ANT370H1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Environmental Policy, Marvin Harris, Sweet Potato
Document Summary
February 4, 2014: cultural ecology (or ecological anthropology) was one branch (or intellectual lineage) of north american anthropology while the brits were doing structural functionalism. Leslie white: (1930s, cultural ecology: energy and the evolution of culture, three subsystems: technological, sociological, ideological. Ideological realm has impact on technological realm; has its own determinative force in society because ideas lead to technological innovations. Reductionist; reducing the domain of the social and ideological (thought, philosophy, art, culture, etc. ) to the technological realm. Very much materialist; claims that everything stems from technological realm. Doesn"t allow for the possibility that the sociological and ideological realms might operate independently of the technological realm; could be independent variables in their own right as opposed to merely dependent variables on the technological realm. Part of why he was targeted so much as this was during the 1950s anti-communist/socialist era of the united states. Similar cultural patterns, subsistence strategies, ideologies, etc.
