To understand ecological anthropology it must be seen as first and foremost a systems approach (Ellen 1982; Hardesty 1997; McGee 1996) that focuses on the interrelationship between culture and the environment. At the heart of contemporary ecological anthropology is “an understanding that proceeds from a notion of the mutualism of person and environment” (Ingold 1992:40) and the reciprocity between nature and culture (Harvey 1996). Instead of the underlying nature-culture dualism prevalent in modern Western thought, the environment in this perspective is viewed as perceptually constructed through historical and cultural interaction with society, while society, in turn, is shaped by the biophysical environment in which it is embedded (Biersack 1999:8). The alteration of the biophysical environment by society consequently has a double impact: upon the biophysical environment and upon the prevailing social arrangements and “imagined geographies” (Said 1979) of the members of the society.
Perhaps the premiere contribution of ecological anthropology to the environmental issues facing modern society is the establishment of culture as the primary conceptual unit of study in human interaction with the biophysical environment. Julian Steward’s insights made prominent the “recognition that environment and culture were involved in a “dialectic interplay…or what is called feedback, or reciprocal causality” (Hardesty 1977:8). For Steward, environment and culture define each other. This does not imply an equal proportion, but instead for Steward (1955) the proportion of influence varies in ways related to specific environmental and cultural interaction.
