Cultural Ecology
Anthropologist Julian Steward (1902-1972) coined the term, cultural ecology envisaging iy as a methodology for understanding how humans adapt to such a wide variety of environments. In his Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution (1955), cultural ecology represents the "ways in which culture change is induced by adaptation to the environment." A key point is that any particular human adaptation is in part historically inherited and involves the technologies, practices, and knowledge that allow people to live in an environment. This means that while the environment influences the character of human adaptation, it does not determine it. In this way, Steward separated the vagaries of the environment from the inner workings of a culture that occupied a given environment. Viewed over the long term, this means that environment and culture are on more or less separate evolutionary tracks and that the ability of one to influence the other is dependent on how each is structured. It is this assertion that the physical and biological environment affects culture. Cultural ecology recognizes that ecological locale plays a significant role in shaping the cultures of a region.
Cultural ecology embraces natural economy and evolutionary humanism and is a logical framework for building a personal body of knowledge on the theme of people, ecology and place.
The pedagogy of cultural ecology is currently at the centre of debate about the kind of holistic education necessary to adapt to global warming.
Mark Q. Sutton and E. N. Anderson