ANTH10001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Materialism, Commodification, Determinism
28 Jul 2018
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Document Summary
The anthropological study of the relationship bet humans and their natural environments. Theories in human ecology lie on a continuum between two extremes: Environmental determinism: culture is determined by the environment. Cultural determinism: no thing has an intrinsic value or meaning beyond the values and meanings inscribed upon it by culture. e. g. ) Sometimes environment prevails, as seen in heierarchical lexical semantic taxonomies" based on the morphological similarities and differences between objects. For example, the distinction made between several types of trees (tree - oal/pine/ash - Environments and the needs of ecological adaption limit people"s activities and cultures to within a wide range of possible constraints. (a quasi-scientific theory in search of causes) Ecological factors ramify through societies from social structure to culture and shape the nature of features of social life, such as ritual, which are only secondarily related to ecology. These processes are often not perceptible to human consciousness.
