Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute · 1998 · 259 citations · 0 references
Social SciencesAnthropologyEnvironmental Social ScienceCultural TheoryEnvironmental AnthropologySustainability ScienceEnvironmental SustainabilityEnvironmental WorldviewsHuman-environment RelationsHuman-environment RelationshipsEnvironmental Meaning-making
In recent years, social scientists have increasingly focused on environmental issues, recognizing their global significance and the growing influence of cultural concepts in public sustainability debates. The book aims to demonstrate how cultural insights illuminate environmental perceptions locally and globally, highlighting anthropology’s unique contribution to the environmental debate. It adopts an anthropological approach to examine the relationship between human culture and ecology, contrasting this cultural perspective with other established social science methods. The book reveals that social and cultural anthropology offers distinct insights into contemporary environmentalism, making it especially valuable for students and researchers in social science and environmental studies.
The last decade has seen a dramatic increase in the attention paid by social scientists to environmental issues, and a gradual acknowledgement, in the wider community, of the role of social science in the public debate on sustainability. At the same time, the concept of `culture', once the property of anthropologists has gained wide currency among social scientist. These trends have taken place against a growing perception, among specialist and public, of the global nature of contemporary issues. This book shows how an understanding of culture can throw light on the way environmental issues are perceived and interpreted, both by local communities and within the contemporary global arena. Taking an anthropological approach the book examines the relationship between human culture and human ecology, and considers how a cultural approach to the study of environmental issues differs from other established approaches in social science. This book adds significantly to our understanding of environmentalism as a contemporary phenomenon, by demonstrating the distinctive contribution of social and cultural anthropology to the environmental debate. It will be of particular interest to students and researchers in the fields of social science and the environment.