At various times during this teaching semester, I have had a hard time convincing my Introduction to Cultural Anthropology students that there is a difference between an environmental anthropologist and an environmentalist. While people have no difficulty seeing that a linguistic anthropologist is an anthropologist with an interest in the uses of language, the notion that an environmental anthropologist is one with an interest in ‘cultural ideas about the environment’ is, apparently, unclear.
As an anthropologist with an interest in environmental anthropology, I am broadly concerned with the ideas about the environment members of a particular group or culture hold. I am also interested in understanding how best to use anthropology’s methods to identify the connections between cultures and their environments; see, for example, Townsend, Environmental Anthropology (2000). Much of my work has surrounded aboriginal conceptions of their physical environment, local animals, and stories about geographical places. The linguistic anthropologist in me is curious about the ways in which native people ‘talk’ about their world in everyday conversations and speech. My own feelings about such things are largely irrelevant.
The group or culture in question is largely irrelevant to me too. I am just as interested, in fact, in how loggers (or commercial fishers) see the world around them. I would be very interested in conducting ethnographic research in a logging camp with an eye towards the stories loggers tell about their time in the woods, their family and life histories, topics of everyday talk, and their ideas about conservation or exploitation of forest resources.
In contrast, I see an environmentalist as someone who advocates on behalf of an environment, a place, or a species within an environment; see the Wikipedia article, example. In general, I don’t consider myself an environmentalist, although through the course of some consulting work, I have assisted native communities with the research that allows them to pursue agendas which might be considered environmentalist in many circles.
Can anyone help me differentiate environmental anthropologist from environmentalist? Are any of my students willing to weight in?
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8 Comments
Sounds like you summed it up pretty well: an environmentalist is an advocate whereas an anthropologist (doing anthropology) shouldn’t, in theory, be advocating anything other than the objective “reporting” of facts (if such a thing is possible). Additionally, an environmentalist seems to put the environment in the context of human society while an environmental anthropologist puts human society in the context of the environment.
Thanks, Will, for being much more succinct than I was!
Just had a thought: would the last statement of my previous comment be the other way around? Perhaps it’s a matter of opinion?
It might go either way … my interest, in your terms, is in culture first and the environment second (or better as a topic of interest within a broader study of culture).
Not a student but an interested observer: would you say that the two necessarily need to be mutually exclusive? Does not the study of how a cultural group relates to its physical landscape lead to one being more sensitive to the preservation of said environment?
Nancy … I agree whole-heartedly with you … and increased sensitivity to the environment is probably a natural (no pun intended) off-shoot of studying the environment in much the same way anthropologists develop emphathy for the people they study. I’m not certain, however, that the two have to be equated. I think you could be an anthropologist of the environment without being an environmentalist. (And you certainly can be an environmentalist without being an anthropologist.) Thanks for your thoughts.
Thanks for the response Tad. I agree as well that they should not be conflated. I just wanted to add that little bit about “just because they are not the same does not mean that they cannot coexist within the same individual” in the same way that one can be both an anthropologist and an activist and that one’s anthropological may help inform one’s activism.
Cheers.
I think we agree, Nancy. What this discussion has reminded me or demonstrated to me is that like ‘culture’ for the cultural anthropologist, it is hard for the environmental anthropologist not to become passionate about studying the environment.
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