anth 206 environment and culture midterm

facthishes

• something we see in the world that is external and has autonomy

• giving meaning to something that is a fact

• something in between

• objects are artificates that are treated with a quality that is given to it

hybrids

• soft (culture) and hard (nature)

• things that fall in between

• without purification there would be less hybrids, too aware of connections

• purification has no point without transition

descola’s naturalism

• nature is created

• nature is a specific concept from a specific worldview

• human and nonhuman share a physical form but only humans have a mind and soul

• very western, product of modernity

phusis

• greek word for nature

• growing or becoming

• fulfillment and achievement

• inventory of other forms of life

• system

• emphasizes physical traits

• double meaning

• everyone has their own nature that something lives up to throughout its lifetime allowing the characterization

• every species has its own nature

evolutionism

the differences between people are the differences in racial biology not social learning

latour’s great internal division

nature separated from society (modern)

latour’s great external division

• the people who do vs dont separate nature from culture

• modern/western vs antiquated/eastern/southern

work of purification

the process of simplying complex phenomena by separating them into distinct categories, which can lead to a distorted understanding of reality by ignoring the interconnectedness and complexities of the world

work of translation

Creates mixtures in between entirely new kinds of beings

unilienal evolution

• One track of development in a series of stages for the development of culture

• All cultures in society are evolving to one point (often seen as western)

multilinear evolution

Evoluntary tracjectory goes differently based on your reponse to the environment youre in

steward’s core and periphery

• wanted to analyze the organization or integration of society and ecology

• what makes the difference between societies is the process of work: the division of labour and the organization, timing, cycling and management of human work in pursuit of subsistence

etic data

formation gathered through an insider’s perspective

emic data

information gathered from an outsider’s perspective

fortress conservation

a conservation model based on the belief that biodiversity protection is best achieved by creating protected areas where ecosystems can funciton in isolation from human distrubance

• nature doesnt need humans

cronon’s wilderness

modern enviornmental attitude toward wilderness was created by two intellectual movements (romantic spiritual sublime and post-frontier, primitivist ideology)

spiritual sublime

god should be found in vast and powerful landscapes

post-frontier

• The belief that modern society is returning to more simple

• Now that there is no frontier left we have to find other frontiers for ourselves to give it meaning

primitivist ideology

the romanticized belief among europeans settlers that indigenous people/society lived in harmony with nature, shaping attitudes towards wilderness perservation and land use in north america

terra preta

• a type of very dark and fertil antrhopologenic soil

• characterized by its high fertility and high levels of organic matter

• it contains material and elements like charcoal and pottery shards

• archaeological evidence and carbon dating indicates that these soils were created over a period of milennia from about 9000 ybp

slash-and-burn agriculture

method where farmers clear land by cutting down trees and then burn the vegetation to create fertile soil for planting crops. after the soil is depleted, the farmers move to a new area, repeating the process elsewhere, often in a cyclical fashion

extinction

catastrophism

animals as ecosystem engineers

the links between hunting and conservation (late 19th century)

substantivist ontology

• The term "substantive" implies a focus on the substance or essence of entities

• Entities, substances or things exist independently of their relationships with other entities

• Entities are considered ontologically stable

• Their existence and properties are not contingent on specific relaitonal or contextual factors

relational ontology

• The nature of existence is fundamentally relational

• Entities, substances, or things exist independently of their relationships with other entities

• Entities are considered ontologically stable

• The nature of existence is fundamentally relational

• Entities are just the sum of their relations and not static substances

• It challenges the idea of entities having independent existence of intrinsic properties

• Instead entities are contextually dependent, emerging through relational dynamics

traditional ecological knowledge

• Tek refers to the cumulative body of knowledge, practices and beliefs about the environment that are developed and passed down within a community over generations

• A big achievement of cultural ecology

  Knowledge is often deeply rooted in local ecosystems and reflects the intimate relationship between a community and its enviornment

• Refers to the evolving knowledge acquired by indigenous and local peoples over hundresds or thousands of years through direct contact with the enviornment

• This knowledge is specific to a location and includes the relationships between plants, animals, natural phenomena, landscapes, and timing of events that are used

folk taxonomies

• The way people in a particular culture classify and categorize the living organisms and objects in their environment based on shared cltural knowledge and perception

• Unlike scientific taxnomoies, which are developed through systematic biological or botanical classification, folk taxonomies are shaped by the cultural, social and practical needs of a community

biocultural diversity

It encompasses the diversity of life not only in terms of species and ecosystems but also in relation to the knowledge, practices, and beliefs of diverse human communities.

ethnoscience

epistemology

linguistic relativity hypothesis

• Language influences thought but doesn’t necessarily determine it entirely

• Linguistic differences can lead to variations in perception and cognitive patterns

• In the context of nature and the environment, it would mean that the structure and vocabulary of a language might influence how speakers perceive and categorize elements of the natural world

violent care

gift economy

• essenece of agift is that it creates a set of relationships

• the currency is reciprocity

• property has a bundle of responsibilities attached

“all flourshing is mutual”

“These fungal networks appear to redistribute the wealth of carbohydrates from tree to tree. A kind of Robin Hood, they take from the rich and give to the poor so that all the trees arrive at the same carbon surplus at the same time. They weave a web of reciprocity, of giving and taking. In this way, the trees all act as one because the fungi have connected them. Through unity, survival. All flourishing is mutual. Soil, fungus, tree, squirrel, boy— all are the beneficiaries of reciprocity.”

ontology

• The study of what there is

• How the things there are relate to each other

• It encompasses problems about the most general features and relations of the entities which do or might exist

• Systems of properties that humans acribe to beings

cultural ecology (cultural materialism - environmental determinism

• nature is the basic determinant of social action

• human behaviour, social institution and specific cultural features are but adaptive responses to basic enviornmental constraints

cultural materialism

• assigns causal priority to the material conditions of life

• human activity is organized to satisfy the material conditions of life and limited by our biological makeup, the level of technology, the nature of the enviornment

• three levels : infrastructure, strucutre, superstructure

• follows a method that can be replicated