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. 
 

  • About the Presenters
    Image
    A headshot of Eduardo Brondizio

    Eduardo Brondizio

    Dr. Eduardo S. Brondizio is Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington, co-director of the Center for the Analysis of Social-Ecological Landscapes (CASEL), and faculty member of the Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. Eduardo’s research combines field-based longitudinal studies of the transformation of rural and urban areas and populations in the Amazon with research on global change and sustainability. Eduardo has published extensively on human–environment interactions, small farmers’ livelihood and social identity, household socio-demography and mobility...

    Image
    A headshot of Eduardo Brondizio

    Eduardo Brondizio

    Dr. Eduardo S. Brondizio is Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington, co-director of the Center for the Analysis of Social-Ecological Landscapes (CASEL), and faculty member of the Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. Eduardo’s research combines field-based longitudinal studies of the transformation of rural and urban areas and populations in the Amazon with research on global change and sustainability. Eduardo has published extensively on human–environment interactions, small farmers’ livelihood and social identity, household socio-demography and mobility, landscape and land use change, agroforestry and commodity chains, and more broadly on integrating geospatial and social–ecological methods, development and poverty, ecosystem services, and institutional analysis and governance. His current research includes analysis of social–environmental vulnerabilities of the Amazon delta and application of complexity systems approaches to analyze the co-evolution of rural, urban, conservation and indigenous areas in the Amazon. Eduardo has been closely engaged with international global changed research programs and has contributed to several past and on-going global assessments. Eduardo is a member of the Science Committee of Future Earth and co-Editor-in-Chief of Current Opinions in Environmental Sustainability.

  • Supporting Materials
    Presentation slides: 
     
     
    Reading list:
    • Brondizio, E. S., O’Brien, K., Bai, X., Biermann, F., Steffen, W., Berkhout, F., ... & Chen, C.T.A. (2016). Re-conceptualizing the Anthropocene: A call for collaboration. Global Environmental Change, 39, 318–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.02.006 
      • This article is mentioned near the end of this talk. It identifies entrenched epistemological differences between the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities and opportunities presented by the Anthropocene concept to overcome these barriers to cross-disciplinary collaboration. It is open access.
Presenters
Eduardo Brondizio, Indiana University Bloomington
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