Catholic University of America
Ecological Anthropology
Anthropology 513

Dr. David Guillet
Marist Rm. 8
Telephone:202 319 5082
E-Mail: GUILLET@CUA.EDU

Course Description and Goals

This course focuses on the relationships between people, culture and the environment. Representations made of these relationships by anthropologists will be examined in terms of their ability to explain stable, expanding, intensifying, and degrading systems. New directions in ecological anthropology incorporating agency, political economy, mental representations and the applications of indigenous ecological knowledge will be discussed.

Required Texts:

Dan Bates and Susan Lees, eds. Case studies in human ecology. Plenum

Robert M. Netting, Cultural Ecology

Guillet, David W. Covering Ground: Communal Water Management and the State.

University of Michigan Press 1992

Worster, Donald, Rivers of Empire. Oxford University Press

Kempton, Willett, James S. Boster and Jennifer A. Hartley 1995 Environmental values in American culture. Cambridge MA: MIT Press

Procedure and Evaluation:

Course evaluation will be based on attendance and class participation (20%), a final examination (50% undergraduates; 30% graduates). In addition, two short written papers on assigned books prepared for delivery in class (30% undergraduates; 20% graduates). Graduate students will prepare a research paper on a topic decided on in agreement with the instructor (30%).

Tentative Class Schedule

Structure and Agency in Ecological Anthropology

Steady-State, Sustainability

Expansion, Intensification

Smallholder Agriculture

Discussion of Covering Ground

Measuring Landuse: Geographic Information Systems

Political Ecology: Local Level

Political Ecology: Region, State, World-System

Discussion of Rivers of Empire

Degradation

Mental and Cultural Models of the Environment

Discussion of Environmental Values in American Culture

Applied ecological anthropology

Schedule of Class Meetings and Required Reading

Structure and Agency in Ecological Anthropology

Bates, Daniel G. and Susan H. Lees, Introduction. In: D.G. Bates and S. H. Lees eds. 1996 Case studies in human ecology. Plenum Press pp. 1-12

Netting, Robert M. 1986 Cultural Ecology

Guillet, David 1983 Toward a cultural ecology of mountains: The central Andes and the Himalayas compared. Current Anthropology 24:5:561-574

Highly Recommended:

Orlove, Benjamin S. 1980 Ecological Anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 9:235-273

Steady-State, Sustainability

Hart, T.B. and J. A. Hart, The ecological basis of hunter-gatherer subsistence in African rain forests: The Mbuti of Eastern Zaire. In: D.G. Bates and S. H. Lees eds. 1996 Case studies in human ecology. Plenum Press pp. 55-83

Abruzzi, William S., Ecology and Mormon settlement in Northeastern Arizona. In: D.G. Bates and S. H. Lees eds. 1996 Case studies in human ecology. Plenum Press pp 365-391

Dazhong, Wen and David Pimentel, Seventeenth-century organic agriculture in China. In: D.G. Bates and S. H. Lees eds. 1996 Case studies in human ecology. Plenum Press pp 311-325

Expansion and Intensification

W. Thomas Conelly, Agricultural intensification in a Philippine frontier community: Impact on labor efficiency and farm diversity. In: D.G. Bates and S. H. Lees eds. 1996 Case studies in human ecology. Plenum Press pp 289-310

Bishop, Naomi H. From Zomo to Yak: Change in a Sherpa village. In: D.G. Bates and S. H. Lees eds. 1996 Case studies in human ecology. Plenum Press pp 195-217

Johnson, Patricia Lyons, Changing household composition, labor patterns, and fertility in a highland New Guinea population. . In: D.G. Bates and S. H. Lees eds. 1996 Case studies in human ecology. Plenum Press pp 237-250

Smallholder Agriculture

Robert McC. Netting, M. Priscilla Stone, and Glen Davis Stone, Kofyar cash-cropping: Choice and change in indigenous agricultural development. In: D.G. Bates and S. H. Lees eds. 1996 Case studies in human ecology. Plenum Press pp 327-348

Highly Recommended:

Robert McC. Netting, 1993 Smallholders, householders. Stanford University Press

Geographic Information Systems

Guyer, Jane I. and Eric F. Lambin 1993 Land use in an urban hinterland: Ethnography and remote sensing in the study of African intensification. American Anthropologist 95d:4:839-859

Conant, F.P. 1990 and beyond: Satellite remote sensing and ecological anthropology. In: Ecosystem Approach in Anthropology

Political Ecology: Local Level

Robert McC. Netting, What alpine peasants have in common: Observations on communal tenure in a Swiss village. In: D.G. Bates and S. H. Lees eds. 1996 Case studies in human ecology. Plenum Press pp 219-232

Leviel, Dominique P., and Benjamin Orlove 1990 Local control of aquatic resources. American Anthropologist 92:2:362-382

Political Ecology: Region, State, World-System

Bunker, Stephen G. 1984 Modes of extraction, unequal exchange, and the progressive underdevelopment of an extreme periphery: The Brazilian Amazon 1600-1980. American Journal of Sociology 89:5:1017-64

David Guillet, Water Demand Management and Farmer Managed Irrigation Systems in the Colca Valley of Southwestern Peru. To appear in: W. Loker, ed. Globalization and the rural poor in Latin America: Crisis and response in campesino communities.

Lennihan, Louise D., Time, space, and transnational flows: Critical historical conjunctures and explaining change in northern Nigerian agriculture. In: D.G. Bates and S. H. Lees eds. 1996 Case studies in human ecology. Plenum Press pp 349-364

Degradation

McGovern, Thomas et. al. Northern islands, human error, and environmental degradation. In: D.G. Bates and S. H. Lees eds. 1996 Case studies in human ecology. Plenum Press pp 103-152

Daniel C. Clay and Laurence A. Lewis, Land use, soil loss, and sustainable agriculture in Rwanda. In: D.G. Bates and S. H. Lees eds. 1996 Case studies in human ecology. Plenum Press pp 271-287

Mental and Cultural Models of the Environment

Behrens, Clifford A. 1989 The scientific basis for Shipibo soil classification and land use: Changes in soil-plant associations with cash cropping. American Anthropologist 91:1:83- 100

Guillet, David, Louanna Furbee, Jon Sandor, Robert Benfer 1993 On a Methodology for Combining Cognitive and Behavioral Research: The Lari Soils Project. In: Indigenous Knowledge Systems: The Cultural Dimensions of Development, D. Brokensha, M. Warren, and J. Slikkerveer, eds. London: Kegan Paul International. pp. 71-81

 Applied ecological anthropology

Brush, Steven B. 1993 Indigenous knowledge of biological resources and intellectual property rights: The role of Anthropology. American Anthropologist 95:653-671

Parker, Eugene 1992 Forest islands and Kayapo resource management in Amazonia: A reappraisal of the Apete. American Anthropologist 94:406-28 (reply by Posey on pp. 441- 446)

Posey, D.A. et. al. 1984 Ethnoecology as applied anthropology in Amazonian development. Human Organization 43:2:95-107

Home Page                                   E-Mail David Guillet