Environmentalism and Cultural Theory

Exploring the Role of Anthropology in Environmental Discourse

Kay Milton

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134821068
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the attention paid by social scientists to environmental issues, and a gradual acknowledgement, in the wider community, of the role of social science in the public debate on sustainability. At the same time, the concept of `culture', once the property of anthropologists has gained wide currency among social scientist. These trends have taken place against a growing perception, among specialist and public, of the global nature of contemporary issues. This book shows how an understanding of culture can throw light on the way environmental issues are perceived and interpreted, both by local communities and within the contemporary global arena.
Taking an anthropological approach the book examines the relationship between human culture and human ecology, and considers how a cultural approach to the study of environmental issues differs from other established approaches in social science. This book adds significantly to our understanding of environmentalism as a contemporary phenomenon, by demonstrating the distinctive contribution of social and cultural anthropology to the environmental debate. It will be of particular interest to students and researchers in the fields of social science and the environment.

1
ANTHROPOLOGY, CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENTALISM

While anthropologists perform archaistic studies of odds and ends of humanity, municipal authorities struggle with the chemical, geological, economic and political problems of toxic wastes – with little help from social scientists.

(Bennett 1990: 435)

Boundaries in social science are not permanent fixtures; they come and go according to context. Sometimes they appear in the arena of academic politics, as the practitioners of each discipline stake out their territories in the contest for student allegiance and financial resources. Sometimes they acquire significance in scientific debate, as specialists in one discipline strain to grasp the subtleties of another’s jargon. Illusions of similarity are created by the tendency to use the same terms (structure, function, culture) for different things, and illusions of diversity are created by the opposite tendency to call the same thing by different names. If social science is to meet the challenge of providing interdisciplinary approaches to the environment, we need to know first what each discipline has to offer. Since my main purpose in this book is to explore what anthropology has to offer to environmental discourse, it is important to begin by establishing what is distinctive about anthropology, what makes it different from the other social sciences.

HOW IS ANTHROPOLOGY DIFFERENT?

The most obvious and well-known distinguishing feature is anthropology’s interest in non-industrial indigenous and ‘traditional’ societies,¹ the study of which was initially fostered by colonial expansion. It is this heritage that has given anthropology its exotic public image. This image is not unfounded, but it is misleading because it conceals the fact that an increasing number of anthropologists are studying various aspects and consequences of industrialism,² writing about major issues of public concern,³ and commenting on the implications of contemporary technological change.⁴ It also masks anthropology’s deep concern with what is general in the human condition, as well as with what is particular to specific societies. ‘Other’ societies have always been held up as mirrors to our own (however ‘we’ might be defined), and the wealth of human diversity has been treated as a source from which to draw insights into the nature of social processes. The minute analysis of ritual, for instance, exemplified in the work of Turner (1967, 1968), is conducted in the context of a broader understanding of what ritual is, how it operates and why people engage in it, built up through knowledge of the diversity and similarity exhibited in a range of human societies. The theories that emerge from such studies are often about humanity in general and, as Turner himself demonstrated (1969, 1974), are just as enlightening on the processes at work among political revolutionaries or crowds at a football match as on the traditional motivations and concerns of a central African community. Thus, anthropologists often share the concerns of sociologists and political scientists but have come to them through a different route. Anthropology’s traditional interest in the full range of human societies is important in shaping its contribution to environmental discourse, as future chapters will demonstrate.

Equally important, but less accessible to public gaze, is the distinctiveness of anthropological theory, where the most enduring and consistent presence has been the concept of culture. This is not to say that culture has been the exclusive territory of anthropologists, far from it, especially in recent decades as ‘cultural studies’ has acquired an identity as a discipline.⁵ But there is no doubt that culture has had a more central position in anthropological thought than in any other social science, at least until the emergence of cultural studies, and that anthropologists have accorded it a great deal of analytical significance. Indeed, in contrast with what anthropologists have written over the years, the manner in which other social scientists view culture sometimes seems rudimentary. As recently as 1992, Featherstone observed,

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

(1992: vii)

It is distressing and frustrating for an anthropologist to read these words, for it is as if the last hundred years or so of anthropological theory had never happened. What many social scientists have become aware of only during the last decade or so (if Featherstone’s observation is accurate), that a concept of culture, appropriately defined, can offer fundamental insights into the human condition and can ‘challenge the viability of our existing modes of conceptualization’ (Featherstone 1992: vii), has been understood and taken for granted by anthropologists for many years (cf. Robertson 1992: 32).

The shifting centre

It is one thing to state that the use of culture as a central analytical concept distinguishes anthropology from other social sciences. It is quite another to state what that concept is or how it is used in anthropology, for the level of inconsistency, disagreement and debate that has surrounded it is as great as for any key concept in social science. Wallerstein’s comment is pertinent, even though he probably was not thinking of anthropology when he made it: ‘Culture is probably the broadest concept of all those used in the historical social sciences. It embraces a very large range of connotations, and thereby it is the cause perhaps of the most difficulty’ (1990a: 31). At least part of the ‘difficulty’ with culture in anthropology stems from a dilemma over whether culture is itself an object of analysis, or whether it is part of a broad framework for the analysis of something else, usually something that is seen as a part of culture and therefore as ‘cultural’ in nature. In other words, do anthropologists consider the question of ‘how culture is constituted, how we should theorize culture’ (Featherstone 1992: vii), or do they study the functions and meanings of more specific phenomena which fall within the broad category of culture? This dilemma was neatly expressed by Bohannan:

Culture is a black box for most anthropologists. We define culture by whatever purpose we ascribe to it in our theorizing, and are hence allowed to continue on our way without examining it. Anyone who needs a black box named culture in order to carry out his activities should have it. But one man’s black box is another man’s field of investigation.

(1973: 358)

Anthropological theory has tended to shift between the two enterprises. For much of the time, anthropologists have studied cultural things, rather than culture itself. The nature of the black box has been glimpsed from time to time, as the theoretical spotlight has focused on its contents: kinship, symbolism, systems of exchange, religious beliefs. Periodically, however, the spotlight has been turned on culture itself, and the shape and dimensions of the black box have been redrawn. This has tended to happen, not surprisingly, during important fundamental shifts in social science theory, in which anthropology has participated. It happened, for instance, during the 1960s and 1970s. At this time, anthropology, like the other social sciences, was shedding the cloak of positivism which it had worn conspicuously throughout its domination by various forms of structuralist theory, and moving towards a more interpretative approach. Pronouncements about the nature of culture (Geertz 1966, Goodenough 1957, 1981 [1971]) were followed by publications which assessed the contemporary state of thinking on culture (Bohannan 1973, Keesing 1974).

There are signs that social science theory is currently experiencing another fundamental shift, the nature of which is not entirely clear as yet, but which appears to be characterized by three prominent trends. First, there is dissatisfaction with the cultural relativist perspective which has characterized anthropology in the post-structuralist era, but which, it is felt by some, has largely outlived its usefulness (see Descola 1992: 108). Second, there is a widespread reaction, both within and outside anthropology, against the ‘Cartesian’ dualisms of mind–body, thought–action, nature–culture, which are seen as obstructing progress in anthropological theory. In particular, the conceptual opposition between nature and culture, which was the mainstay of some forms of structural anthropology (most famously in the work of Lévi-Strauss) and remained firm through the post-structuralist phase, is under serious attack as a framework for understanding the human condition (see Croll and Parkin 1992: 3, 13; Ingold 1996). This development echoes fundamental questions that are continually raised in environmentalist discourse about the role of humankind within the natural order (Grove-White 1993: 24), and is therefore likely to be highly significant for anthropology’s contribution to environmental discourse.

Third, and perhaps most important, social scientists are paying increasing attention to ‘globalization’, which is characterized by the spread and exchange of ideas, practices and technologies on a world-wide scale. Some degree of exchange among societies has always been a part of human history, but the ability of contemporary communications to transcend the barriers of time and space has led social scientists to ask whether it is appropriate to speak of a ‘global culture’. The focus on world systems is far from new in social science (see, for instance, Wallerstein 1979, Nash 1981, Chirot and Hall 1982). What is relatively new is the conceptualization of such systems in terms of culture. Anthropology is in danger of being confined to the margins of this discourse, despite its long history of cultural theory, for the images of culture being imported into social-scientific thinking on globalization are drawn, not from anthropology, but from the disciplines which, as Featherstone observed (1992: vii), used to define it as ‘esoteric and epiphenomenal’. The spectre of a global culture would seem to offer a direct challenge to anthropological tradition, whose central analytical practice, cross-cultural comparison, would be difficult to sustain in the absence of boundaries between cultures. The nature of this challenge will be examined more closely in Chapter 5.

Environmental discourse appears to be characterized by a high degree of globalization. This is expressed, for instance, in the tendency for environmentalists in industrial society to ‘borrow’ philosophies and practices from non-industrial peoples, in the creation of international arenas for negotiating agreements and setting environmental standards (most notably, through the United Nations, the European Union and other such alliances), and in the imposition, through these mechanisms, of ‘western’ concepts of science, value and nature in countries where such concepts are not indigenous. More than any other important contemporary discourse, the debate on the environment has adopted the concept of the global as both ‘motive and motif’.⁶ Environmental problems are represented as global in their extent and consequences, and this image is used as a spur both for local effort (through such slogans as ‘think globally, act locally’) and for international negotiation. The global motif thus might be said to fuel the globalization of environmentalist ideas. However, globalization is an ambiguous and contested concept in social science and its relevance to an understanding of environmental issues needs to be explored rather than assumed. The question of whether a concept of globalization provides a useful framework for developing an anthropological perspective on environmental discourse will be discussed in Chapter 5.

THE CONCEPT OF CULTURE IN ANTHROPOLOGY

The argument of this book will shift, as anthropological thought itself has done, between a focus on culture itself, as an analytical concept, and a focus on cultural things. I shall argue that anthropology’s contribution to environmental discourse depends on environmental issues being seen as cultural in character. This requires some attention to what it means, in anthropology, to label something as ‘cultural’.

Any attempt to describe anthropologists’ shared understanding of culture very quickly runs into difficulties. Probably most would agree that culture is something that all human beings have, that it enables them to live in social groupings and that it is acquired through association with others. Beyond this, however, one is in dangerous territory. Even the apparently innocent declaration that culture is shared (Nanda 1987: 68; Peoples and Bailey 1988: 19; Ferraro 1992: 19) raises awkward questions about the manner of the sharing, and conjures up images of group mind and common consciousness, which many anthropologists find difficult to live with (see Goodenough 1981 [1971]: 51ff.). If it is impossible to state precisely what anthropologists mean by culture (since there is no universal agreement on this), it is at least possible, and useful, to explore the concept by focusing on some of its ambiguities and shifts in meaning.

Culture is general, culture is specific

Culture, however it is defined, is used in two main senses in anthropology, a general sense and a specific one. In its general sense, culture is a phenomenon that is part of all human experience. In its specific sense, a culture is an entity associated with a particular society or category of people. In the first sense, we refer simply to ‘culture’; in the second sense, we refer to ‘Japanese culture’, ‘Irish-American culture’ or ‘youth culture’. Anthropologists have not always acknowledged the distinction between the two, as the following definitions indicate: ‘Culture … is the patterned way of life shared by a group of people’ (Nanda 1987: 68, emphasis added); ‘Culture is the socially transmitted knowledge shared by some group of people’ (Peoples and Bailey 1988: 18, emphasis given). Howard appears to avoid the confusion: ‘Culture itself is the manner in which human groups learn to organize their behaviour and thought in relation to their environment’ (1986: 5). But in doing so he has deprived culture of its substance and turned it into a manner in which something is done (in this case, in which certain skills are learned). In this form, it is no longer a category, and is of little use as a black box.

Culture operates as a black box in anthropological analysis in both its general and its specific senses. It is in terms of a general understanding of culture that we identify phenomena (such as marriage, ritual, classifications of plants and animals) as cultural and proceed to examine their detailed characteristics. The more specific understanding of culture provides countless black boxes for the purpose of ethnographic description and analysis. ‘Irish culture’, for instance, becomes the framework within which, say, Irish traditions of hospitality are described and their relations with other Irish cultural items examined.

As long as we stay within the box, we do not need to worry about its dimensions. In the more general sense, and as Bohannan implied (1973: 358), as long as we are concerned only with things cultural, we do not need to worry about what it is that makes them cultural. We can treat culture as the category that encompasses religious beliefs, political systems and kinship obligations, and discuss the relationships among these things, even drawing examples for comparison from different societies, without worrying about what culture itself is. Similarly, in the more specific sense, as long as we are writing about Irish culture, we do not need to be concerned about whether the things we describe are exclusively Irish, or whether some things are ‘shared’ with other cultures. We might, for instance, analyse the relationship between religion and political ideology in Irish culture without concerning ourselves with parallels that might be drawn with, say, British or American culture. In many contexts, anthropologists can get away with failing to indicate whether they are referring to culture in its general or its specific sense, either because it is obvious which is intended or because it does not matter. In some contexts, however, it is important to bear the distinction in mind, as will become clear in the discussion on culture and globalization (in Chapter 5).

The more specific understanding of culture, apart from providing black boxes for ethnographers, has had fundamental implications for the development of anthropology. Cross-cultural comparison, which is present, either explicitly or implicitly, in most anthropological writing, depends on cultures being seen as boxes of some kind; comparing cultures means comparing the contents of different boxes. There have also been many analyses of how specific items move between cultures, through processes such as ‘cultural integration’ and ‘acculturation’. However, although the study of cultural change, and of cultural exchange, have formed a significant field within anthropology, the discipline has suffered from a notorious inability, or reluctance, to produce models for the analysis of ‘macro-processes’. Anthropology has become famous for analysing the minutiae of cultural change, but equally famous for ignoring the big picture, for failing to cope with large-scale social movements and worldwide communications systems. Not surprisingly, this failing has meant that, with a few exceptions, anthropologists have played little part in the debate over globalization. The failure to develop models of large-scale cultural change can be attributed in part to two prevailing features of anthropological thought: the assumption that cultures are systems, and the ‘spectre’ (Holy and Stuchlik 1981: 28) of cultural relativism.

Cultures as systems

One of the most pervasive anthropological assumptions about cultures (in the specific sense) is that they are systems. This image persists, regardless of how the contents of cultures are defined. Keesing, for instance, represented cultures in turn as ‘adaptive systems’, ‘cognitive systems’, ‘structural systems’, ‘symbolic systems’ and ‘ideational systems’ (1974: 74–83). The important questions about cultures have been taken to be whether they are adaptive, cognitive, structural and so on; that they are systems has been taken for granted. There is considerable variation in what social scientists mean by the term ‘system’. Wuthnow pointed out that, in its strictest sense, it ‘implies only relationships’ (1983: 61). It is unlikely that any anthropologist would disagree with the characterization of cultures as systems in this minimal sense. But many would assume that system implies more than relationships, and would take it to indicate a significant degree of order and boundedness.⁷

Thus to represent a culture as a system is, for many analysts, to see it as something more than a mere box with contents. It implies that the contents are organized, that the relationships among them are structured. This, in turn, gives cultures a degree of boundedness which mere boxes with contents do not have. If a culture is nothing more than a box with contents, then it is a relatively easy matter to remove or copy something from it and put it in another box. Cultural exchange and integration appear relatively straightforward processes. This is not the case if a culture is a system. Any cultural item canno...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Social science and environmental discource
• 1. Anthropology, Culture and Environmentalism
• 2. Culture and Ecology
• 3. Environmentalism in Social Science
• 4. Environmentalism and Cultural Diversity
• 5. Globalization, Culture and Discourse
• 6. The Culture of Global Environmentalist Discourse
• 7. Anthropology, Social Science and Environmentalism
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index