was once widespread amongstanthropologists, it has been undermined by the changes in the wayculture is understood.

The dialectical relationship between culture (meaning whatpeople hold in their minds) and what people do, which has been amain focus of post-structuralist anthropological analysis, consists oftwo complementary processes: that whereby culture generatesactions, and that whereby culture is sustained, reinforced ormodified through actions. The first process has probably receivedmore analytical attention. Patterns of action, discernible, forinstance, in recruitment to social groups, have been understood interms of the knowledge which guides the individual actionscontributing to the overall pattern (see, for instance, Leach 1961,Keesing 1971, Stuchlik 1976, Riches 1977). Less attention has beenpaid to the ways in which culture is sustained or changed through


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the actions people perform (see Stuchlik 1977, Riches 1979, Holy1986). Nevertheless, the way in which this process has beenconceptualized by anthropologists has far-reaching implications fortheir own involvement in cultural change.

Culture is sustained and modified through social interaction, inwhich individuals act on the basis of their own knowledge, theirown cultural understandings. In other words, by engaging insocial activity, people are bringing their knowledge to bear on asituation and participating in the generation of new knowledge orthe reinforcement of existing knowledge.10 Social activity cannothelp but contribute to this process, which encapsulates culturalreform. It has been argued that the involvement ofanthropologists in advocacy is a logical consequence of this wayof conceptualizing the relationship between culture and socialinteraction (see Harries-Jones 1986). Social interaction becomesan arena in which the participants each assert their particular wayof knowing the world, in which they try to make their knowledgecount (Harries-Jones 1991) in the process through which cultureis continually recreated.

Anthropologists have used the knowledge gained through theirstudy of cultural diversity in many different ways. Some have usedit in defence of cultural pluralism and human rights, some haveused it primarily to further their own academic careers, others haveprobably been content to assume that they are contributing to thesum of human knowledge. Those who have argued thatanthropologists should not participate in social reform have,through their very arguments, helped to perpetuate an image ofvalue-free social science and to give scientific considerationsprecedence over moral ones (see Milton 1993:13). This is as much acase of involvement in cultural change as is anything done by amissionary or a prophet. The only way of opting out of culturalchange is to keep our knowledge to ourselves, in which case itcounts for nothing. The choice to participate in environmentaldiscourse or any other public discourse must always remain withthe individual analyst, but it must be understood that, far fromviolating the disciplines fundamental principles, such a choice isentirely consistent with the way in which many anthropologistsdefine their central theoretical concerns.


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Culture as process

The current stirrings in social science theory, characterized by thedisenchantment with cultural relativism and with Cartesianoppositions between thought and action, mind and body, cultureand nature, are engendering yet another shift in the way culture isconceptualized by anthropologists. The distinction betweenculture, as something held in the mind, and peoples activities,which was central to the development of post-structuralistanthropology, is now regarded as unsatisfactory by some scholars,who see it as reproducing and reinforcing the opposition betweenmind and body. In an attempt to eliminate the dualism, the termculture is being used less to refer to what people know and think,and more to refer to the process by which that knowledge andthose thoughts are generated and sustained. In other words, thewhole dialectical process outlined above is becoming synonymouswith culture itself.

Harries-Jones (1986:238) refers to a model of culture in anactive sense. Culture and action are no longer distinct; instead,action and knowledge are part of the single process that isculture. This image of culture is very close to someunderstandings of the concept of discourse, as a process in whichknowledge is generated through communicative action. It is alsoreflected in recent developments in ethnographic writing, inwhich the distinction between subject and object is dissolved, andthe production of ethnographic knowledge is seen as the jointenterprise of the ethnographer and the members of the societythey are studying (Clifford 1986:13ff.). For reasons to be discussedin Chapter 2, I do not consider this processual concept of cultureparticularly helpful in developing anthropologys role inenvironmental discourse. The concept of discourse itself will bediscussed more fully in Chapter 5.

ANTHROPOLOGY AND ENVIRONMENTALDISCOURSE

Having considered in detail the central concept of anthropologicalthought and its most significant variations in meaning, I am now ina position to suggest, in a preliminary way, what anthropologyscontribution to environmental discourse might look like. Such acontribution might take two main forms. First, the knowledge


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generated by anthropologists about the diversity of human culturemight be important in addressing environmental problems. Thismeans treating anthropology as the study of human ecology, andapplying its findings in much the same way as the work of otherecologists is applied. Second, anthropologists might use theirdistinctive approach to study environmentalism itself as a culturalphenomenon and contribute to the development ofenvironmentalist thought. The theoretical bases of these twosuggestions are explored in Chapters 2 and 3 respectively; here, it isimportant simply to clarify what is meant by them.

Anthropology as the study of human ecology

One important way in which anthropologists have understood theconcept of culture has deliberately been omitted from thediscussion so far, the view of culture as an ecological mechanism.This idea exists in two main forms. First, many anthropologists haveassumed that culture is the medium through which people interactwith their environment; that culture is essential to their survivalbecause, without it, they would not be able to obtain from theirenvironment whatever they need to sustain their physical andsocial well-being. This view is not universally accepted (see Ingold1992a), but has nevertheless been a pervasive and persistent idea inanthropological thought. Second, some anthropologists haveassumed that culture is the medium through which people adapt to,rather than merely interact with, their environment (Burnham1973:93; Ingold 1992a:39). The difference between these views liesin the degree of power attributed to the environment in thedevelopment of human society. While the first treats theenvironment simply as the source of human sustenance, the secondimplies that it has shaped human society by setting the conditionsfor its development. Some anthropologists have seen theenvironment as the prime mover in human cultural evolution.

Neither of these ideas is incompatible with the various ways ofconceptualizing culture discussed above. A culture may be seen asa whole way of life, as a way of thinking about and understandingthe world, or as the process through which that understanding isgenerated, and still be a mechanism through which the peoplewhose culture it is, interact with or adapt to their environment. Thepossibility of treating culture, for analytical purposes, as anecological mechanism is therefore not affected by the theoretical


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shifts outlined in the previous sections. Nevertheless, those shiftshave influenced the extent to which anthropologists haveincorporated culture into ecological studies, as the discussion in thenext chapter will demonstrate.

Ecological anthropology, in which the relationship betweenhuman beings and their environments has been an explicit andcentral focus, has a long history, which has to some extent runparallel to, but somewhat detached from, the major theoreticalshifts outlined above. In this field, the concept of culture hasplayed varying roles, which will be examined in detail in Chapter 2.The important point to be made here is that, if culture is to be seenas a mechanism through which people interact with theirenvironment, then there is a sense in which the study of cultureitself (and of cultures)the whole of cultural anthropology, infactbecomes the study of human ecology. This makesanthropologys potential contribution to environmental discoursesomewhat clearer. For environmental problems are generallydefined as ecological, as involving the way in which organismsinteract with their environments. Human activity is also generallyseen as the most important agent of environmental change. Adiscipline which can claim to be the study of human ecologyshould also be able to claim a central place in the wayenvironmental problems are examined and addressed.

Anthropologists as theorists of environmentalism

The second way in which anthropology might contribute toenvironmental discourse is through the analysis ofenvironmentalism itself. In many societies environmentalists areadvocates of cultural and social change. They want people tochange the ways they understand, value and use theirenvironments. Their success depends on the extent to which theycan persuade others that their interpretation of reality is correct,and that the changes they advocate are important and necessary.Cultural revolutions inevitably acquire theorists who analyse theirideas, examine their underlying assumptions, exposecontradictions and inconsistencies. Such scrutiny may notnecessarily benefit a cause, and may effectively destroy it if, as aresult, its ideology is seen to be fundamentally unsound. But causeswhich are destined to exert long-term political influence needstrong intellectual foundations, and these can develop only through


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the continual analysis and refinement of their ideas. This hasalways been an important role for social scientists, and causes suchas liberalism, socialism and feminism have progressed throughconstructive analysis.

Environmentalism has also acquired its theorists and benefitedfrom their scrutiny. They have tended to come from politicalscience (Dobson 1990, Goodin 1992a), sociology (Cotgrove 1982,Yearley 1992a), or from a background of active involvement inenvironmental discourse (Spretnak and Capra 1985, Grove-White1993). With a few exceptions (Douglas 1972, Ellen 1986, Redclift1987) and until very recently,11 anthropologists have had little tosay about environmentalist thought. In Chapter 3 I shall argue that,by treating it as a cultural phenomenon, anthropology can offerdistinctive insights into environmentalism, which complementthose provided by the other social sciences.

It will immediately be obvious, following the discussion in thischapter, that when an anthropologist calls something cultural thisdoes not establish very clearly what kind of a thing it is. We need toknow in what sense culture itself is understood. This will bediscussed further in the following sections, but I wish to avoidputting the finishing touches to this particular black box until theend of Chapter 2, after the concept of culture has been examined inthe context of human-environment relations. It is important, for thatdiscussion, that the reader does not have in mind the impressionthat a particular definition of culture is being advocated.

However, there are some definitions which cannot be left aside.I have suggested that environmentalism is both a project to whichanthropologists might contribute and an object which they mightanalyse. This means that we need to be able to identify itempirically, and this in turn requires some criteria for doing so; inother words, a definition. There is widespread misunderstandingabout what definitions are for in social science, and particularly inanthropology, and it would be wise to clarify this issue beforeproceeding.

Definitions in anthropology

Social scientists often get into deep trouble over definitions. Thereasons for this are easy to understand but difficult to overcome. Inorder to analyse something, we need to have some way ofrecognizing it; we need to know, in some sense, what it is. And yet


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the nature of the thing we are studying is revealed in the analysisitself, and our conclusions may lead us to revise our initialimpressions. This continual modification of understanding is anormal part of scientific enquiry and is not, in itself, worrying, but itdoes pose the problem of where to start, how to establish someinitial criteria for identifying what we are studying. Bohannansapparently helpful suggestion, that defining an object of analysisshould never amount to more than being specific about what oneexcludes (1973:357), turns out, on close inspection, not to behelpful at all. Since most definitions are intended to exclude morethan they include, being specific about it can amount to rather a lot!Not surprisingly, most social scientists persist in narrowing downtheir objects of study by stating what they are, rather than what theyare not.

Definitions have been especially problematic in anthropologybecause they have been required to span cultural boundaries. Thiswas a lot to ask, even before cultural relativism became dominantas a guiding principle. Attempts to formulate universal definitionsof cultural phenomena such as marriage (Leach 1955, Gough 1959)and religion (Goody 1961, Horton 1960, Spiro 1966,) invariably ledto unwanted exclusions and inclusions.12 Cultural relativismdeepened the dilemma by casting doubt on the whole enterprise ofcross-cultural comparison. The principle that all cultures areequally valid interpretations of the world, that they are all equallytrue, appears to deny the existence of an independent reality (Keatand Urry 1982:5), and therefore to deprive us of any overarchingcriteria for comparing across cultural boundaries. These kinds ofarguments have been made and countered many times over (forinstance, Holy and Stuchlik 1981:29), and their persistenceindicates a deep-seated unease which, while seeming to constrainthe potential of anthropology, has also been a driving force in itsdevelopment.

My response to the dilemma is as follows. First, there is no needto pretend that the definitions employed in anthropology aresomehow culturally neutral. It is undeniably the case thatanthropology requires phenomena generated in one culturalcontext to be interpreted in terms of ideas generated in a differentcultural context. This also happens continuously in everyday life,and increasingly so in a world of global communications (seeChapter 5). The challenge for anthropology has always been todevise guidelines for cross-cultural interpretation that enable it to


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teach us something useful and interesting about the humancondition. Second, definitions are only problematic if we insist thatthey describe the true essences of things. Since social scientistsstudy social realitythat is, reality as it is understood by people,and not essential truthsthis demand is both unreasonable andinappropriate (cf. Holy and Stuchlik 1981:30).13 In proposing cross-cultural definitions, anthropologists are simply setting up analyticalframeworks which may or may not collapse when put to the test,which may or may not prove useful for interpreting a range ofcultural responses. If we treat definitions as conceptual tools forinterpreting reality, and avoid confusing them with reality itself,their failure to grasp essential truths is not a difficulty. We can use adefinition for as long as it remains useful, and change it when itoutlives its usefulness.

EXPLORING ENVIRONMENTALISM

Thus far, I have referred to environmentalism assuming that read-ers will have their own broadly similar interpretations of the term. Ialso trust that nothing I have written so far will have seriouslystretched or contradicted the vast majority of such interpretations.But developing an anthropological perspective onenvironmentalism, and presenting it for analysis as a culturalphenomenon, will require some modification of popularconceptions. This is the task to which I now turn.

In its everyday use, the term environmentalism typically refersto a concern that the environment should be protected, particularlyfrom the harmful effects of human activities. Environmentalism isexpressed in many ways: through public support for organizationsdedicated to environmental protection, through governmentpolicies aimed at decreasing pollution or conserving wildlife,through green political parties, through demands for changes inland use, through the purchase of goods whose producers claim tobe sensitive to environmental needs. For individuals, it may be adeep commitment which informs every aspect of their lifestyle or itmay be a marginal concern which has little effect on everyday life.It appears to have grown, over the past thirty years, out of a long-standing but relatively low-key minority interest, to become asignificant, but far from dominant political influence at national andinternational level. Described thus, environmentalism is a feature ofwhat I have chosen to call industrial society. Within this context,


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because it is seen as a relatively new and growing phenomenon, itis often described by analysts as a social movement. And because ithas become an important and distinctive component of politicaldiscourse, it is often characterized as an ideology. The ways inwhich social scientists have interpreted it in these terms will beexamined in detail in Chapter 3.

Environmentalism beyond industrial society

There is a widespread awareness, expressed mainly throughtelevision documentaries and news reports, that something akin toenvironmentalism is being expressed in specific locations outsideindustrial society and at the interface between the industrial and non-industrial worlds. Public attention has been drawn to the plight ofindigenous peoples such as the Amazonian Indians and the Penan ofMalaysia, who have opposed the destruction of their rainforestenvironments by commercial interests. Chico Mendes gainedinternational recognition as the leader of Amazonias rubber-tappersagainst the environmentally destructive forces of large-scale cattleranching (Cowell 1990, Revkin 1990). Sunderlal Bahuguna gainedsimilar recognition as spokesman for the Chipko (tree-hugging)movement in India, which also opposed the destructive commercialexploitation of the forests (Weber 1988, Guha 1993). These eventsare seen as similar to environmentalism in industrial societies in twosenses: first, in the fundamental sense that they express a concernthat the environment should be protected from the effects of humanactivities; and second, in the sense that they are protests against adominant commercial ethos, and therefore tend to exhibit thecharacteristics of social movements.

However, there is another sense in which something akin toenvironmentalism has been said to exist in non-industrial societies.Environmentalists frequently point to some non-industrial societiesas models for a sustainable or conserver society (Paehlke1989:13741). The extractive economies of rainforest peoples, whogather most of their food from the forest, who cut branches forfirewood rather than felling whole trees and who restrict theircommercial activities to those which have little impact on the forestecosystem (such as the harvesting of rubber and Brazil nuts), arecontrasted with the destructive and exploitative activities ofcommercial loggers, who clear large areas of forest just to remove afew commercially valuable trees. The reverence and respect with


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which hunters in non-industrial societies are seen as treating theirquarry species is contrasted with the apparently wasteful practicesof commercial fishing and whaling, which can decimate wholepopulations and bring species to the brink of extinction. Thespiritual ties between some non-industrial peoples and their landare contrasted with the way in which industrial society turns landinto a commercial good, whose value is assessed in terms of what itcan produce. These kinds of contrast have contributed to animpression, widespread among environmentalists in industrialsocieties, that non-industrial peoples live in harmony with nature(see Ellen 1986, Rayner 1989) whereas industrial processes workagainst natural ones. This impression is expressed in the contentionthat it is industrialism that is the root cause of environmentalproblems (see Dobson 1990:29).

Ecosystem people and biosphere people

The opposition between industrial and non-industrial relationshipswith the environment is neatly encapsulated in Dasmannsdistinction between ecosystem people and biosphere people(1976:304). Ecosystem people are those who live within a singleecosystem, or at most within two or three adjacent ecosystems(such as people who live at the coast and use the resources of bothland and sea). Dasmann included within this category traditional,non-industrial societies, and people who have opted, or beenpushed, out of technological society. Biosphere people are thosewhose way of life is tied in with the global technological system.They use the resources of the whole biosphere: they may receivegrain from America, beef from Argentina, coffee from Brazil, teafrom India, electrical goods from Japan, oil from Saudi Arabia, carsfrom France, and so on.

Expressed in these terms, the opposition between ecosystempeople and biosphere people generates certain expectationsconcerning environmental responsibility. Ecosystem peopledepend on their immediate ecosystem for their survival and, if theyunderstand the ecological consequences of their actions, might beexpected to take care not to destroy it. In other words, anecosystem economy might be expected to engender a sense ofresponsibility towards the environment. Biosphere people do notexperience the same constraints. They draw on a wide range ofecosystems to meet their needs, and if supplies from one source are


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exhausted or destroyed, they turn to another. Biosphere peopletherefore might be less likely to feel the need to protect any oneecosystem; a biosphere economy is more likely to engender acavalier exploitative attitude than a sense of environmentalresponsibility. One of the central arguments of environmentalistthought in industrial societies is that the consequences of thisattitude are now coming home to roost and the whole biosphere isendangered as a result of biosphere peoples thoughtlessexploitation of its resources.

The distinction between ecosystem people and biospherepeople is misleadingly simple (as, indeed, is the distinctionbetween non-industrial and industrial societies). It cannot begin torepresent adequately the range of different ways in which humaneconomies impact on the environment. But it does provide anattractive idiom in which to discuss the relationship betweenenvironmental sensitivity and environmental exploitation. Thehistory of colonial expansion and industrial progress can be seen asa process in which ecosystem peoples have been transformed intobiosphere peoples, often unwillingly, often forcibly, but often (andperhaps increasingly in recent decades) with their enthusiastic co-operation. After all, the biosphere economy offers previouslyundreamed-of material rewards and it is safer, in principle, tospread dependence over the whole biosphere than to rely on oneecosystem. But the impact of the biosphere economy has been,effectively, to turn the whole planet into a single ecosystem and,according to some environmentalists, threaten its ability to sustainlife. In accordance with this interpretation, some environmentalistsaim to transform biosphere people into ecosystem people. Byadvocating and, in some cases, practising greater degrees of self-sufficiency, some environmentalists are aiming to create (orrecreate) a higher level of dependency on the immediateenvironment, and thus to generate a greater level of responsibilitytowards it. This effort is based on the assumption that if acommunity is producing most of its own food, then the quality ofits land becomes more important than if it is producing food thatwill be eaten elsewhere. And if a community is more dependent onits immediate ecosystem, it is less dependent on other peoplesimmediate ecosystems, allowing them more opportunity to becomeself-sufficient.


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Primitive ecological wisdom?

This discussion raises questions which are of central importanceboth to environmental discourse and to anthropologysparticipation in that discourse. To what extent is the impression thatnon-industrial peoples live in harmony with the environment anaccurate one? Are the expectations that ecosystem peoples have agreater sense of responsibility towards their environments fulfilledin reality? Do they really possess a kind of primitive ecologicalwisdom?14 The image of non-industrial communities living inharmony with the environment is well established inenvironmentalist thought and widely accepted in globalenvironmental discourse, not least by non-industrial peoplesthemselves. Indeed, I think it reasonable to suggest that this imagehas the status of a myth, by which I mean, not that it is necessarilyuntrue, nor that it has some special, symbolic truth, but that itstruth is treated as a dogma (Robinson 1968, Milton 1977), in noneed of proof and not easily amenable to refutation.Environmentalists cling to the image of non-industrial peoples asparagons of ecological virtue because it forms a basis for some oftheir most cherished arguments, particularly for theenvironmentalist critique of industrialism. One of the ways inwhich anthropologists can help to improve our understanding ofenvironmentalism is by examining the role of this myth inenvironmentalist discourse (cf. Ellen 1986:12). I shall return to thispoint in Chapter 6.

However, it is also important to study the myth in another way,by examining its basis in reality. Anthropologists do not normallyconcern themselves with whether or not particular myths are true,but in this case the myth in question is about the very subject matterof anthropology, the character of specific cultures and kinds ofculture. The myth states that non-industrial peoples understand andinteract with their environments in harmonious, non-destructiveways. It could be extremely important for the future of the planet,and particularly of human life, to know whether or not this mythhas any sound basis. If, as many environmentalists argue, theindustrial economy (and with it industrial culture) is fundamentallyand inevitably destructive towards the environment, then the futurewill rest with alternative ways of living. It will obviously beimportant to select alternatives that are genuinely benign towardsthe environment and not just held dogmatically to be so. As Ellen


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(1986) has demonstrated, the kind of knowledge required to testthe accuracy of the myth is precisely that which anthropologistshabitually acquire in the practice of their discipline (see alsoKeesing 1981:506). These points will be discussed more fully inChapters 2 and 4.

Diverse environments

Thus far, I have also referred to the environmentunproblematically as something that people interact with anddepend upon by using its resources for their survival and well-being. But it would be misleading to suggest that people, evenwithin the same society, all share the same understanding of theenvironment. Ecologists, for example, trained in the same broadtradition of western science, have been found to conceptualizenature in different ways, as robust, fragile, capricious or robustwithin limits (see Douglas 1992:262). These diverse myths ofnature give rise to different understandings of the risks involved inour use of the environment, and the character and degree of ourresponsibilities towards it (see Chapter 3). A much greater diversityis found between different cultural traditions. For some, theenvironment may be passive and amenable to management bypeople, for others it may be personified as an all-powerful beingwho controls human destiny, or it may be inhabited by agentswhich interact with people in a reciprocal manner.

The question of whether something like environmentalism existsin any given society will depend on how the environment itself isdefined. A concern that the environment be protected isincompatible with an image of the environment as infinite andinvincible. And personal responsibilities to protect the environmentare unlikely to be felt by people who, for generations, have seenthemselves as living under its protection or at its mercy (Richards1992a). On the other hand, an environment that is seen asconsisting of impersonal objects and substances in limited supply,particularly if it has been seriously depleted by human use, maywell be thought of as in need (and deserving) of human protectionand amenable to human management. Several ways in which theenvironment is defined, and their implications for humaninteraction with it, will be examined in Chapter 4.


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Environmentalism as part of culture

In its everyday usage, the term environmentalism typically signifiesa perspective that has evolved to oppose the harmful impacts of thebiosphere economy. The myth of primitive ecological wisdom,however misleading it may be, is useful in drawing attention to thefact that a concern to protect the environment from the effects ofhuman activity need not be part of an oppositional ideology. It maybe part of the cultural status quo, part of the way in which themembers of a particular society have always understood their placein the world. I want to suggest that, for analytical purposes,environmentalism be identified as a concern to protect theenvironment, wherever and in whatever form it exists. In somecontexts it will stand in opposition to an exploitative and damagingperspective and, when it does so, may indeed drive a socialmovement. In other contexts it will have a place in the set ofassumptions and values that shape a societys habitual way of doingthings. I should also stress that I see it as a concern to protect theenvironment through human effort and responsibility, rather thansimply a concern that the environment be protected. Given thevarious ways in which the environment itself is culturally defined, itis possible to envisage a society in which a concern for theenvironment is strongly held, but in which agents other than humanbeings are seen as responsible for its protection: ancestral spirits, forinstance, or an all-powerful divine being.

Defined in these terms, environmentalism is unambiguously partof culture in the narrower sense of that term identified above. Inother words, it is a part of the way in which people understand theworld and their place within it. It belongs to the sphere thatincludes peoples feelings, thoughts, interpretations, knowledge,ideology, values and so on. It is, I suggest, a type of culturalperspective (taking culture in its narrower sense),15 a particularway of understanding the world. As such, while not itself located inpeoples actions and patterns of action, environmentalism hasimplications for, and is expressed in, the things people do.

The reason for distinguishing, analytically, betweenenvironmentalism as a part of culture and the actions throughwhich people express and implement their perceivedresponsibilities towards the environment is that it enables therelationship between them to be treated as problematic (just as, ingeneral terms, anthropologists began distinguishing between what


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people are assumed to hold in their minds and what they areobserved to do, in order to examine the relationship betweenthem). Without this distinction, it might be assumed that anenvironmentalist perspective will always generate the same kindsof action. In fact, a concern to protect the environment throughhuman effort might be expressed in many different ways,depending on how the environment itself and the forces thatimpact upon it are defined. Even where the protection of theenvironment is seen as being in the hands of a divine being orspirits, these agents may require human obedience and respect inreturn for their protection. In these circumstances, responsibility forthe environment is in human hands, but may be implementedthrough actions which, from the viewpoint of industrial society,would not easily be recognized as environmentalist: acts ofworship, for instance, or the daily maintenance of certain standardsof behaviour (fulfilment of kinship obligations, avoidance of incestor adultery). On the other hand, in an atheistic culture, or one inwhich the responsibilities of the divine are assumed to exclude theenvironment, or one in which the divine is seen to have delegatedresponsibility to people, a concern to protect the environment hasdifferent implications for human action.

The relationship between an environmentalist perspective andthe actions that might be based upon it is problematic in anothersense. Very often, with the best of intentions, people get thingswrong. Actions that are intended to protect the environment turnout not to have the desired effect. For instance, when the tankerTorrey Canyon was wrecked off the south-west coast of England in1967, detergents used to disperse the oil added to the biologicaldamage (McCormick 1989:57). In these kinds of circumstances, theknowledge on which the actions are based is thrown into question,and people may ultimately revise their understanding of the world.

I have suggested that the analytical concept of environmentalismproposed here might be seen as incorporating a wider range ofphenomena than is implied in the everyday usage of the term, inthat it covers any concern to protect the environment which impliesa human responsibility, whether it exists as part of a traditionalcultural perspective or as the basis of an oppositional movement.There is also a sense in which the concept proposed here might beseen as including less than is normally understood byenvironmentalism, both in everyday contexts and in social-scientific analysis. People who refer to themselves (and are referred


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to by others) as environmentalists often intend to imply more bythis label than a concern to protect the environment. They see it asimplying a range of values and principles which inform theirpolitical allegiances, their behaviour as consumers and the waythey allocate their personal time and resources. In many instances itcould reasonably be argued that all these things hinge on a concernto protect the environment, and are expressions of this guidingprinciple. But some would certainly argue that the termenvironment is itself too narrow to represent adequately the objectof so-called environmentalist concerns. Quite often,environmentalism implies a respect for life itself, and a concern forthe quality of life of human beings and other species. Both ineveryday contexts and in the work of social scientists (see Chapter3), it may designate a comprehensive political ideology whichincludes views on how human society should be organized, as wellas on how environmental issues should be addressed.

I have no quarrel with the term environmentalism being used inthis broad sense, and the proposed definition does not contradictthis usage in any way. Just as definitions in social science are notrequired to grasp essential truths, so they should not be expec

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