While looking at Stanford University’s Anthropology Department’s website I learned about numerous subfields of anthropology. I was introduced to the subfield of biological anthropology called environmental anthropology. According to the Stanford University Environmental Anthropology site, “Environment and Ecology track focuses on the dynamic relationship between the human organism and its natural and social environment.” They continued to say how they often study how humans interacted with their resources based on their environment. The university’s site continued later stating that this is a very interdisciplinary subfield and a combination of the biological anthropology along with “dynamics, including behavioral ecology, political ecology, evolutionary ecology, zooarchaeology and ethnoarchaeology, the human dimensions of global change, demography, biological anthropology, and human population ecology.” This not only contributes to the broader themes of anthropology but helps other related fields.
This subfield greatly contributes to anthropology because it studies and uncovers how environments create a change. The changes may be physical, cultural, or even changes to the environment. The site mentioned how the main points of emphasis are “processes of evolutionary change, both biological and cultural, create variability and plasticity in human behavior, bodies, culture and social systems and on the ways that such variability interacts dynamically with biotic and social environments at various spatial scales.”
https://anthropology.stanford.edu/undergraduate-program/degree-emphases/environmental-anthropology
While looking into this subfield more I came to the University of California- Davis’ Environmental Anthropology homepage. UC Davis’ said this subfield of anthropology is very important because it can be used to examine “sociocultural dynamics producing environmental problems and environmentalisms.” The University of California-Davis site gave many examples of modern issues being studied through active environmental anthropology research. UC Davis said that not only is environmental anthropology a subfield of anthropology, but it is closely related to fields “environmental humanities, science and technology studies, and cultural geography.” After reading so much on the UC Davis site, I began to see how this subfield can greatly contribute to many areas. Environmental anthropology allows us to see how people interact with their environment and how this creates change over time. Anthropology deals with the evolution of humans both genetically and culturally. The interaction we have on our environment can create massive alterations in the way we act and the way we are. This is important because through this process researchers can find root causes, contributing factors, and real effects of real issues.
UC Davis said that real and current motivators for research are climate and atmospheric changes, along with fracking, crude oil, and mining. I found this all very interesting because I am planning to study environmental urban planning and it is interesting to see how in almost every field of science can find some way to contribute to environmentalism. In this field, they are studying why we became reliant and how our actions have changed, why they have, and their effects. Knowing these types of answers through environmental anthropology research can better equip the current population for an educated changes in both human and environmental interactions and human to human interactions.
https://anthropology.ucdavis.edu/research/sociocultural-wing-research/environmental-anthropology
I think this subfield is really interesting! I have recently gotten involved with sustainability efforts and am always fascinated when I find professions working on the environment! The fact that environmental anthropology uses many disciplines to understand how humans interact with their environment in order to understand the present is how I think anthropology and history should be used. While I was studying paleoanthropology I also saw that there were a lot of other disciplines mixed in, like cultural and linguistic anthropology. I think this just points out how connected everything is and how you need everything to see a bigger picture of human and environmental life. Although I am a history major, I didn’t look into anthropology until I began this class, and I think it can teach everyone something about their interests, like environmentalism and sustainability.
Hello!
Environmental Anthropology sounds very interesting! I’m a Philosophy minor, and last year took a course dedicated to exploring German Philosophical Anthropology, and all of the thinkers used an idea similar to the one quoted by you, that there is, in humans, a “variability and plasticity in human behavior, bodies, culture and social systems and on the ways that such variability interacts dynamically with biotic and social environments at various spatial scales.” For these thinkers, it was called world-openness, which was the quality of being extricated from a dependence on a certain environment, like other animals, like a Panda that can only eat two foods that grow in a small range of space. We are other than animals, because of this plasticity in us, our ability to survive in any environment given that our ingenuity can sustain us. I wonder to what degree the concepts employed by environmental anthropology are informed by the writings of these thinkers.
Hi!
This is a very interesting topic as climate change is something that is very prevalent in the world right now. But not only is this interesting, I think it is important to sustainability efforts that can be made in the future. I also agree with you that knowing the answers to why we got to where we are right now in the environment through environmental anthropology is key to being able to change what happens in the future. I think it is important that they are keeping track of what the big companies are doing since they leave such a big environmental footprint, and are apart of the issue at hand. Anthropology overall is such a broad field, that it is cool to see how many ways environmental science can be used to understand and solve big issues at hand
Hi Zac,
Great post! Environment anthropology is another important contribution that needs to be talked about especially today. Sadly, there are people that do not believe that our environment is at risk. Which is mind-boggling.. Like how do you not believe that this is not a real issue when there are actual proven facts out there to support these findings?
Your post really shows why we need their help to fix our planet. I took an ISP course and it really opened my eyes on how we as human have created these environmental problems. When you mentioned franking I just literally could not stop thinking about this is literally creating an increase in hurricanes and earthquakes. Just yesterday there were two earthquakes in California! Things will only get worse if we do not listen to these people.