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has developed an approach to human-environmental
relations, inspired by, for example, phenomenology, eco- Culture
logical psychology, and Gregory Bateson, that he calls
relational-ecological-developmental. Ingold rejects the he concept of culture occupies an important place
universality of the distinction between nature and culture Tboth in academia and everyday usage. Since culture
by showing that such categories are generally alien to means so many things at once, it is hard to define in sim-
hunter-gatherers. He also rejects the view that knowledge ple terms. In fact, one 1960s text noted that there were
of the environment is either a representation or a con- at least 150 definitions of the term in use.The term has
struction of reality, in favor of Bateson’s view that knowl- for long been used in a variety of contexts to describe the
edge is a relation that shapes both the knower and the activities, beliefs, institutions, and artifacts produced out
known, both subject and object. Ingold challenges all of the interactions among human beings. Culture under-
notions of cultural or biological inheritance, arguing stood in terms of meaningful actions can be located
instead that humans are constituted (as indissolubly per- among both human and nonhuman species. Among
sons and organisms) through practical enskilment and humans, culture can be located at many levels of human
engagement in specific environments.As for Bateson and interaction, from the smallest of human groups (such as
Rappaport, the thrust of this effort is to transcend the a nuclear family) to successively larger units of human
conventional dualism in Western thought that separates organization (communities, tribes, ethnicities, societies,
material and ideational aspects of human-environmental nations, and civilizations). It is culture that imparts a
relations. sense of identity to human beings.
Perhaps it is the discipline of modern anthropology
Alf Hornborg
that has been expressly concerned with defining the
See also Anthropology term. Over the past hundred years or so anthropologists
have debated the relevance of this term and generated
a variety of definitions on both sides of the Atlantic.
Further Reading
Some, like David Schneider, Claude Levi-Strauss, and
Bateson, G. (1973). Steps to an ecology of mind. Frogmore, UK: Paladin.
Crumley, C. (Ed.). (2001). New directions in anthropology and environ- A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, despite differences, tended to
ment. Walnut Creek: AltaMira. view culture in terms of underlying structures whose
Descola, P., & Pálsson, G. (Eds.). (1996). Nature and society: Anthropo- order could be uncovered. Others like Ruth Benedict and
logical perspectives. London: Routledge.
Ellen, R. (1982). Environment, subsistence, and system: The ecology of Margaret Mead associated culture with personality types.
small-scale social formations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University After World War II, greater attention began to be focused
Press.
Harris, M. (1979). Cultural materialism:The struggle for a science of cul- on the changing and disorderly aspects of culture that
ture. New York: Vintage. had for long been ignored by most anthropologists.
Ingold,T. (2000). The perception of the environment: Essays in livelihood, Scholars like Clifford Geertz and the Comaroffs began to
dwelling, and skill. London: Routledge.
McGee, R. J., & Warms, R. L. (Eds.). (1996). Anthropological theory: An study culture in terms of the meanings and symbolic
introductory history. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. actions of human beings over time.
Rappaport, R. A. (1968). Pigs for the ancestors: Ritual in the ecology of
a New Guinea people. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Today, there is a general consensus that cultures are
Sahlins, M. D., & Service, E. R. (Eds.). (1960). Evolution and culture. Ann profoundly shaped by history, that is, they are subject to
Arbor: University of Michigan Press. constant change over time. Cultures are shaped by envi-
Steward, J. (1977). Evolution and ecology: Essays on social transformation
by Julian H. Steward. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. ronmental forces, political struggles, and social inequal-
Vayda, A. P. (Ed.). (1969). Environment and cultural behavior: Ecological ities. Cultural features might be widely shared among
studies in cultural anthropology. New York: Natural History Press.
White, L. A. (1959). The evolution of culture: The development of civi- human populations. At the same time, they may also ex-
lization to the fall of Rome. New York: McGraw-Hill. hibit human meanings and actions that are contradictory,