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Table of Contents<\/p>\n
Cultural Ecology and Julian Steward: <\/span><\/span>1<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Steward\u2019s theory: <\/span><\/span>1<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Arrival of Culture ecology. <\/span><\/span>2<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Sources: <\/span><\/span>3<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Further reading: <\/span><\/span>3<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The question of The cultural Steward created Steward\u2019s Unlike Benedict, Steward drew his hunter-gatherers Steward\u2019s search Steward came to In the 1950s, Despite its Steward always preferred Steward has Many \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology \u2013 An Encyclopedia<\/span><\/i>, Edited by R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms 2013, Sage: Thousand Dictionary of Anthropology, <\/span><\/i>Edited by Thomas Barfield, New York: Blackwell, 1996<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Neo-evolutionism: Branches of Political \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0
\nhow culture is formed, evolved or changed continues to remain a puzzle to the
\nanthropologists. The answer to this question is never settled and called for
\nincreasing number of diverse answers. The question is dealt differently by
\ndifferent schools of thought. Hence, for the 19th<\/sup> century
\nevolutionists it was similar to Darwinian evolution, for scholars like Franz
\nBoas (Harris, 1968) it was the \u2018historical determinants\u2019 for ecological
\nanthropologists, championed by Julian Steward (1955) it is the \u2018ecological
\ndeterminants\u2019 or cultural ecology. <\/span><\/p>\n
\necologists speak about an intimate relationship between culture and
\nenvironment. For Sahlins (1969) it is cultural moulding of ecological challenges
\nto enhance life chances, and for Steward (1955) it is a dialectic-interplay of
\nculture and environment creating something known as \u2018reciprocal-causality.\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n
\na theoretical perspective that was distinctive in mid-20th-century
\nanthropology. His environmental perspective on culture was unusual, as was his
\nsynthesis of comparative, secondary data from archaeological and ethnographic
\nresearch. Both were essential to his goal of understanding the causes of
\ncultural change by charting the course of change in the past. He did share a
\nbroadly historical orientation with archaeologists and many American cultural
\nanthropologists of his time. But he departed sharply from the cultural
\nhistoricism of Franz Boas and his American students, who included Steward\u2019s own
\nteachers, Kroeber and Lowie. <\/span><\/p>\n
\ntheoretical perspective, in contrast to theirs, was materialist,
\nenvironmentally oriented, generalizing, and concerned with causality. It was
\nalso thoroughly behaviorist. His theoretical ideas were the antithesis of
\nhumanistic and relativistic trends in cultural anthropology at the time. The
\nwork of Ruth Benedict\u2014his colleague at Columbia University and a student of
\nBoas\u2014perhaps best represented those prevailing trends, which Steward always
\nrejected. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nand in keeping with behaviorist principles, Steward consistently focused on
\nwhat was external and observable. He gave priority to environmental resources,
\nprimarily those most important in human subsistence, such as edible plants,
\nanimals, and water; to technology, especially the tools used in procuring food
\nand water; and to behavior, above all, subsistence-related work. These elements
\nconstituted what he eventually termed the cultural core, a key concept in his
\nthinking about the causes of cultural change. Another, earlier foundational
\nconcept was what he termed the patrilineal band. Steward developed this concept
\nin an essay that he called his \u201cfirst work,\u201d a 1936 essay on types of bands
\n(later divided into two essays and republished in Theory of Culture Change). He
\ndefined the patrilineal band as an exogamous and politically independent group
\nof male kin who own land and defend exclusive rights to that territory.
\nPatrilineal bands, he hypothesized, developed in arid regions and others where
\nfood resources were scattered and limited and where hunting centered on the
\npursuit of nonmigratory game animals. These were causal factors that limited
\nthe size of bands and kept population density low. Steward thought of this type
\nof band as a particular cultural type, or cross-cultural type as he termed it.
\nHe argued that the patrilineal band occurred under certain ecological
\nconditions, while different conditions produced\u2014that is, caused\u2014 other types. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nfirst evidence for the patrilineal band from published, but fragmentary,
\naccounts of <\/span><\/p>\n
\nwritten by explorers, missionaries, and early anthropologists. He set out to
\nfind first hand evidence through his own ethnographic fieldwork in the Great
\nBasin in 1935 and 1936, but his search for the patrilineal band did not
\nsucceed. Steward found no evidence that hunter-gatherers in the Great Basin of
\nwestern North America had formerly lived in patrilineal bands. In his 1938 ethnography,
\nBasin-Plateau Aboriginal Sociopolitical Groups, he instead documented the
\ndiversity he had found. He focused on how environmental resources and
\nconditions in different localities varied, how people in each place had adapted
\nculturally, and how this resulted in differences in the size and structure of
\nlocal groups. The concept of cultural adaptation, which Steward sometimes
\ntermed cultural ecological adaptation, provided a conceptual framework for the
\nmonograph. Over time, it became a unifying concept in American anthropology,
\nspanning several subfields. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nfor the patrilineal band also motivated his two subsequent efforts at fieldwork
\nwith hunter-gatherers: the failed effort in South America in 1938 and his final
\nfieldwork with Carrier Indians in Canada in 1940. In Canada, as in the Great
\nBasin, he found no evidence of patrilineal bands. He never succeeded in
\ndocumenting this type of band structure in his own fieldwork. During a 20-year
\nperiod, between the mid-1930s and the mid-1950s, Steward wrote and published
\nthe series of articles that he later included in the collection titled Theory of Culture Change<\/i>. One of the
\nmost important was \u201cCultural Causality
\nand Law: A Trial Formulation of the Development of Early Civilizations,<\/i>\u201d
\nfirst published in 1949. Using secondary data from published archaeological
\nreports, Steward argued that the earliest civilizations developed in arid and
\nsemiarid environments and shared a uniform sequence of development, including
\nthe use of irrigation in agriculture. As the telling title suggests, \u201cCultural Causality and Law<\/i>\u201d addressed one of Steward\u2019s central
\nquestions: What causes cultural change such as the independent development of
\ncivilization? A central premise came from the natural sciences. Steward
\nbelieved that just as there are natural laws, discovered through scientific
\ninquiry, so are there cultural laws that can likewise be discovered. <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n
\ncall his approach cultural ecology, having used the terms ecology and
\necological in print since the 1930s (e.g., \u201cEcological
\nAspects of Southwestern Society,<\/i>\u201d first published in 1937 and later reprinted
\nin Theory of Culture Change). In the early 1950s, he finally wrote an essay on
\nthe concept and method of cultural ecology; it appeared in print as a chapter
\nin Theory of Culture Change<\/i>. There,
\nhe explicitly named and defined the cultural core, a concept implicit in his
\nprevious writings about patrilineal bands, lineage- and clan-based societies,
\nand early civilizations. A few years later, he quietly abandoned the concept of
\nthe cultural core\u2014which was arguably the linchpin of cultural ecology\u2014but he
\nnever questioned the concept of the patrilineal band, despite the lack of
\nempirical evidence to support it. This foundational concept, inspired in part by
\nexperiences at Deep Springs, held deeply personal as well as intellectual
\nmeaning for him. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nSteward began to be linked with Leslie White as a fellow cultural evolutionist.
\nWhite\u2019s brand of cultural evolution differed in many ways from Steward\u2019s ideas
\nabout the causes and the course of cultural change, and Steward adopted the
\nterm multilinear evolution to distinguish his approach from what he called
\nWhite\u2019s universal evolution. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nname, the basic ideas of multilinear evolution came from cultural ecology.
\nSteward consistently focused on environmental resources, technology, and the
\norganization of work in analyzing cultural change. To analyze change in
\nsociopolitical structures and complexity, a topic of perennial interest to him,
\nhe developed a concept he termed levels of sociocultural integration. He
\nincluded a chapter on that topic in Theory of Culture Change. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nthe name cultural ecology for his approach, a set of ideas that he complained
\nhad been hard to \u201csell.\u201d That name proved to be the one that endured, and his
\ntheoretical ideas began gaining ground after the publication of Theory of Culture Change<\/i>. Steward\u2019s
\nenvironmental perspective helped stimulate a range of ecological approaches
\nlater in the 20th century, including human behavioral ecology, which has drawn
\nadherents from biological anthropology, archaeology, and cultural anthropology.
\nCultural ecology\u2019s influence on three of the four subfields of American
\nanthropology is undeniable but perhaps not widely appreciated. <\/span><\/p>\n
\nbecome a figure of controversy among cultural anthropologists and Native scholars
\nfor his role in the Indian Claims Commission trials and the way in which he
\nrepresented Great Basin Indians in his testimony and in his published writings;
\nfor his conviction that anthropology was a value-neutral science; and for his
\nnotable preoccupation with men\u2019s labor but his near silence about women\u2019s,
\ndespite having learned in fieldwork as early as 1935 that women had made the
\nlarger contribution to subsistence in much of the Great Basin. <\/span><\/p>\n
\narchaeologists, among others, continue to find great heuristic value in
\nSteward\u2019s cultural ecology. His founding role in environmental anthropology
\nalso continues to receive favorable attention. The Julian Steward Award,
\nlaunched in 2002 and given periodically by the Anthropology and Environment Section
\nof the American Anthropological Association, recognizes what is judged the best
\nnew book in ecological\/environmental anthropology.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nOaks, California <\/span><\/p>\n
\nhttp:\/\/sumananthromaterials.blogspot.com\/2019\/07\/neo-evolutionism-with-special-emphasis.html<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nSocial Cultural Anthropology (especially ecological anthropology): http:\/\/sumananthromaterials.blogspot.com\/2014\/11\/branches-of-social-cultural-anthropology.html<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\nAnthropology: http:\/\/sumananthromaterials.blogspot.com\/2014\/11\/political-anthropology.html<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
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