Foundations of Environmental Anthropology

In this lecture on the foundations of environmental anthropology, Dr. Eduardo Brondizio first highlights the modern era in world history as one great global acceleration in which the use of natural resources and economic development have increased exponentially. He traces the history of ideas used to study the relationship between human culture and environmental constraints starting with cultural ecology and moving through ecological anthropology, political ecology, ethnobiology, and historic and symbolic ecologies. He notes that these and other related theories and approaches all deal with complexity and connectivity and that the temporal and spatial scope of current change requires new frameworks for understanding. He shows that socio-environmental synthesis approaches draw on these distinct traditions in anthropology, but he perceives a lack of participation by anthropologists in shaping current socio-environmental synthesis frameworks. Recent trends within anthropology towards synthesizing these disparate traditions may also be an opportunity for anthropologists to contribute to developing socio-environmental synthesis approaches. He ends with questions about the Anthropocene and how anthropology and related disciplines are dealing with the epistemological and moral tensions inherent in current challenges facing humans and the environment. 

Authors named during the presentation: Will Steffen, Julian Steward, Rostow, Sidney Mintz, Eric Wolf, H.T; Odum, Clifford Geertz, Andrew Vayda, Roy Rappaport, Ben Orlove, Harold Conklin, Mary Strathern, James Acheson, Marvin Harris, Anthony Giddens, Arjun Appadurai

This video is a recording of a presentation given as part of SESYNC’s Socio-Environmental Immersion program.