Roy A. Rappaport Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Roy A. Rappaport was one of the most influential ecological anthropologists of the 20th century. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1966, studying under other major scholars of ecological anthropology, such as Marvin Harris, Harold Conklin, and Andrew Vayda. It was Gregory Bateson, however, who exerted the strongest influence over Rappaport’s work. Bateson introduced Rappaport to systems theory and encouraged him to think about cultural practices as optimizing human adaptation and maintaining ecological balance. Rappaport’s work played an important role in the development of theories regarding how people relate to, adapt, and manage their environments. More specifically, he was devoted to understanding why ritual should order ecosystems and human life.

Rappaport made a significant theoretical shift from the cultural ecology model, the dominant framework of environmental anthropology in the early 20th century. Instead of focusing on culture as the unit of analysis, as Julian Steward, the founder of cultural ecology did, Rappaport viewed ecological populations as the primary unit of analysis. In Rappaport’s system-centered paradigm he saw the part (human populations) as subject to the regulatory forces of the whole (the ecosystem). In this system, culture is understandable only in terms of its material effects and is seen as a means for human populations to adapt to the environment. In using an ecosystem approach in anthropology, Rappaport and others borrowed concepts from the ecological sciences that promoted a more holistic approach to understanding human populations and their adaptations to specific environments.

Rappaport wrote three influential books but is best known for his Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People (1968), a case study of human ecology among the Tsembaga Maring people of highland New Guinea. In Pigs for the Ancestors Rappaport develops an elaborate model of how ritual cycles among the Maring operate to regulate warfare, pig slaughter, and swidden gardens, thus regulating the land use system and the size of human and animal populations. In his analysis of Maring ecological and ritual behaviors, Rappaport focuses on humans as a species that participates in ecosystems in ways that are fundamentally similar to how other animals participate. Pigs for the Ancestors has become a classic case study in environmental anthropology, exploring the role of culture in resource management and the application of systems theory to an anthropological population.

While Pigs for the Ancestors is one of the most widely read books in ecological anthropology, Rappaport has also been heavily critiqued for his highly functionalist approach. Most introductions to human ecology include reading and evaluating Pigs for the Ancestors in light of more recent theories in ecological anthropology. Critics have argued that by rejecting culture as a unit of analysis Rappaport’s systems approach was too reductive, and that his environmental determinism resulted in overlooking the importance of events and individuals. More recently, scholars of ecological anthropology have moved far beyond the boundaries of Rappaport’s self-contained human ecosystem in their exploration of human-environmental interactions. Recent research in ecological anthropology places far more emphasis on local-global articulations, the relationships between villages and the state, and the importance of external power relations in shaping local resource use decisions.

Rappaport was deeply concerned with the social policy implications of his work. In an approach he called “engaged” anthropology, Rappaport advocated bringing anthropological findings to bear on important social issues. Rappaport served as consultant for the state of Nevada on the question of storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain and was a member of the National Academy of Science Task Force addressing the social and cultural impacts of off-shore oil drilling in Alaska. To Rappaport the ethnographic tools of an anthropologist are uniquely suited to solving the world’s problems. It was his vision that anthropology should be a politically engaged practice with a mission for human survival.

Bibliography:

Aletta Biersack, “Introduction: From the ‘New Ecology’ to the New Ecologies,” American Anthropologist (v.101/1, 1999);
Conrad Kottak, “The New Ecological Anthropology,” American Anthropologist (v.101/1, 1999);
Ellen Messer and Michael Lambek, , Ecology and the Sacred: Engaging the Anthropology of Roy A. Rappaport (University of Michigan Press, 2001);
Roy A. Rappaport, Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People (Yale University, 1968).