Culture and Environment Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Of all of the words in the English language, culture and nature are two of the most complicated and multi-faceted, making any discussion of “culture” in the context of environment-society relations fraught with complexity. The Latin word cultura, from which “culture” is derived, had the primary meaning of cultivation or husbandry, the process of tending natural growth, especially crops or animals. The concept was eventually extended to the process of human development, and “culture” was often used in the 18th century as a synonym for “civilization.” In the late 17th century, Matthew Arnold introduced the notion of culture as high culture, that which is beautiful, sublime, and perfect, the best of what has been thought and said. In this view, culture is embodied by extraordinary works of literature, painting, music, and philosophy. More recently, social scientists have argued by contrast that “culture is ordinary,” and that popular or mass culture is also worthy of study.

In 1952, anthropologists Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn catalogued 164 definitions of culture. One common definition is culture as a distinctive, “total way of life” including meanings, values, norms, and ideas embodied in institutions, social relations, belief systems, customs, and material artifacts. Clifford Geertz argued that culture should be understood as “webs of meaning” coded in symbolic forms, such as artifacts and rituals, which can be interpreted like a text. Culture in this view is concerned with the production and exchange of meanings between members of a group. Culture is also often thought of as a way of organizing society through a system of signs or signification, and a set of stories that a society tells itself about itself. It is learned rather than biological or innate, but is often learned unconsciously, passed through generations by instruction, example, and imitation. Culture shapes awareness, perception, and the way an individual makes sense of the world, and thus is also intimately linked to knowledge and representation.

What is Culture?

Many “common sense” ideas about culture have been critiqued and refined in recent years. For example, some social scientists have recently stressed that culture should not be thought of as an object, and that meanings can be challenged and can change. Culture is shared, but also contested, and some members of a society almost always have more power or ability to shape meanings than others. Moreover, culture is differentiated; members of a society of different genders, status, occupation, and age have particular roles and types of knowledge. Different cultures, or subcultures, can exist within a larger society; these boundaries are not fixed.

Culture is neither just a set of material objects that characterize a particular group (sometimes referred to as material culture), or just a bunch of abstract ideas and symbols, but also includes the relationship between the two. Some sociological views have suggested that culture is distinct from behavior, but others have insisted on the centrality of cultural practice. In this view, meanings are important and powerful because they organize and regulate social practices. A few critics have gone so far as to argue that “there is no such thing as culture,” by which they mean that “culture” is not an adequate final explanation for actions or behaviors, but instead is something that itself needs to be explained. A less extreme version of this approach is to emphasize cultural mobilization or cultural politics, that is, to ask how the idea or category of “culture” gets deployed, and what gets accomplished by invoking “culture.”

As might be expected given the complexity of the term “culture,” many different approaches can be taken to the relationship between culture and the environment.

Early Cultural Ecology

In its early formulations, cultural ecology, with its focus on humans as part of their surrounding ecosystems, tended to examine small tribes in isolation from the rest of the world. Cultural ecologists explored how their cultures-including traditions, rituals, and religions-were adapted to the environment and functioned to keep them in balance, or equilibrium, with their surroundings. For example, Roy Rappaport argued that the ritual cycles of pig sacrifice and warfare of the Tsembaga Maring of New Guinea functioned to prevent environmental degradation, even though the Maring themselves were not aware of that function. This type of approach was eventually criticized for focusing only on small, rural groups of people; for ignoring the fact that even these groups have been influenced by larger histories and processes of colonialism, state policies, and regional and national markets; and for its assumptions, which have been challenged by new developments in ecology, that ecosystems are always in equilibrium.

Despite these criticisms, this early work contained valuable insights whose influence can be seen in a number of themes in contemporary studies of culture-environment relations. Key among these is the recognition that members of different cultures perceive, experience, know, and manage their external environments in different ways. What looks “degraded” and barren to one group of people might look vibrant and alive to another. For example, researchers have shown that Chinese state officials in Inner Mongolia see shifting sand dunes as “wasteland,” whereas local Mongolian herders value the same sand dunes for environmental, practical, and aesthetic reasons. Han Chinese see crop cultivation on the pastures as “opening up the wasteland,” while Mongolians call the same process “shattering the land.”

A related finding from culture-environment research is that many practices that have looked irrational, backward or destructive to Western observers actually turn out to be quite suitable for the contexts in which they are practiced. One extensively studied example is shifting cultivation or “swidden” agriculture -a practice in which farmers grow crops for several years and then move on to new fields, leaving fields fallow for up to several decades as forest cover and soils reestablish to become suitable for crops again. Until recently, shifting cultivation was looked down on as “primitive” (as reflected in its other name, “slash and burn agriculture”), and blamed for being unsustainable and for destroying forests. However, detailed research has shown that shifting cultivation has had a long, successful, and sustainable history in many places. It also maintains a remarkable degree of agrodiversity. One study found that the managed forests around “swidden” fields on the island of Borneo contain up to 800 edible plants and are home to more than 100 species of edible ground fauna and several hundred species of birds. Although shifting cultivation can lead to soil erosion under some circumstances, modern “scientific” agriculture-with its much simpler biological structure, much smaller number of species, and use of industrially produced fertilizers and pesticides-has in many ways much more environmentally harmful effects.

A related finding is that a great deal of knowledge is embedded in the management of fields as well as surrounding second-growth forests in shifting cultivation. More generally, different cultures have different specialized systems of knowledge about various aspects of the surrounding environment. This is reflected in language. One well-known example is that most English speakers distinguish cold weather precipitation simply as “snow” or “sleet,” whereas avid skiers make finer distinctions between different types of snow. The Inuit of the Artic circle have many more terms that make even finer and more complex distinctions, reflecting how their culture conceptually classifies, perceives, experiences, and knows the world.

Ethnobotany

Ethnobotany is also concerned with the conceptual classification schemes of different cultures, in particular with systems of naming and use of plants for food, clothing, shelter, ritual, and medicine. In many parts of the world, average people can name and know how to use far more species of plants than can the average American, suggesting a different day-to-day relationship with the natural world. The Chacabo Indians of the Amazon, for instance, have 305 uses for the 360 species of vascular plants in the forest surrounding their village. Ethnobotanists have found that specialized healers or shamans among some cultural groups encode extensive, specialized knowledge of the properties of many plants in a language of myth, dream, and magic. More than half of all modern medicines are either derived or modeled on compounds from wild species, and today pharmaceutical companies are actively prospecting for plants that could be used to produce medicines. This has produced a new respect for the extent of the cultural knowledge of groups of people formerly thought of as “primitive,” but it has also created new problems and disputes about intellectual property and adequate compensation.

What happens when culture is analyzed not just as a transparent fact, but also as an idea that can be mobilized for various purposes? In thinking about their own culture’s relationship with the environment, writers in the West have often used other cultures as a foil. This has generally taken one of two forms. First, some have argued that Western culture-or civilization-is superior to others because it is more modern and scientific, and that it has been uniquely able to develop the scientific knowledge and techniques needed to protect the environment. This view, which still persists today, is often at the basis of policies that take control of environmental management out of the hands of local people in the developing world. On the flip side, other writers have blamed Western civilization for an underlying alienation of humans from nature, which is seen as being at the root of environmental ills today.

Indigenous Knowlege

This search for alternatives has also often turned to indigenous peoples, who are sometimes portrayed as ecologically noble. Groups such as the Kayapo of the Amazon are represented as living in a harmonious and nonexploitative relationship with the natural world. Their attitudes toward nature are seen as holistic and organic rather than mechanistic and individualistic. It is important to distinguish between two views about traditional-or native-cultures and the environment. One is the recognition that different cultures have specific beliefs and practices that grow out of particular relationships with the natural world, which are often environmentally benign. The second is a “noble savage” view that members of these cultures are automatically programmed to do only that which is ecologically wise.

This latter, romantic view has a number of problems. First, it is easy to find empirical evidence of environmentally destructive practices caused by groups of people portrayed as ecologically wise. Second, these representations can have the effect of denying that these people have their own unique history. When certain cultures are portrayed as being so “close to nature” that they get collapsed into nature itself, the people of those cultures are denied full humanity. Third, claims about indigenous or traditional ecological knowledge are often anachronistic. For example, Tibetan exiles frequently claim that, guided by their Buddhist beliefs, Tibetans have always been aware of ecological interdependence and the need to safeguard the environment. However, the concepts of “ecology” and “environment” are actually thoroughly modern and rather recent. While sets of cultural practices may have had the effect of what we would today call environmental protection, attributing these to the modern notion of “ecology” is to impose a concept on practices driven by other cultural beliefs and values. Nevertheless, many marginalized groups of people today find it very useful to invoke ideas about the inherent ecological friendliness of their cultural beliefs and practices. In many cases, this helps them to negotiate politically both for respect and for their right to continue living in their traditional territories.

What we call the environment, or nature, can only be known through cultural frameworks, or “cultures of nature.” This is true not just of indigenous peoples living in remote forests, but also of wealthy, urban citizens of industrialized countries such as the United States. For example, the American view of nature is often thought of as “wilderness areas” being untouched by human modification, despite the fact that the movement to set aside wilderness areas only came after the removal of Native Americans to reservations. This ideology can be traced back in part to the way that European colonists saw the land they encountered as “natural” in the sense of being untouched by human influence. They failed to see that the landscapes had actually been thoroughly shaped by Native American cultural practices. These included the annual burning of extensive sections of forest, which made the forest open and park-like, and helped attract and increase the population of game animals including elk, deer, turkey, and quail. The ideology of wilderness obscures not only Native American cultural transformations of the landscape, but also the history of violence through which they were removed. It also helps to produce a binary view of wilderness, land that is “worth saving,” vs. land that is already spoiled by human modification and thus beyond redemption. This has contributed to the American environmental movement’s strong focus on some issues, while ignoring others.

Culture Shapes the Environment

Finally, culture shapes the environment in many ways, even in realms which aren’t immediately connected to “nature.” A good example is American automobile culture. U.S. automobile use has a tremendous environmental impact. Among other things, the burning of gasoline produces pollutants that react in sunlight to form tropospheric ozone and smog, which are harmful to human health. Transportation accounts for roughly one-third of all carbon dioxide emissions, contributing significantly to a rise in global average surface temperatures, which are projected to cause significant sea level rise, increased intensity of severe weather events, disruption of water supplies, spreading of malaria, and the loss of species. Rapid expansion of roads fragments ecosystems and causes loss of habitat, thus contributing to the loss of biodiversity. Despite these well-known environmental effects of driving cars, American driving habits are remarkably resistant to change.

This is due in part to the cultural meanings that Americans associate with cars, none of which have to do with environmental degradation. For one, driving is understood as a source of freedom: the freedom of movement, the pull of the open road, and the expectation of new experiences are all central to the imagination of America in movies, literature, and advertising. These images manage to prevail over other possible meanings of the car, such as the division of home from workplace, lengthy commutes, congestion, and environmental impacts. Cars have also become a way for people to express themselves as individuals and to announce their status, particular lifestyle, and socioeconomic class. In the United States, cars are also associated with rites of passage and coming of age.

Car culture is not limited to the car itself, but also includes the way the system of highways, parking lots, and layout of the suburbs has been historically structured around the automobile. This in turn was shaped by specific economic and political forces, such as various subsidies that made the cost of driving an individual car less than taking public transportation. As soon as American society started to be “locked in,” there were huge returns for producing and selling cars and for their infrastructure, products, and services. This led to a change in the way Americans think about and use space and time, how they socialize, and how and where we live. It makes possible the separation of business and industrial districts, and of retail outlets from city centers.

Culture both our own and others is intricately connected to the environment. Cross-cultural examinations are useful in showing that there is usually more than one meaning, explanation, set of values, and way of managing or relating to the natural world. Using the same analytical tools on ourselves shows that what is familiar is not necessarily universally accepted. Indeed, many of the environmental ideas and practices that we take for granted as natural are actually culturally specific.

Bibliography:

William Cronon, , Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (Norton, 1996);
James Fink, The Automobile Age (MIT Press, 1990);
Toni Huber and Poul Pedersen, “Meterological Knowledge and Environmental Ideas in Traditional and Modern Societies: The Case of Tibet,” Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute (v.3, 1997);
Adam Kuper, Culture: The Anthropologists’ Account (Harvard, 1999);
Helaine Selin, ed., Nature Across Cultures: Views of Nature and the Environment in Non-Western Cultures (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003);
Dee Mack Williams, “The Barbed Walls of China: A Contemporary Grassland Drama,” Journal of Asian Studies (v.55, 1996);
Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (Oxford, 1983);
Alexander Wilson, The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez (Blackwell, 1992).