Ecological Anthropology

Ecological Anthropology
Author(s): Benjamin S. Orlove

Source: Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 9 (1980), pp. 235-273
Published by: Annual Reviews
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Ann. Rev. Anthropol. 1980. 9:235-73
Copyright i 1980 by Annual Reviews Inc. All rights reserved
ECOLOGICAL +9656
ANTHROPOLOGY
Benjamin S. Orlove
Division of Environmental Studies and Department of Anthropology,

University of California, Davis, California 95616
INTRODUCTION
Ecological anthropology may be defined as the study of the relati

the population dynamics, social organization, and culture of huma
tions and the environments in which they live. It includes com
research as well as analyses of specific populations from both syn
and diachronic perspectives. In many cases, systems of production
tute important links among population dynamics, social organizat
ture, and environment. Defined as such, ecological anthropology p
a materialist examination of the range of human activity and thu
affinity to other materialistic approaches in the social and biological
sciences.
Review articles can be critical or encyclopedic; this one adopts the former
approach. It presents the development of ecological anthropology, not as
a smooth accumulation of information and insights, but as a series of stages.
Each stage is a reaction to the previous one rather than merely an addition
to it. The first stage is characterized by the work of Julian Steward and
Leslie White, the second is termed neofunctionalism and neoevolutionism,
and the third one is called processual ecological anthropology. In all three
cases, this article discusses the theoretical assumptions and methodological
approaches, and examines a few representative studies. It reviews the links
to biological ecology and analyzes the mechanisms of change. It is in these
areas that processual ecological anthropology is particularly strong. It thus
adopts a more historical approach than the positivist slant of recent texts
in the field (123, 194, 205).
235
0084-6570/80/1015-0235$01.00
236 ORLOVE
This article focuses primarily on work in social anthropology. It contains

relatively little archaeology. The treatment of demography is brief; for other
studies of demographic anthropology, see (181, 229, 340). The primary
focus is on social, economic, and political activity and ideology; there is only
brief treatment of what has been termed "biosocial ecology" (321). The
relation between environments and human physiology, nutrition, disease
and the like, though part of human ecology, is not discussed in this article,
although some work (166a, 236, 249) in ecological anthropology examines
these topics.
THE FIRST STAGE OF ECOLOGICAL

ANTHROPOLOGY: JULIAN STEWARD
AND LESLIE WHITE
Ecological anthropology owes its existence to a number of swings on intel-

lectual pendulums. Stated briefly, it emerged from the reaction to the incau-
tious cultural evolutionism associated with Morgan, Tylor, and others in
the nineteenth century. In this period, a number of writers developed mod-
els of cultural evolution. The specific details of the models and some aspects
of the conceptualization of culture varied, but the writers shared the as-
sumption that all cultures could be placed in a small number of stages and
that cultures tended to move through these stages in a relatively fixed
sequence. Morgan, one important figure in this school, established a set of
seven evolutionary stages which Marx and Engels encountered and utilized.
The cultural evolutionistic approaches were overcome by the data which
they attempted to order; the reaction to them led to the institutionalization
of anthropology as an academic discipline. The increasingly detailed evi-
dence of complex culture and social organization among allegedly primitive
groups made it difficult to relegate them to more backward, earlier stages.
The reaction to cultural evolutionism took different forms on opposite sides
of the Atlantic and thus broke a relatively high degree of intellectual con-
sensus. Anthropologists in America, led by Boas at Columbia University,
questioned the unilinearity of the evolutionary schemes and the assumption
of progress inherent in evolution. They accepted the interest in cultural
process and change, but looked more prudently for details of each case of
culture change, examining whether traits were diffused or independently
invented and how they were reworked by each culture that adopted them.
The school that they formed has been aptly named historical particularism.
The British anthropologists faced a different issue which the cultural evolu-
tionists had not resolved, the nature of the forces that united the different
elements of a given culture or stage of cultures. Focusing on societies rather
than cultures, they found that the diverse elements served certain functions,
ECOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 237
although different authors did not agree on the nature of these functions.
They also observed that the elements formed coherent structures. The
influence of British social anthropology, itself changed somewhat over the
decades, has begun to be felt in ecological anthropology only recently (36a);
the history of ecological anthropology for many years remained primarily
American.
Ecological anthropology emerged from the Boasian school of historical
particularism (136, 223). It can be seen as having passed through two stages
and now entering a third. The term "stage" is used to refer to a set of works
that share theoretical approaches, modes of explanation, and choices of
research problems. The term also suggests that the stages follow one an-
other chronologically and that each is an intellectual outgrowth of the one
that preceded it. The first stage ran from about 1930 to 1960, and the second
from about 1960 to the early 1970s. These dates cannot be exact, since many
writers continue to employ earlier approaches after new ones have been
introduced. In addition, some researchers have shifted from one stage to the
next, but others have remained with the previous ones. The stages thus refer
to analytical frameworks rather than to specific periods in time or the
writings of specific individuals.
As an intellectual endeavor, contemporary ecological anthropology can
be clearly attributed to two individuals: Julian Steward and Leslie White.
These men shared a strong Boasian training; Steward at Berkeley and White
at Chicago were both taught by students of Boas, who had founded these
departments (Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie, Fay Cooper Cole and
Edward Sapir, respectively.) It is an apparent paradox that Steward, who
received more contact with individuals outside this Boasian circle in his
graduate student days, made the less definitive break with historical particu-
larism.
Steward's work in ecological anthropology was motivated by a consistent
set of intellectual concerns (177). His contact at Berkeley with the noted
geographer Carl Sauer led him to examine the effect of environment on
culture. This interest characterizes his early postdoctoral work in the Great
Basin and his later more comparative work elsewhere. (Sauer also in-
fluenced Daryll Forde, one of the more ecologically oriented British social
anthropologists.) His "method of cultural ecology" (292, 294) demonstrates
his materialist emphasis. This method entails the study of the relation
between certain features of the environment and certain traits of the culture
possessed by the sets of people living in that environment. Within the
environment, Steward emphasized the quality, quantity, and distribution of
resources. The aspects of culture that he examined most closely were tech-
nology, economic arrangements, social organization, and demography, al-
though he included other aspects as well. Steward stressed the fact that the
238 ORLOVE
environment influenced only certain elements of a cultur

the "culture core"; other elements of culture were subject to the autono-
mous processes of culture history which the more strict Boasians discussed.
Steward was particularly interested in finding what he termed "regulari-
ties," or similarities between cultures that recur in historically separate or
distinct areas or traditions, and which may be explained as a result of
similar environmental features. These regularities are analytically similar to
the individual lines of change which he examined in his approach of multi-
linear evolution. By introducing the concept of "level of sociocultural inte-
gration," he began efforts to integrate the study of small-scale "tribal"
isolates with that of complex society and large sociopolitical units.
His method permitted both synchronic analyses of static equilibria and
diachronic analyses of both long-term and short-term evolutionary pro-
cesses (196). His early (289) work on prehistoric societies of the American
Southwest demonstrates his interest in a specific area. His later evolutionary
work was more ambitious and comparative; a change may be noted (40) in
the shifts from the ambiguous categorizations of the Handbook of South
American Indians (291) to the strongly evolutionist analysis of irrigation
civilizations (290) to the later, more cautious works such as the controlled
comparison of two Indian groups in North and South America (197) and
a general review of cultural evolution (293, 295).
Leslie White's relation to the Boasian tradition was somewhat different.
Like Steward, he wrote a historical particularist dissertation, but he made
a sharp break with that approach soon after. He taught at Buffalo, where
he visited the Iroquois and read Morgan's work. A trip to the Soviet Union
in 1929 impressed him with Marxism, and he found that the works of those
two figures were closely associated. He became virtually obsessed with the
extreme rejection of cultural evolutionism that was current them and dedi-
cated much of his intellectual career to efforts to restore it to respectability
within anthropology.
White shared Steward's emphasis on culture as the unit of analysis and
his interest in cultural evolution; his partitioning of culture into technologi-
cal, social, and ideological components gave him a materialist stance gener-
ally similar to Steward's. White was more concerned with the broad details
of evolution than with specific adaptations, however, and he also directed
relatively little attention to the influence of environment on particular cul-
tures. Instead he emphasized levels of energy use as the determinant of
cultural evolution (328), a point which has continued to hold importance
for anthropology (2a). Although his proposed science of culturology never
achieved the fame that he had hoped for, his stress on the consistency of
cultural evolution has had a broad influence.
Despite their similarities, there were several fundamental dif

tween these two founders of ecological anthropology. White w
to admit the utility of other theoretical frameworks, but Ste
designated the areas where other approaches, such as historical particu-
larism, could complement his own work. In both synchronic and diachronic
studies, White was much less interested in adaptation of groups to specific
environments than Steward was. Finally, although the distinction is not as
rigid as some critics have made it out to be, White's models of cultural
evolution were unilinear and monocausal, whereas Steward admitted a
number of different lines of cultural development and a number of different
causal factors. These differences posed a problem that was simultaneously
intellectual and sociological; not only did many anthropologists wish to
resolve the theoretical disagreements between the two, but they sought to
avoid factionalism in specific institutional settings such as academic depart-
ments.
THE SECOND STAGE OF ECOLOGICAL

ANTHROPOLOGY: NEOEVOLUTIONISM AND
NEOFUNCTIONALISM
The attempts to address the similarities and differences of Steward and

White mark the second stage of ecological anthropology. Boldly oversimpli-
fying, one could argue that there are two main trends in this second stage:
the neoevolutionists, who claimed that Steward and White were both cor-
rect, and the neofunctionalists, who argued that they were both wrong.
Neoevolutionism
The neoevolutionists, drawing inspiration from the centennial of Darwin's
publication, The Origin ofSpecies, established a series of evolutionary stages
and used the notions of specific and general evolution (266a) to accommo-
date Steward's method of cultural ecology to White's work on unilineal
evolution. The term neoevolutionism serves to distinguish their writings
from those of earlier evolutionists such as Tylor and Morgan. General
evolution, which tends to be unilinear, included features from Steward's
work (level of integration) as well as from White's (energy use per capita
per year). Elman Service (276), for example, dedicated his Primitive Social
Organization: An Evolutionary Approach to Steward and White. General
evolution strongly resembles the long discarded view in biology that evolu-
tion is progressive and leads toward new and better forms in succeeding
periods. Much of this work has involved the establishment of a small
number of evolutionary stages. These formulations also show the influence
240 ORLOVE
of Polanyi's (230) notion of three types of economies, based

redistribution, and market exchange. Some work examines cases of appar-
ent cultural regression or movement from a higher to a lower stage of
cultural evolution. The debate (19, 46, 118, 173) on the ability of the humid
tropical forest to support large complex societies reflects this discussion. By
marking out cases of regression as exceptional, it serves to reinforce the
general orthogenetic tone of neoevolutionism. The more multilinear specific
evolution relies closely on Steward's writings. Adopting techniques from
general systems theory, archaeologists and social anthropologists in the
neoevolutionist school have collaborated in the study of the origins of
agriculture and the emergence of the state. In the latter, for example, there
has been considerable debate on several topics: whether the existence of
social stratification preceded or followed the origins of the state (101, 207),
the analytical power of certain causal theories of state formation (39, 277),
the universality of patterns of pristine state formation (278), and the utility
of the distinction between pristine or primary and secondary states (338).
Several review articles on this subject have appeared recently (95, 144, 336).
Neofunctionalism
The neofunctionalist school represents a second line of resolution of Stew-
ard and White. It is associated with Marvin Harris and the early work of
Andrew Vayda and Roy Rappaport; like the first line of resolution, it was
concentrated for a number of years at Columbia and Michigan universities.
The term neofunctionalism is used because the followers of this approach
see the social organization and culture of specific populations as functional
adaptations which permit the populations to exploit their environments
successfully without exceeding their carrying capacity. This approach
differs from other functionalist approaches in the social sciences in that the
unit which is maintained is a population rather than a social order. It also
differs from the treatment of adaptation in biological ecology by treating
populations rather than individuals as the units which adapt to environ-
ments. It forms a school, although there are differences between individuals
in it (Harris's greater concern with causality, Vayda and Rappaport's with
system functioning), and some members have shifted their theoretical posi-
tion in recent years.
In general, neofunctionalists explain specific aspects of social organiza-
tion and culture in terms of the functions which they serve in adapting local
populations to their environments. A close parallel might be noted between
White's technological, social, and ideological components of culture and
Harris's division of sociocultural adaptations into ecological patterns (in-
cluding technoenvironmental and demographic aspects), social structure,
and ideology (129), which reappear, in slightly modified form, as

ture, structure, and superstructure (131), with a strong similarity evident
to the Marxist concept of mode of production and its components of forces
of production, relations of production, and superstructure. However, it
would be more accurate to agree with the members of the neofunctionalist
school and dwell on the sharp discontinuity between their work and that
of Steward and White instead of the similarities. They adopt local popula-
tions rather than cultures as their units of analysis. They examine the
interaction between environments and populations rather than treating the
environment as a passive background which shapes culture but is not in-
fluenced by it, and their methodology is more explicit, rigorous, and quanti-
tative than that of earlier writers. They are concerned to adopt concepts
from biological ecology, although they often use these concepts in a naive
or outdated fashion because of the weak historical, institutional, and inter-
personal links between anthropology and biological ecology. Specific terms
which were borrowed include adaptation, niche, and carrying capacity (11,
121, 122, 183, 243, 339), although there were numerous problems with all
three cases (35, 137, 175, 182, 216, 296). [For more thoughtful treatment
of the concept of adaptation, see Alland (4) and Vayda (310); there are also
a few cases (106, 175) of appropriate use of the niche concept.] Their
uncritical use of Wynne-Edwards' notions of group selection is another
example of this problematic borrowing; examples (205) of the uncritical use
of this concept can be found more than 10 years after a devastating attack
on it had been published (331). Like the neoevolutionists, this school is
influenced by systems theory, both generally, in its choice of homeostatic
equilibrium models, and specifically, in its concern with energy flow in
ecosystems (72).
Neoevolutionism and Neofunctionalism Compared

The neofunctionalist and neoevolutionist schools tend to follow certain
trends within biological ecology. They focus on regularities in ecosystem-
level process. In this approach, human populations are believed to function
within ecosystems as other populations do, and the interaction of different
human populations is like the interaction of different species within ecosys-
tems (313). This approach leads to an emphasis (237) on energy and nutri-
ent cycling. They also adopt a view of ecosystems as relatively tightly
integrated, and they accept a series of concepts that are associated with the
notion of "succession," or the orderly and regular replacement of species
in a disturbed ecosystem over time as it goes from a "pioneer" to a "climax"
stage. More "mature" ecosystems are supposed to be more complex, di-
verse, stable, and efficient. [Rappaport's (236) comparison between Tsem-
242 ORLOVE
baga society and Polynesian kingdoms, for example, follows this view.] It
is not surprising that several of the most frequently cited ecology texts are
the different editions of E.P. Odum's Fundamentals of Ecology (209).
The neofunctionalists and neoevolutionists have examined the mecha-
nisms which link social structure and culture to the environment. They
follow biological ecologists in emphasizing survival and reproduction as the
goals of organisms (165), and they therefore emphasize population pressure
as one of the principal mechanisms of change (124). Unlike biologists, they
do not have a principle like natural selection which generates these goals,
and instead tend to fall back on implicit and poorly operationalized con-
cepts of adaptation. Systems should tend toward homeostatic equilibrium
(238, 239), with populations at or close to carrying capacity; population
growth above these limits induces change. The carrying capacity reflects
environmental variables and technology, and may be influenced by the
presence of other neighboring groups of trade partners, political enemies,
and the like. Population pressure, however, does not translate immediately
into human motivation, and some ecological anthropologists, seeking to
explain change, have had to appeal rather generally to notions of human
desires for survival or to the gradual replacement of less efficient systems
of production by more efficient ones (5). In a more recent discussion, Harris
(131) lists the desires for food, sex, and love and affection and a tendency
toward the expenditure of the minimum amount of effort necessary as
universal human constraints from which social and cultural systems can be
built, although this recapitulation of Malinowski is difficult to use in con-
crete cases. Values and preferences are explained by being reduced to the
ecological functions they serve, as in treatments of factors which influence
the levels of effort and efficiency of tropical forest hunters (249, 281) or in
the female infanticide-male warfare complex (70, 145, 200). This lack of an
ability to account for motivation and values in a more direct way has
attracted a great deal of criticism, and may account in part for the rift
between ecological anthropologists and their opponents (24). Such a lack,
however, has been addressed in the third stage of ecological anthropology,
as will be discussed later.
The neoevolutionists and neofunctionalists, although they examine popu-
lations of different sizes in different time scales, share a great deal. They
accepted the issues which Steward and White had outlined as worthy of
investigation, although they took different approaches in their study. They
both added a strong systems orientation to an earlier materialism, although
the neofunctionalists emphasized negative feedback mechanisms linking
energy use, food production, and population size, and the neoevolutionists
stressed positive feedback mechanisms among the same variables. They
developed strong interpersonal and institutional links; the departments at
Columbia and Michigan universities had representatives of both for many

years. Some individuals work in both approaches. Furthermore, the
concern of the neoevolutionists to define stages (141) in general cultural
evolution (e.g. "bands," "tribes") dovetails with the efforts of the
neofunctionalists to establish basic production types (e.g. "hunting and
gathering," "swidden agriculture"); in some cases, as in the ones listed,
evolutionary stages and production types can be correlated (63, 73, 287).
Early neofunctionalist analysis (228, 297) of the Northwest Coast groups
showed that the apparently exotic custom of the potlatch served adaptive
functions by encouraging the redistribution of food from groups with a
temporary surplus to those with a temporary deficit. Part of the appeal of
this analysis (71, 162, 211) derived from the ability to challenge Boas on
his own ground, since the cultures of that area were among the ones he
studied most intensively. In addition, it began a tendency, still quite strong,
within neofunctional ecological anthropology, to define one of its tasks as
the explication of ethnographic riddles (130). In this line of work, an
ecological anthropologist picks a custom or practice which would seem to
demonstrate the extreme intercultural variability of human behavior and
the lack of fit between culture and environment; the supposedly impractical
cultural elements are shown to possess positive adaptive value. The second
such riddle was the sacred cattle of India (127, 128, 208). Other examples
have appeared, the most currently famous of which is Aztec cannibalism
and its purported nutritional significance (125, 222, 231: see also 143, 253).
The adoption of riddle explication as a goal would seem to be justified by
the following logic: if apparently impractical behavior can be explained on
ecological grounds, then less impractical behavior must surely also be expli-
cable in the same manner. Although the discussion of such riddles has
attracted a fair amount of attention within strictly anthropological circles
and others as well (134), it has often not led to a more thorough attempt
to explain the less bizarre behavior that makes up much of the subject
matter of ecological anthropology (6). Instead it has led to the proposal of
alternative solutions to the riddles (67-69) with little possibility of empiri-
cally testing them.
The neofunctionalist school has brought certain benefits, particularly the
generation of detailed descriptions of food-producing systems (5, 153, 199,
256), a greater concern for recording environmental and demographic data
(200), the suggestion of the systematic nature of the interactions between
the environment on the one hand and social organization and culture on
the other, and the demonstration of certain weak points in the work of
Steward and White. There are several problems which have emerged from
it, some of which also apply to the neoevolutionists: (a) Functionalist
fallacy. The neofunctionalists are simply incorrect in attempting to argue
244 ORLOVE
that human populations remain at or below carrying capacity, since they

miss the cases of populations which cause significant damage to their envi-
ronments (178, 187). The idea of a relatively fixed carrying capacity has
remained in the literature, despite the publication of strong critiques of it.
Even when the damage is minimal or unmeasurable, they possess the fre-
quently criticized flaws of functionalism: the inability to distinguish be-
tween functional alternatives, logical circularity, and false attribution of
purposiveness (245). (b) Ecological reductionism. Many of the writers of
this school tend to assume that particular aspects of social organization and
culture serve specific functions in adapting local populations to their envi-
ronment (242). They (99, 117, 138) thus tend to present social organization
and culture as unstructured sets of practices and beliefs rather than as
possessing internal coherence. Leeds's (167, 168) discussions of the Yaruro
Indians in Venezuela are an exception to this common pattern. (c) Energet-
ics. Energy need not be the limiting factor in restricting population growth
or social complexity. Although biological ecologists have recognized this
fact for many years, ecological anthropologists have became aware of it only
recently (207, 311). These issues are interrelated; energy flow is a simple
way to consider local populations in the context of ecosystems (283). Tho-
mas's (301) discussion of energy flow in a highland Andean district, for
instance, argues that energy is a limiting factor despite the fact that local
people are involved in producing commodities for export whose prices on
the world market shift greatly; government policies also strongly affect their
access to factors of production. It is therefore difficult to argue that their
adaptations are constrained primarily by local environmental factors or
their access to energy. The presentation of arguments that energy is not
limiting in many human populations has led to minor refinements in several
cases: protein is substituted for calories as the limiting dietary factor or
energy, though not limiting, is critical; by producing energy as efficiently
as possible, time is conserved to address the scarcity or excess of other
limiting factors, so that populations still must behave in much the same
manner as if energy were limiting. This latter approach raises a common
problem in ecological anthropology; writers claim that populations or indi-
viduals maximize several variables simultaneously, but they do not address
the issues of trade-offs between the variables and choice between several
optima (132). (d) The local population as unit of study. Local populations
are difficult to bound (193) and tend to be involved in wider networks of
social, economic, and political relations (275a). The nature of population-
level processes is unclear, and there has been a neglect of both supralocal
processes and internal differentiation (227, 260). [See, however, some works
by Harris (131) and Vayda (309) which examine larger units.] (e) Time-
scale. The assumptions about local populations being in homeostatic equi-
librium are difficult to assess because they require a long time scale. The
work also tends to present a sharp disjuncture between synchronic equilib-
rium and long-term macroevolution corresponding to the separation be-
tween the neofunctionalists and the neoevolutionists. Mechanisms of
short-term cultural evolution are also often lacking. [See, however, Leeds's
(169) treatment of microinvention.]
THE THIRD STAGE OF ECOLOGICAL

ANTHROPOLOGY: PROCESSUAL APPROACHES
In contrast to the work of Steward and White and the neoevolutionary and
neofunctionalist schools, a third set of approaches in ecological an-
thropology has begun to emerge in recent years. The research that is bein
carried out cannot be characterized as strongly as in the two previous stages
as sharing a large number of assumptions, but it does question the neofunc-
tionalist approach along the lines indicated above. This work will be called
"processual" ecological anthropology. The use of the term "process" has
been used earlier by other writers (16, 158, 171, 186) to refer to the impor-
tance of diachronic studies in ecological anthropology and to the need to
examine mechanisms of change. However, the term "processual ecological
anthropology" to describe current developments in the field does appear to
be new. Important trends are (a) the examination of the relation of demo-
graphic variables and production systems, stimulated in part by Boserup's
work (31); (b) the response of populations to environmental stress (268,
311, 312); (c) the formation and consolidation of adaptive strategies (22-24,
27, 37, 38) which follow Barth's early work on the use of the concept of
the niche (11); and (d) new work in Marxism, including the emerging
interest of anthropologists in political economy and structural Marxism.
The studies are called processual because they seek to overcome the split
in the second stage of ecological anthropology between excessively short
and long time scales (15, 84-86). More concretely, they examine shifts and
changes in individual and group activities, and they focus on the mecha-
nisms by which behavior and external constraints influence each other.
These points indicate the importance of the incorporation of decision-
making models into ecological anthropology. Like the neofunctionalist and
neoevolutionist ecological anthropology, processual ecological an-
thropology examines the interaction of populations and environments (5
rather than treating the latter as a passive background to the former. Th
are strong parallels between processual ecological anthropology and curre
work in biological ecology; the nature of these resemblances is the subje
of some analyses which seek to link anthropology and biology in a mor
rigorous manner than has previously been the case.
246 ORLOVE
It should be noted that work characteristic of Steward in the two previous

stages continues to the present. His method of cultural ecology, for instance,
is exemplified in several studies (26, 303) including some of Netting's work
among agriculturalists in Nigeria (201-203) and Switzerland (204); see also
(197). Strong echoes of Steward's search for "regularities" can be noted in
Wolf's Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (334) and elsewhere (116).
Similarly, neofunctionalist studies are still being carried out. Bolton's (30)
recent analysis of guinea pig production and consumption in one village in
highland Peru, for instance, suggests that although guinea pigs contribute
less than one-twentieth of the protein in the local diet, "the ritual cycle ...
serves to distribute protein, making it available at times when it will be
maximally beneficial for the maintenance of health in the population" (p.
249) based on informants' statements on ritual guinea pig consumption,
with little direct observation on diet, and simulation models rather than
observation of guinea pig flock dynamics. Neoevolutionary work also con-
tinues to the present (53, 158, 174).
Actor-Based Models and Processual Ecological Anthropology

A major influence on the processual ecological anthropology is the actor-
based models which have received general interest in social anthropology.
The literature on these models is large and diverse; one particular focus,
decision-making models, will be emphasized here. The actor-based models
form part of a general shift in postwar anthropology in both Britain and the
United States from social structure to social process, from treating popula-
tions as uniform to examining diversity and variability within them, and
from normative and jural aspects to behavioral aspects of social relations.
Firth's (92-94) distinction between social structure and social organization
is a major point of departure. He underscored the importance of variability
in decision making and individual behavior, and demonstrated that many
social systems contain options among which individuals must choose.
The actor-based models have several advantages: they account for a
wider range of social organization than previous models do; they permit a
more precise analysis of the parameters of behavior and the variation of
behavior within populations; they admit more readily an examination of
conflict and competition; and they offer the potential of examining change
through an analysis of the processes which generate economic, political, and
social relations. One important aspect of actor-based models is decision-
making models, which may be loosely divided into two types: cognitive or
naturalistic models and microeconomic models. These types are not neces-
sarily opposed, as attempts at synthesis (47a, 147) show; they remain,
however, largely distinct. The former, borrowing from cognitive an-
thropology, attempt to depict actual psychological processes of decision
making by locating the cognized alternatives and the procedures for choos-
ing among them. Quinn (234, p. 42) distinguishes within these among
"information processing models," "retrodictive models," and "models of
cultural principles." These types all tend to be employed to analyze contexts
in which individuals must select among a small number of alternatives,
often on the basis of consideration of social status. Postmarital residence
and adoption are common topics. These models offer useful links between
studies of native systems of classification and actual behavior; such ethnose-
mantic models have been developed for the planting decisions of Brazilian
sharecroppers (154-156) and the marketing decisions of West African fish
vendors (108). These models often are applied to situations in which alter-
natives are finite and may be distinguished by discrete rather than continu-
ous variables. The parameters which affect the choices tend to be few in
number, and the outcomes of choices are certain, or nearly so.
The microeconomic models resemble economic models of choice making.
Actors operating under a set of constraints allocate scarce resources to a
hierarchical series of ends or goals. Many such models assume that actors
attempt to maximize some valued state, although some authors have
proposed more complex models of optimizations such as "satisficing," mini-
max strategies, and hierarchies of strategies (18, 274). In this fashion they
avoid the rigidities often attributed to models of rational actors (139). There
is a larger concern with the outcome of the decision and less emphasis on
the process of decision making. These models are applied to situations with
greater uncertainty and ambiguity, where the range of alternatives and the
outcomes of choices are less well defined. The alternatives may be distin-
guished by continuous as well as discrete variables, and many parameters
may influence them. Barth's (12) efforts at generative models of social
organization are an example of such work. Borrowing from game theory,
he attempts to explain political organization among Pathans as a structure
which had emerged from a large number of individual decisions made by
actors operating under different constraints. Ortiz's (220, 221) studies of
planting and marketing decisions by small-scale farmers in Colombia are
another example. Although these models can be criticized for taking the
goals and constraints as givens and failing to examine the patterns of
resource distribution, they have been of considerable use in anthropology
as in political science and economics.
The potential links between ecological anthropology and actor-based
models are strong, but they have not been utilized extensively. Ecological
anthropology, particularly in its first two historical stages, emphasized the
importance of environmental factors in shaping collective patterns of behav-
ior. The neglect of the examination of individuals which this focus has often
produced may be explained in part by the repudiation of the examination
248 ORLOVE
of individual actors by early ecological anthropologists (327) and in part

from the neofunctionalist and neoevolutionist emphasis on systems in which
aggregates and aggregate variables were accorded more importance than
individuals. Conversely, actor-based models have tended to treat environ-
mental variables as part of a relatively static set of external constraints to
which individuals respond and adapt. This tendency is particularly strong
in studies which focus on small areas in short periods of time. They have
thus omitted some of the concerns of ecological anthropology. Despite the
lack of effort in this direction, ecological anthropology can offer actor-based
models a richer understanding of the dynamic that operates within the
system of constraints; and actor-based models can permit ecological an-
thropology to examine the proximate factors which influence the behavior
of individuals and of aggregates. The integration of the two is particularly
favorable to the processual studies in ecological anthropology; the ecosys-
tem and decisions made by individual actors affect each other reciprocally.
The microeconomic models of decision making are preferable to the
cognitive ones in this synthesis, although the latter may also be of use in
certain well-defined areas of behavior (9, 10, 57a, 109). In general, the
alternatives are often characterized by continuous rather than discrete vari-
ables, by many parameters which influence the selection among them, and
by uncertainty as to the outcomes. A concern for the interaction of actors
with ecosystems would lead to a primary focus on the outcomes of deci-
sions.
Processual Ecological Anthropology, Biological Ecology,

and Evolution
The emphasis on individual decision making also corresponds to recent
developments in biological ecology, with its stress on natural selection on
the level of individual organisms as a principle which organizes populations
and communities (176, 185, 245). The links between microeconomic and
ecological models have been drawn to show parallels between consumer
choice and foraging strategies, investment behavior and life-history strate-
gies, locations of firms and refuging behavior, market behavior and preda-
tor-prey interactions, and the like (146, 241). In addition, the criticisms that
the neofunctionalists and neoevolutionists have established a rigid separa-
tion between synchronic studies of homeostatic equilibria and diachronic
studies of long-term evolution directly parallel the criticism that earlier
work in ecology, typified by Odum and others, fails to synthesize adequately
energy-flow studies and studies of ecosystem succession. The efforts of these
ecologists to link the two through ecosystem-level processes such as ecosys-
tem strategies and maturity have run into serious difficulties. Major re-
search projects along these lines in the International Biological Program did
not generate as powerful results as were expected, and system modeling and
simulation has also been relatively unrewarding. Both biological and human
ecology have shifted from system-level statics and dynamics to utilizing
individual action as a basis for emergent higher-level processes (252). Many
biologists have begun to challenge the order and regularity of the sequence
of successional stages. The links among diversity, stability, and ecosystem
maturity are also questioned (58, 75, 157); the stability of some ecosystems
has been shown to rely on climatic stability rather than on mechanisms
internal to the ecosystem. The role of external stresses and catastrophes in
influencing ecosystem structure and function has also attracted consider-
able attention (41, 65, 218, 224), paralleling the interest in the response of
populations to environmental stress in ecological anthropology. The links
with demography and biological ecology have led in many cases to in-
creased efforts to define and operationalize variables, to include new meth-
odological procedures for assessment of environmental variables, and to
apply tests of statistical inference with greater rigor (166a). Furthermore,
these parallels between cultural and biological ecology have generallly been
proposed (245) more cautiously than was the case with the neofunctional-
ists. Rather than claiming that natural selection forces organisms to behave
as if they operated with the same rational calculus that human actors are
presumed to use, it can be suggested that these homologous optimization
models facilitate the examination of the ways in which human action affects
ecosystems and environmental constraints influence human decision mak-
ing. They also allow interdisciplinary research efforts to proceed more
easily. The questioning of the neofunctionalist approach has led to an ability
to study productive activities (83, 166b, 332), settlement patterns (166, 324),
and the like without attempting to show how they maintain human popula-
tions in equilibrium with their environments. In this way the processual
approach and Stewardian cultural ecology may be seen to share some
approaches. (The "principle of alternating generations" also links them.)
Some research (207) on hunting typifies this work. Hunting behavior in
traditional settings has been compared to the predictions of hypotheses on
optimal foraging strategies in biological ecology. In some cases the hunters
deviate from these predictions, because the most prestigious or culturally
desirable meat is not always the most efficient or least risky to catch in
energetic terms (80), or because fear of observation by members of other
social groups constrains patterns of movement (179, 180).
Components of Processual Ecological Anthropology
DEMOGRAPHY Demographic decision-making models are closely tied to

the specific trends in processual ecological anthropology mentioned earlier
250 ORLOVE
in this section. They bear on the recent work in demography and an-
thropology which has contributed to processual ecological anthropology.
Neofunctionalist work emphasized negative feedback mechanisms which
maintained populations at static levels: neoevolutionists looked at the broad
details of human demographic history, and often missed the details of
particular cases.
A seminal work in this field is Boserup's The Conditions of Agricultural
Growth (31). Her well-known hypotheses reverse Malthusian descriptions
of human demography to suggest that population pressure causes rather
than follows agricultural intensification; people shift from more efficient
extensive systems to less efficient intensive ones only when driven by the
necessity of feeding more individuals. The general outlines of her argument
and the details of her sequence of stages in agricultural intensification have
attracted a great deal of attention. Many authors have pointed out the
shortcomings of her excessively simple scheme, and indicate that other
factors can also influence the sequences of agricultural intensification; these
include market systems, political pressures, and environmental variables.
Boserup's work and studies by Spooner (286) and others (14, 17, 25, 37, 61,
113, 124, 126, 190, 203, 307, 325) stimulated by it may be classified as
processual, for several reasons. The effort to assess the links between popu-
lation pressure and agricultural intensification have led to diachronic stud-
ies (190) in which changes in single groups are traced through time;
research in other areas for which little historical reconstruction is possible
has been carried out by examining the covariation of population density and
agricultural intensity (34a), with the assumption that current distribution
of associations resembles past sequences. The studies often rest on an im-
plicit decision-making model in which actors actually allocate scarce re-
sources (labor) in order to achieve goals (food production). The
mechanisms of change are seen in the connection between population and
resources, linked through systems of agricultural production and the neces-
sity to feed local populations. Individual decisions have cumulative conse-
quences which lead to broader change; shortening of fallow periods may
lead to a shift from communal tenure to private property, for instance.
Other work links demographic and ideological change (20).
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS Vayda & McCay (311, 312) argue that

the literature on the response to environmental problems is an important
shift away from the strong focus on energetics and from the assumption of
stable equilibrium; as they show, it also permits an examination of individ-
ual as well as population responses to environmental forces. Waddell's (314)
work on the response of the Fringe Enga in highland New Guinea describes
three types of responses to three levels of frost intensity and duration, wit
larger (though still subpopulation) sets of individuals acting in ca

severe potential or actual damage to crops. Earlier work by Vayda (308,
309) and others (120) on the nature of warfare and the choice of different
forms of attack rather than other responses to certain situations similarly
makes the point that the nature of the response can be correlated with the
scale of the problem. Other works show that responses can vary on individ-
ual as well as collective levels to natural stresses such as storms (17),
droughts (171, 212, 232, 243), famine (159, 219), and earthquakes (210).
Laughlin's (163, 164) well-documented analysis of the responses of the So
in East Africa to periodic crop failures is another good example of use of
decision-making models and the analysis of environmental problems. Britan
& Denich (33) address similar issues in Newfoundland and Yugoslavia in
cases of secular rather than cyclical change. Some efforts (209a) have been
made to quantify environmental hazards.
ADAPTIVE STRATEGIES The notion of adaptive strategy follows closely

from that of decision making. The idea of adaptive strategy suggests that
individuals, by repeatedly opting for certain activities rather than others,
construct alternatives which others may then choose or imitate. It is also
congruent with the emphasis on strategies and fitness in evolutionary
biology (304). A focus on adaptive strategies leads to an examination of the
manner in which a larger number of choices made by individuals can
influence the wider setting (27, 47a, 178, 278a, 300, 323, 330). Rutz's (258)
analysis of household decision making in a Fijian valley, for instance, shows
the unplanned village-level consequences of interaction between households
and their resolution of competition over different types of land. McCay
(186) examines two types of adaptive strategies among Fogo Islanders as
responses to a period of decline in the nearby fisheries. Individuals and
households may adopt "diversification" and "intensification" responses,
and the latter in particular led to outside intervention by governmental
agencies, which made the environmental problems more severe. The con-
cept of adaptive strategy, however, is often more elusive than one might
suspect, as suggested by definitions such as Bennett's (22, p. 14): "the
patterns formed by the many separate adjustments that people devise in
order to obtain and use resources and to solve the immediate problems
confronting them." The issues of the consciousness of the adaptive strate-
gies and the ease with which they may be adopted are often not wholly
confronted; the same work by Bennett on a region in the Canadian Great
Plains recognizes four strategies (rancher, farmer, Hutterite, Indian) but
does not fully examine the consequences of the fact that it is easier for
farmers and ranchers to shift between those two strategies than to adopt the
Hutterite or Indian one.
252 ORLOVE
MARXISM It is at this juncture that the contributions of Marxism become

evident. The important role of Marxism in the two earlier stages of ecologi-
cal anthropology makes its contributions in the third stage appropriate. If
adaptive strategies are seen as the outcome of decision making, or repeated
allocation of scarce resources to a hierarchy of goals under conditions of
constraint, then it is necessary to examine the pattern of resource distribu-
tion and the source of the goals and constraints. This is precisely the
contribution of recent work in Marxism, including much structural Marx-
ism (29, 103, 111) and the new political economy. In particular, a reconsid-
eration of the notion of mode of production questioned the rigid sequence
of succession of modes and the determination of the superstructure by the
base (140, 172,215), paralleling a rejection of neoevolutionism and neofunc-
tionalism. Dependency theory raised similar issues on the relation of eco-
nomics and politics and suggested the importance of an examination of
world systems. This work is compatible with the emerging interest in politi-
cal economy within anthropology (1, 36, 49, 114, 119, 151, 180, 213, 250,
269, 273), the concern for a historical materialist perspective (59), and an
emphasis on the links between local populations and wider systems (3 la,
36a, 259), including regional studies (16), studies of complex society (334),
and a world-systems perspective (217). This work thus contrasts with the
neofunctionalist ecological anthropology, which often adopted the local
population as its unit of analysis. For a structural Marxist critique and
reply, see (102) and (240). Each social formation may be seen as having a
characteristic set of forces and relations of production and an associated
superstructure. This social formation is pushed toward transformation by
confficts within the base, between the base and superstructure, and between
the social formation and its wider natural and social setting. Any social
formation is a transformation of the ones that preceded it. This criticism
is similar to the one made by Sahlins, that ecological anthropology reduces
culture to "protein and profit" (266, p. 45), that it misses the fact that
activity and ideology form a coherent structured whole of meaning and its
expression. This criticism also attacks the lack of satisfactory treatment of
the mechanisms which generate human behavior on the part of many
neofunctionalists and neoevolutionists.
Social Organization, Culture, and Process

One analyst (235, p. 34) of social conditions in Argentina, in attempting to
explain living conditions to a junior colleague, pointed out the necessity for
weighing the relative influence of geographical and institutional factors. The
choice between environmental factors on the one hand and social and
cultural ones on the other is not so simple, since the nature of their relations
goes beyond the old debate between determinism and possibilism (36a).
[This debate continues to resurface, as may be seen, for instance, in the

discussion of similarities and differences between blacks and East Indians in
the Caribbean (66, 83, 100).] Environmental factors interact with social and
cultural ones, and neither operates independently.
The neofunctionalists claim that the basic facts of technology, environ-
ment, and demography determine social structure and culture (131), and
an extreme culturalist point of view, such as that of Sahlins, would argue
that culture must be seen on its own terms. A useful place to compare the
two approaches and to incorporate the Marxist contributions is the Pacific,
an area where Sahlins and many of Harris's associates have worked. The
contrast between Melanesia and Polynesia is an instructive one. In the
period before European contact, the two areas shared a generally similar
technology, including tools (dibble sticks, bamboo knives, stone axes) and
crops [taro, yams, breadfruit, banana, coconut (8)]. There is considerable
variety of environments in the Pacific, ranging from high volcanic islands
to low coral atolls, from areas with high rainfall to others with low rainfall,
but Melanesia and Polynesia each possess this wide range of habitats (34,
302). Population densities at the time of contact are harder to establish, but
they varied in both areas from the order of one to two individuals per square
kilometer to densities a hundred times larger. However, the cultures and
social structures were quite different, since the areas were settled in separate
migrations (326). The differences between the two areas stand out. The
sharpest is the contrast between the Polynesian chief and the Melanesian
big man drawn by Sahlins (264); the relative orderliness of chiefly succes-
sion in Polynesia, the ability of the chief to command his followers, and the
success of linking smaller chiefdoms into larger kingdoms (112) are all quite
distinct from the more individualized careers of the big men, the uncertainty
of their rule, and the difficulties of establishing larger political units in
Melanesia. The postcontact histories are also different; states formed in
parts of Polynesia and cargo cults arose only in Melanesia. The two different
systems also are connected with different ideologies, the famed mana and
tabu of Polynesia, and more complex and varied beliefs about ancestors,
sexual differences, warfare, and the like in Melanesia. The contrast between
ancestor spirits in Melanesia and a fixed pantheon in Polynesia may also be
noted. These general patterns are quite distinct, and it would be hard to
dispute that what makes Tikopia strikingly Polynesian is the culture and
social structure brought by the people who settled it; similar technologies,
environments, and population densities are found in Melanesia. [There are
two types of cases where the distinction is less clear: (a) the small, disaster-
prone atolls; (b) medium-sized chiefdoms, where more abundant resources
allow incipient stratification in Melanesia and smaller island size limits the
elaboration of chiefly power in Polynesia (e.g. Trobriand and Marquesas).]
254 ORLOVE
Nonetheless, the environment influences social structure

important ways. For Polynesia we can return again to Sahlins's work. Social
Stratification in Polynesia (262), despite its tendency to neglect the impor-
tance of intrasocietal conflict in shaping social structure and some tautolo-
gies in the measures of productivity, argues strongly that environmental and
technological features (variations on a common Polynesian pattern with
some elaboration of irrigation and drainage) account for the particular
variations on the common Polynesian theme of chiefly political organiza-
tion and hierarchically arranged descent groups. The data from Melanesia
are less clear and variation within Melanesian social organization is greater
than was once suspected (48, 87). However, for similarities between high-
land and lowland Melanesian groups see (255). Europeans were less inter-
ested in them than in the Polynesians, so records for the contact period are
poorer. Since the islands are closer, more involved in interisland trade, and
were settled earlier, the specific association of social and cultural systems
with each island environment is less immediate. However, there is also some
association of environment and social structure, as shown by the larger
political units in eastern Melanesia (264).
In other words, the environmental factors which influenced social struc-
ture and culture were mediated by certain patterns, different for Melanesia
and Polynesia. [Cody & Mooney make an analogous ecological argument
about Mediterranean climates (52)]. It would be almost impossible to recon-
struct the early political histories of the Polynesian chiefdoms, for example,
but one can assume that the settlers arrived with certain cultural and
institutional patterns that bore a strong resemblance to those of other
Polynesians, and that these patterns offered the settlers certain goals, placed
constraints on their choices, and thus influenced their social, economic, and
political history. Not surprisingly, the largest, richest, and most diverse
islands, such as Hawaii, Tonga, Samoa, and Tahiti, supported the largest,
most complex, and stratified political systems, and the chiefs had much less
power on the smaller island societies; in neither case did they resemble
Melanesian social structure on similar islands. Sahlins (265) shows that
Tonga social structure and culture is a permutation of their counterparts
in Fiji; he argues that this case demonstrates the supremacy of culture over
material forces (107). But the matter might have been argued differently:
environmental and other material forces favor certain of the many possible
transformations of a given social structure and culture. Labby's (160) work,
for example, incorporates material factors into an otherwise idealist struc-
turalist analysis of Micronesian social organization.
To take another similar example, Sahlins states that Western meat prefer-
ences reflect deeply rooted cultural meanings rather than their nutritional
quality or availability; Harris & Ross (133) present a contrary position, that
preferences for different sorts of meat mirror their availability and quality.
Sahlins argues by alluding to the symbolic meanings attached to animals in
other domains, which transform biologically edible animals such as cattle,
swine, dogs, and horses into distinct cultural degrees of edibility and inedi-
bility; Ross (251) juxtaposes data on animal production and meat preserva-
tion in the United States with statements on relative preference for cattle
and swine. One might argue that the truth lies somewhere in between, as
does one analyst (322) of American commodities interested in predicting
future levels of consumption; if the price of one type of meat goes down,
people will buy more of it, but certain traditional preferences change slowly.
It might also be argued that both are wrong since neither one focuses on
individuals as actors, but rather on superorganic systems. It is difficult for
Sahlins to account for changing food preferences, and Harris & Ross (133)
cannot explain lags in changing availability and consumption patterns.
Decisions about diet, like many other decisions, are not always made fully
consciously, and they reflect a number of goals and constraints, yet their
cumulative impact is large.
The relative isolation of island societies and the recent settlement of some
make the examination of the interrelation of social and cultural patterns
with the environment particularly clear in the Pacific case. Another similar
case, however, may be found in Europe. In a study of an alpine valley in
northern Italy, Cole & Wolf (54) find striking differences between a Ger-
manic and a Romance-speaking village, despite similarities in environment,
technology, and population. Though both villages are Catholic, they par-
take of the somewhat different cultures of northern Europe and the Medi-
terranean. The inheritance patterns (335) in each, for instance, represent a
compromise between the respective cultural ideals of impartible and parti-
ble inheritance on the one hand and the exigencies of alpine agriculture and
livestock raising on the other; the two are close but still distinct. Settlement
patterns and village political systems also reflect the cultural differences
between the two. These facts are taken to indicate some "doubts ... about
the usefulness of ecological anthropology in the study of complex societies"
(54, p. 284); it might better be argued that it is neofunctional ecological
anthropology whose utility is dubious. The history of each village includes
a series of contacts with other villages and wider political units; this, how-
ever, is also true of most Melanesian and many Polynesian societies as well.
The two villages are the outcome of a long history of interaction between
environment, social structure, and culture in the valley and surrounding
region. The debate about whether they really have more in common as
Alpine peasants or less in common as Germanics and Latins is not wholly
256 ORLOVE
to the point; rather the individual, household, and village d

of land resources and the decisions over ambiguous and shifting political
alliances generate the different patterns.
A complementary approach to the one adopted in the Oceanic and Al-
pine cases is to look at areas with relatively uniform cultures and social
structures but varying environments. Such work has been done in the Maya
region, where general Mayan patterns of patrilineality and virilocality are
shown to covary with population density (55, 56). The numerous works
which discuss the impact of the fur trade, technological changes, and popu-
lation shifts on the hunting and trapping Indian groups of Canada may also
be reviewed in this context (28, 105, 152, 248, 272, 280, 282, 284, 298, 306).
They also demonstrate the advantages of abandoning the population as the
unit of analysis, since they include both individual and nuclear families as
actors and examine the wider economic and social context, and the articula-
tion of trapping economies with the capitalist world system and competition
between imperial powers. Similarly, variations on a common Andean pat-
tern of social organization may be related to differences in ecology and
political economy. There are several core features in the area [bilateral
inheritance (219), dual organization, extension of ties to affines and ritual
kin, several modes of reciprocal exchange (3), verticality (198, 244)] which
combine to generate different patterns. The tension (161) between an adult's
ties to a spouse and to married siblings, for instance, is resolved differently
in pastoral and agricultural settings (62, 96, 218). Access to different types
of land depends on ecological and political economic features (36, 61a, 104,
135, 183, 192, 267, 337). The varying nature of affinal links and reciprocal
exchanges reflects scarcity of different factors of productions (184). In all
cases, however, these variations are based on common Andean elements of
social organization. Such studies (2, 118, 189, 254) exist for other culture
areas as well; other authors follow a similar perspective in explaining rela-
tively late state formation in Madagascar (158), East Africa (315), and
Southeast Asia (333). Analogous biological arguments (21, 271) can be
made about temperature regulation in vertebrates. Physiological systems
are coordinated in various ways for a variety of purposes in different envi-
ronmental settings. The temperature regulatory systems are the outcome of
particular evolutionary histories of different species, reflecting their prior
physiologies and the environmental pressures to which they were subject.
In general, an examination of evolution must consider both phylogenetic
inertia and environmental forces. To understand the evolution of bats, it is
instructive to study both the elements which they have in common with
other mammals and those which they share with more distantly related but
functionally similar species of flying insectivores and frugivores. Parallels
can readily be drawn with the previous examples of Oceanic societies and
high-altitude peasant groups in the Alps and Andes (244). It should be
stressed that these analogies are not intended to suggest that the same
processes or mechanisms operate in human history and biological evolution,
nor that culture and species are similar entities.
Mechanisms of Change
In processual ecological anthropology, decision-making models can provide
a mechanism of change because there is interaction between the choices
which actors make, behaviors on an individual and group level, and the
biological, social, and cultural systems which influence the distribution of
resources, constrain the possible adaptive strategies, and provide some of
the goals which the actors attempt to meet. In this view, culture and
ideology are not seen as epiphenomena but as proximate causes which shape
human action. They influence the options among which individuals select
and in turn are influenced by the cumulative consequences of such choices.
This view facilitates the synthesis of recent Marxist work and ecological
anthropology. These points are supported by recent literature on Highland
New Guinea (31a, 187, 188, 195, 279, 299, 320), the Philippines (7, 74, 82),
pastoral nomads (148, 225, 226, 269, 270, 278a, 305), and other groups (64,
78, 115, 275, 288, 329).
Other writers, dissatisfied with such eclecticism, have sought more con-
cise and formalized presentations of mechanisms of change. One approach
is the previously mentioned cultural determinism of Sahlins and others. His
treatment of "transformations" (265), however, looks at qualitative change
without examining the quantitative change with which it is inextricably and
dialectically linked. To draw an analogy, he would suggest that a compari-
son of a few frames from a film is sufficient to depict the events and processes
which were recorded. Such still photographs, though, even if they were
analyzed in detail, could not portray motion. The view of sociobiology (47)
is that human behavior, like that of other species, is shaped by the dictates
of natural selection on genetic variation. This point resembles that of other
writers who emphasize population size and growth as an indication of
adaptation, although it differs on insisting on a genetic rather than a cultural
basis of behavior. The debates surrounding this approach will not be sum-
marized here. [It is worth noting, however, that arguments made in sociobi-
ological terms can frequently be recast without any reference to the genetic
basis for behavior. Thus, in a recent article, Dyson-Hudson & Smith (81)
present an argument that human territorial behavior follows the predictions
of ecological theory with regard to spatial patterns of resource use and
defense; they show that territoriality among Basin-Plateau Indians, the
258 ORLOVE
Northern Ojibwa, and the Karimojong is consonant with such predictions,

but neglect to state that they are equally consonant with an economic
cost-benefit analysis model of allocation of effort. They fail to recognize the
proximate mechanisms by which individuals choose to utilize certain loca-
tions and not others.]
Other works link cultural and genetic processes, following Campbell,
who "argues that the necessary conditions for the existence of natural
selection are met as well by culture as by genes: the trait must be heritable,
it must vary between individuals and the replication of trait-bearing individ
uals must be theoretically infinite but limited in practice" (246, p. 130).
Some efforts to link the two emphasize genetic factors more heavily, as
Irons' (149) notions that individuals choose the behaviors which maximize
their fitness and Durham's (76) argument that culture traits which will
maximize biological fitness are more frequently retained. Efforts to apply
these models have been limited in success; one need not assume, as Irons
(150) does, that Turkmen strive to be wealthy because wealthier Turkmen
have more children and biology makes people want to do things that will
allow them to have more children (148, 149, 247); and Durham's analysis
of fertility differentials (76, 77, 79) has little bearing on his examination (78)
of socially mediated patterns of resource utilization which led to the 1969
"Soccer War" between El Salvador and Honduras. Other writers give equal
emphasis to both, as Cloak's (50, 51) discussion of "self-replicating instruc-
tions" and Ruyle's (260a) concepts of "cultural and genetic pools." Two
sets of works, by Richerson & Boyd (32, 32a, b, 246) and by Cavalli-Sforza
& Feldman (42-45, 88-91), construct more general and formal models of
dual inheritance systems in which the relations of genetic to cultural fitness
can be specified rather than assumed. These approaches (233) can poten-
tially examine a wide range of cases; their empirical analyses have so far
tended to be restricted to a very general analysis of human kinship behavior
in which some of the deviations from the predictions of sociobiology have
been explained. A recent exploration (32b) of the behavior of employees in
firms demonstrates the potential of extending dual inheritance theory to
other areas of activity. These writers apply the methods of populations
genetics and evolutionary ecology to culture-bearing organisms, but do not
assume that genetic theories alone apply to people. Culture and genes are
treated as systems of inheritance, with related but distinct properties. The
success or failure of these dual-inheritance approaches remains difficult to
assess. Their efforts to unravel the interaction of biology and culture in
human kinship systems, for example, though suggestive are still prelimi-
nary. It is notable, however, to see biologists and social anthropologists
engaging in a debate as colleagues (50, 246).
Specific Cases
Two recent works which exemplify processual ecological anthropology are
The Raft Fishermen (98) and Fields of the Tzotzil (55). The former analyzes
the retention of fishing from rafts in a Brazilian village where boats, which
would permit larger catches, are also available. The study examines a local
population but places it in the contexts of extralocal economic and political
systems. Forman's explanation begins with the decisions that individual
actors make. He shows that local elites would be able to dominate the
fishermen even more thoroughly than they currently do if the shift in fishing
techniques took place. The fishermen accurately perceive that they would
have an absolutely as well as a relatively smaller share of the total catch if
that catch were increased by shifting to boat fishing. The lack of change is
thus a dynamic rather than a static equilibrium; if certain aspects of external
domination were to change (such as the system of patron-client relations
on the regional and national level), the local situation would change as well.
[However, Forman (97) has recently been criticized (60, 186) for leaning
toward neofunctionalism in making relatively unsubstantiated claims that
secrecy about identifying fishing spots serves to reduce competition and
prevent overfishing, and his analysis of kinship has been challenged on
methodological grounds (191).]
Collier's study in southern Mexico addresses a generally similar question,
the reasons for the retention of traditional identities among peasants, as
Indians in distinction to ladinos and as members of specific communities
(municipios) in distinction to other such communities. He shows the bene-
fits that these identities would confer on individuals and the difficulties
which the loss of identities would bring about. He examines local systems
of production in detail and shows the consequences of demographic increase
and external pressures on them. He thus retains much of the systems
orientation of earlier work without falling into a functionalist bias. The
detailed data on changing patterns of lineage composition, land tenure, and
labor utilization systematically document the response of individuals to
shifting environmental and demographic constraints, and the historical
material shows the impact of the cumulative consequences of these deci-
sions on the environment and wider economic and political systems. He also
integrates regional and national level processes with the study of local
populations more thoroughly than Forman. This work thus draws on the
areas of processual ecological anthropology mentioned earlier-the relation
of demographic variables and production systems, the response of popula-
tions to environmental stress, and the formation and consolidation of adap-
tive strategies. This work, however, has been criticized recently both
implicitly and explicitly for failing to analyze correctly the role of Chiapas
260 ORLOVE
and the Indian populations in regional, national, and global economies.

Wasserstrom's (257, 316-319) research, drawing heavily on recent Marxist
work, shows the importance of systematically considering the demographic
patterns, ritual activities, and work organization in this wider context.
Highland Indians' life was even more directly influenced by regional and
national elites than Collier would suggest.
This debate over Chiapas resembles disagreements over another more
famous ethnographic case: the Nuer. Sahlins's (263) reanalysis shows the
organizational strength of the segmentary lineage system. More recently,
attempts have been made to relate the presence of the segmentary lineage
system among the Nuer and its absence among the neighboring Dinka to
different levels of population pressure (206) and to differential spatial pat-
terns of resource distribution (110). Southall (285) offers a detailed analysis
of both factors. Sacks' (261) interesting recent treatment emphasizes politi-
cal economy. The Nuer and the Dinka had different historical experiences
with traders from other areas, and these relations led to these characteristic
patterns of internal differentiation. As in the case of Chiapas, though,
different explanations focus on political economy on the one hand and local
ecology and social structure on the other. Efforts at synthesis of the two are
still incomplete.
Similar aspects of processual ecological anthropology are shown in the
February 1977 issue of American Ethnologist devoted to human ecology.
Seven of the 11 articles examine the rationality of individual actors and the
manner in which external constraints shape their choices. There is a corre-
sponding deemphasis on concepts such as carrying capacity and homeosta-
sis which were favored by the neofunctionalists. It is significant that all the
articles examine complex state societies rather than small-scale societies.
Neofunctionalist ecological anthropology, which was more focused on local
populations in homeostatic equilibrium with their environment, restricted
itself to such populations. The greater time depth possible in complex
settings, and one series of responses of different groups within such societies,
demonstrates the importance of historical change rather than of static
equilibrium or long-term evolution, justifying the label of "processual" for
such studies. This setting in complex societies clarifies the importance of
extralocal ties and of the access to extralocal resources which the neofunc-
tionalists neglected. These settings, as Forman and Collier show, are ones
in which conffict can be examined. These aspects of social organization were
greatly neglected by neofunctionalists, whose focus on the adaptation of
local populations led them to assume that the interests of all individuals and
groups within the population were similar and compatible. Aside from a
functionalist examination of primitive warfare, a discussion of conffict ap-
pears in only a few cases of works by neofunctionalist ecological an-
thropologists, notably Barth (13) and Leeds (170), both of whom have used
actor-based models with considerable success in the analysis of social and
economic organization of complex societies. Some nonstate settings have
also attracted processual ecological anthropologists (36a). New Guinea
allows for the testing of Boserup's hypothesis on demographic pressure and
agricultural intensification, and the nature of Melanesian social and politi-
cal organization makes actor-based models particularly appealing. Never-
theless, many of the factors identified in complex societies are at work
elsewhere, and even the supposedly isolated local populations studied by
neofunctionalist ecological anthropologists have undergone processes of
historical change and rely on extralocal resources, as shown by Anderson's
(5) criticisms of Rappaport's (236) analysis of Tsembaga in highland New
Guinea, Helms' (142) analysis of Miskito Indians in lowland Central Amer-
ica, studied by Nietschmann (207), and Schrire's (275a) reexamination of
the San (166, 166b) of southern Africa.
CONCLUSIONS
Processual ecological anthropology is a reaction to neofunctionalist and

neoevolutionary approaches, which were also responses to the pioneer work
of Julian Steward and Leslie White. Adopting an historical time frame,
rather than examining synchronic homeostatic equilibria or the many mil-
lenia of human history, permits a closer focus on mechanisms of change.
By studying units other than the local population on which the neofunction-
alists concentrated, studies have been carried out of larger units (political
economy) and smaller ones (actor-based models). The elimination of func-
tionalist assumptions has had several consequences: (a) a focus on the
mechanisms which link environment and behavior; (b) an ability to incor-
porate conflict as well as cooperation by recognizing that not all goals are
population-wide; (c) more precise studies of productive activities, settle-
ment patterns, and the like without assumptions about equilibrium mainte-
nance.
Processual ecological anthropology draws on several recent trends in the
social sciences: demography, an examination of environmental problems,
the concept of adaptive strategies, and recent work in Marxism. Decision-
making models link all of them. The gap between anthropologists and
biologists is also narrowing, as specialists in each field become more aware
of work in the other and have begun efforts to link the two theories (as in
dual inheritance approaches) and to borrow more cautiously than in the
past. The homologies between actor-based models and natural selection
favor this connection between sciences without assuming that they are
262 ORLOVE
virtually identical as the sociobiologists do, and the ecosystem ecologists,

neofunctionalists, and neoevolutionists did.
The incorporation of decision-making models as mechanisms of change
has led to a greater emphasis on social organization and culture. Social and
cultural systems influence the goals which actors have, the distribution of
resources which they use, and the constraints under which they operate. It
appears likely that the comparative work in ecological anthropology will
emphasize culture areas, as in the Pacific, European, Mayan, and Andean
cases mentioned here, as well as the comparisons of evolutionary stages and
production types which characterized the neofunctionalist and neoevolu-
tionary stages. As this work progresses, materialist and idealist approaches
in anthropology are likely to find more common ground through a more
thorough interpretation of culture and ideology as systems which mediate
between actors and environments through the construction of behavioral
alternatives.
As ecological anthropology draws closer to biology and history, it
becomes enriched and enriches other fields. Although it incorporates mod-
els and research methods from other areas of anthropology and other
disciplines, it must rework them to suit its own needs rather than adopt
them blindly. This association with other fields, however, creates the danger
of a fragmentation of ecological anthropology into a series of specialized
areas of inquiry. The current diversification, though it shows a growth of
new lines of productive research, could lead to a loss of analytical coher-
ence. An examination of theoretical issues and of the complex history of the
field is therefore an urgent task. Future developments in ecological an-
thropology thus rest on an understanding of the new common elements in
processual approaches-the importance of the time frame, the role of actor-
based models, a clearer focus on mechanisms of change, and a more bal-
anced position on the role of social organization, culture, and biology.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many people provided useful suggestions of items to include. I wish to

thank the individuals who sent me lists of references. Richard Burger,
Candace Cross-Drew, William Davis, Gary Hamilton, Laurence Krock-
man, Anthony Leeds, Valerie Levulett, Thomas Love, Peter Richerson, and
Karl Yambert gave me many valuable comments on an earlier version of
the article, which has since been published (214) .I also received helpful
comments on the later version from David Boyd, Robert Boyd, Michael
Chibnik, Mario Davila, William Durham, Timothy Earle, Michael Harner,
Marvin Harris, Cristina Kessler, Bonnie McCay, Ellen Messer, Daniel
Meyerowitz, Robert Netting, Bernard Nietschmann, Christine Paddoch,
Eric Ross, Leslie Sponsel, Robert Wasserstrom, and David Sloan Wilson.
I also wish to thank my research assistants, Aaron Zazueta and Gary
Newport, for their help in locating and classifying references, and the
secretaries, Wanda Greene, Cecelia Odelius, Lyn Schonewise, and Clifford
Shockney, who patiently typed various drafts of this manuscript. Finally,
I would like to acknowledge the useful discussions and insights generated
by the students in the Anthropology/Ecology 211 seminar on cultural
ecology.
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Ecological Anthropology

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Ecological Anthropology

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Ecological Anthropology

Author(s): Benjamin S. Orlove

Division of Environmental Studies and Department of Anthropology,

Ecological anthropology may be defined as the study of the relati

This article focuses primarily on work in social anthropology. It contains

THE FIRST STAGE OF ECOLOGICAL

Ecological anthropology owes its existence to a number of swings on intel-

environment influenced only certain elements of a cultur

Despite their similarities, there were several fundamental dif

THE SECOND STAGE OF ECOLOGICAL

The attempts to address the similarities and differences of Steward and

of Polanyi's (230) notion of three types of economies, based

and ideology (129), which reappear, in slightly modified form, as

Neoevolutionism and Neofunctionalism Compared

Columbia and Michigan universities had representatives of both for many

that human populations remain at or below carrying capacity, since they

THE THIRD STAGE OF ECOLOGICAL

It should be noted that work characteristic of Steward in the two previous

Actor-Based Models and Processual Ecological Anthropology

of individual actors by early ecological anthropologists (327) and in part

Processual Ecological Anthropology, Biological Ecology,

Components of Processual Ecological Anthropology

DEMOGRAPHY Demographic decision-making models are closely tied to

ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS Vayda & McCay (311, 312) argue that

larger (though still subpopulation) sets of individuals acting in ca

ADAPTIVE STRATEGIES The notion of adaptive strategy follows closely

MARXISM It is at this juncture that the contributions of Marxism become

Social Organization, Culture, and Process

[This debate continues to resurface, as may be seen, for instance, in the

Nonetheless, the environment influences social structure

to the point; rather the individual, household, and village d

Northern Ojibwa, and the Karimojong is consonant with such predictions,

and the Indian populations in regional, national, and global economies.

Processual ecological anthropology is a reaction to neofunctionalist and

virtually identical as the sociobiologists do, and the ecosystem ecologists,

Many people provided useful suggestions of items to include. I wish to

26. Beteille, A. 1972. The study 39. of Carneiro,

an Alpine Valley. New York/London: cattle complex. Dialect. Anthropol.

221. Ortiz, S. 1976. The effect of risk aversion

ative Study of New Guinea Societies. and evolution of thermal regulation in

319. Wasserstrom, R. 1978. Population 330. Williams, G. C. 1977. Differential risk

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