environmental determinism essay

Environmental Determinism (Examples, Theory, Pros & Cons)

Kamalpreet Gill Singh (PhD)

This article was co-authored by Kamalpreet Gill Singh, PhD. Dr. Gill has a PhD in Sociology and has published academic articles in reputed international peer-reviewed journals. He holds a Master’s degree in Politics and International Relations and a Bachelor’s in Computer Science.

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Environmental determinism is the idea that the physical environment shapes the destinies of humans and societies. The theory has its roots in antiquity and has been revived and rejected periodically throughout history.

Definitions of environmental determinism usually take one of the following forms:

• The belief that the physical environment is a significant factor in shaping human societies (aka it’s an extreme version of the ecological perspective in social sciences).
• The idea that the physical environment can determine the development of civilizations.
• The claim that climate and geography are the main drivers of history.
• The argument that some cultures are more virtuous than others because they live in a harsher climate

Although popular throughout history, the theory of environmental determinism fell out of favor in the 20th century, as it was increasingly seen as a racist and colonialist way of looking at the world. Nevertheless, it’s still studied in courses such as AP Human Geography.

However, it has experienced a revival in recent years, with some scholars arguing that the physical environment is still a significant factor in shaping human societies. Whether or not this is true remains a matter of debate.

Environmental Determinism Theory – Explained

In the late 20th century, environmental determinism theory experienced a revival, primarily through the works of Jared Diamond and dependency theorists.

Jared Diamond is an American scientist and author who has argued that the physical environment has a significant impact on the development of human societies. He has used this theory to explain why some cultures are more advanced than others, and why some societies are more prone to collapse than others.

Dependency theorists are scholars who argue that the economic development of a country is determined by its relationship to the rest of the world.

They claim that countries which are economically dependent on others will always be less developed than those which are not, and that this is due to the unequal distribution of resources around the globe.

Environmental Determinism Examples

1. the nile gave birth to the egyptian empire.

One of the earliest proponents of environmental determinism was the Greek historian Herodotus, who argued that the physical environment determined the development of civilizations.

For example, he claimed that the Egyptians developed a complex civilization because they lived in a fertile river valley, while the Persians were warlike because they lived in a harsh, desert climate.

Herodotus’ ideas were later taken up by the Roman historian Tacitus, who argued that the Germans were virtuous people because they lived in a cold climate. This theory was used to explain the decline of the Roman Empire, as it was thought that the warmer climate of Italy made its citizens lazy and decadent.

2. llamas Helped Grow the Inca Empire

The Inca Empire was one of the largest empires in the history of the Americas, extending over much of present-day Peru, Bolivia, Columbia, and Argentina.

Between the 13th and the 16th centuries CE, the Incas built a flourishing civilization most noted today for its architectural marvels such as Machu Pichu.

The German geographer Carl Troll (1899 – 1975) argued that the extent and reach of the Inca empire was determined, and eventually limited, by the availability of the Llama – the only pack animal available to the Incas.

Llamas were domesticated in the highlands of Peru between 4000 and 3000 BCE. They allowed the Inca to travel across the empire, carrying goods and messages.

To back his argument, Troll pointed out that the greatest extent of the Inca empire coincided with the geographical range that had the greatest density of Llamas and Alpacas (Gade, 1996).

3. Tsetse Fly and Underdevelopment in Africa

The tsetse fly is a species of blood-sucking fly that is found in equatorial Africa. The fly transmits a disease called sleeping sickness, or African Trypanosomiasis, which can be fatal to humans and cattle. 

Dr. Marcella Alsan of the Harvard Kennedy School has proposed that the prevalence of the tsetse fly in Sub-Saharan Africa (the area to the south of the Sahara desert) is a major reason for its underdevelopment. As of 2015, the disease continues to affect more than 11,000 people and causes over 3400 human deaths annually. 

This figure is a significant improvement from the high human death toll it caused till as late as 1990, when it accounted for more than 34,000 human lives. Its impact on cattle is even more severe, with an estimated loss from cattle productivity amounting to over USD 1 Billion each year. (Ilemobade, 2009)

The result of this environment has been that until the advent of modern medicine, societies in sub-Saharan Africa were forced to be confined to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, thus preventing the formation of large centralized states. (Alsan, 2015) In the long run this resulted in underdevelopment and poverty in Africa.

4. The Equatorial paradox

The equatorial paradox is the observation that countries near the equator are often poorer than countries at higher latitudes. The reason for this, it is argued, is that the physical environment near the equator is less conducive to economic development.  

As an example, its proponents point to the fact that the poorest countries in the world are all strung out all along the equator, while the richest countries, such as Scandinavia, Canada etc. are located the farthest from the poles. 

The equatorial paradox is a subset of environmental determinism and is sometimes also referred to as climatic determinism, as it focuses only on one aspect of the human environment – its climate. 

Among its most articulate proponents was the American geographer Ellsworth Huntignton. The theory has been advocated in the 20th century by David Landes in his popular book The Wealth and Poverty of Nations , and in the 21st century by Philip M. Parker.

See More: Paradox Examples

5. Native Americans and the Bison

The North American Bison was a highly valued resource among the indigenous populations of North America before European colonization. The Bison provided the Native Americans with meat, hide for making their homes known as Teepees, wool for their blankets, skin for making their drums, and much more (Driver, 1969).

Due to its importance to their lives, Native Ameicans considered the Bison sacred and invested considerable effort in ensuring that Bison populations thrived on the American continent. In the words of John Fire Lame Deer, an elder of the Lakota tribe:

“…the bison gave us everything we needed. Without it, we were nothing.” (Lame Deer & Erdoes, 1994) 

Early European settlers realized that indigenous populations thrived because of the Bison. Thus in order to limit their expansion and seize more of the indigenous territory, it was necessary to eradicate the Bison. 

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Bison in America & Canada numbered well over a few hundred millions. Throughout the 19th century, governments in America and Canada followed a population of targeted extermination of the Bison in an attempt to limit the expansion of indigenous Native American tribes (Robins, 1999). The campaign yielded the desired results – by 1880, only 1081 Bison remained in North America. 

With the near extermination of the Bison, populations of indigenous Americans began to dwindle as well. The Bison today remains an endangered species in the US and Canada, while indigenous Americans have been confined to scattered reservations. 

The destruction of their natural environment, and its most important resource, the wild Bison, led to a disintegration of native American society and culture.

6. Pygmies and Short Stature

Pygimes are an ethnic group native to the Congo basin in Africa who are noted for their short stature. Pygmy men on average are no taller than 155 cm or 4 feet 11 inches.

It was earlier believed that the short stature of Pygmies is due to malnutrition. However, latest research on Pygmy genetics suggests that the short stature of Pygmies may be a result of the environment they live in. 

The Congo Basin in Africa where the Pygmy dwell includes some of the densest tropical rainforests on earth. High rainfall, intense heat, and oppressive humidity make the Congo basin a harsh place to survive in. The moist climate also acts as a fertile breeding ground for pathogens. Pygmies, being the earliest inhabitants of the basin are believed to have genetically adapted to survive in this climate. 

Scientists believe that the genes that enabled the Pygmies to survive the onslaught of tropical pathogens found in their hunter-gatherer diets may also be the cause of their short stature. Additionally, the dense tropical rainforests keep out much of the sun and its UV rays, thus resulting in Vitamin D deficiencies in the population, and in turn, smaller bone development (Stix, 2012).

7. Lactose Intolerance

Lactose intolerance is the inability of certain individuals to completely digest and absorb lactose – a sugar present in milk and milk products.

Symptoms of lactose intolerance may include stomach cramps, flatulence, and vomiting. The primary cause of lactose intolerance is the absence of an enzyme called lactase in the bodies of lactose intolerant individuals. This enzyme is responsible for breaking down the lactose present in dairy products into glucose and galactose.

Researchers have discovered the primary reason for lactose intolerance is genetic and historic. Or in other words, it is the result of the environment in which specific populations evolved through history, thus acquiring genetic traits that render them able or unable to digest lactose.

East Asians for instance, are often highly lactose intolerant. North and West Europeans on the other hand display the lowest occurrences of lactose intolerances. (Storhaug, et al., 2017)

The reason behind this, it is argued,  is that cattle were domesticated early in Europe, and milk and milk products came to form an important part of the west European diet as early as the neolithic period. 

Tens of thousands of years of living in an environment in which dairy was an important part of their diets predisposed west Europeans to have greater lactose tolerance as compared to other populations where domesticated cattle arrived very late (Segurel, 2017).

Otherwise, humans, like all mammals do not possess the means to digest lactose after the weaning period. Thus lactose intolerance is the norm throughout the entire mammal population of earth. Through the influence of a specific environment, a small sub-set of human population has been able to defy this norm and acquire a greater degree of tolerance to lactose. 

8. The Myopia Boom

The prevalence of myopia or near-sightedness has increased drastically in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. In some regions, for instance, East Asia, it has reached epidemic proportions. It is estimated that in Singapore, between 85-90% of the adult population suffers from myopia.(Chia, 2021)

Researchers have linked the rise of myopia in human populations to a changed lifestyle and altered occupational environment. Humans now spend more time indoors and staring at screens than at any other point of time in history. Crucially, a lack of exposure to sunlight has been identified as a major factor in the high prevalence of myopia. (Dolgin, 2015) . 

Strengths and Weaknesses of Environmental Determinism Theory

1. it provides contextual explanations for poverty.

Often, people’s personalities or personal faults are used as an explanation for poverty. One interpretation of the environmental determinism theory is that it can explain how poverty is not a personal failing but a contextual one.

For example, we can see that some people are not poor because of their aptitude (or lack thereof), but because they grew up in an unfitting environment. Being raised in the desert or in a war-torn country naturally places you at a disadvantage. Environmental determinism theory recognizes this and sees how this has large-scale impacts on societies living in less-than-ideal circumstances.

2. It Reveals how we are Shaped by Environmental Factors

Environmental determinism wades into the ‘nature vs nurture’ debate on a societal level. The theory sees that nature, not nurture , is the cause of societal demise.

The argument has some logic to it. There are aspects of nature that affect us all. For example, it is uncontroversial in sociology to state that growing up in a home with fewer books is known to affect literacy rates throughout a person’s life; and growing up in an unsafe home leads to trauma.

However, where EDT meets is detractors is that it’s seen to be too focused on nature and not focused enough on the role of nurture (e.g. culture, personal agency, oppression by colonizers) in impacting a social group.

1. It Fails to Ascribe Agency

Like technological determinism theory, EDT has too much of an emphasis on the role of the environment in ‘determining’ our future and fails to recognize that we can achieve success despite barriers and challenges.

For example, just because a society has some setbacks, it doesn’t mean they can’t achieve significant successes. Just like the success stories of people growing up in poverty and ending up extremely wealthy, we could imagine some societies working through struggle (with the help of its citizens) and achieving great success and wealth.

If we were to rely on EDT as a theory of social development, we would throw our hands up and give up on a range of societies, dooming them to failure because of situational factors that could, with good policy, be overcome.

2. Extreme Interpretations Justify White Supremacy

The most significant reason environmental determinism theory fell out of favor in the 20 th Century was that it had been used as a justification of colonialism.

The theory underscored that almost exclusively white societies were societies of wealth, strength, and privilege, whereas people of color from closer to the equator were poorer and even less cognitively developed due to their environment. This was used as a justification for colonialism and eurocentrism .

Modern interpretations, such as that from Jared Diamond, took an opposite approach, interpreting it as an explanation for poverty, and a route for finding solutions for it. This became the anti-racist interpretation that is most commonly used today.

3. It Fails to Explain the Resource Curse (aka the Paradox of Plenty)

The resource curse, also known as the paradox of plenty is the phenomenon wherein regions that are most well-endowed with natural wealth suffer the most extreme poverty and underdevelopment.

The phenomenon is most prominently evident in nations of Africa and South America that despite being rich in natural resources, remain economically poor. 

For instance, Nigeria, one of the largest producers and exporters of oil remains a low-income country that often has to import oil to meet its domestic needs.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recognizes 51 countries of the world as being “resource-rich” 29 out of these are low or middle-income countries (Venables, 2016).

Other Theories and Concepts in Human Geography

• Environmental Justice
• Central Place Theory of Development
• Multiple Nuclei Model of Development
• Urban Realms Model of Development
• Concentric Zone Model of Development

Environmental determinism theory has some serious weaknesses that limit its usefulness in understanding social development. However, it does provide a helpful way of thinking about how our environment affects us.

It is important to be aware of the potential limitations and misuses of the theory when using it so that we don’t make the mistake of giving up on entire societies or groups of people who could achieve great things given the right circumstances.

Alsan, M. (2015). The effect of the Tsetse Fly on African development . American Economic Review , 105 , 382–410. doi : 10.1257/aer.20130604 . 

Chia, E. (2021, June ) Myopia rising among kids in S’pore as screen time goes up during the pandemic The Straits Times https://www.straitstimes.com/life/myopia-rising-among-kids-here-as-screen-time-goes-up-during-the-pandemic  

Driver, H. E. (1969). Indians of North America.  The University of Chicago Press.

Dolgin, E. (2015) The myopia boom. Nature, 519, 276–278 . https://doi.org/10.1038/519276a  

Gade, D.W. (1996). Carl Troll on nature and culture in the Andes (Carl Troll über die Natur und Kultur in den Anden). Erdkunde , 50 (4),301–316. doi : 10.3112/erdkunde.1996.04.02

Lame Deer, J.  & Erdoes, R. (1994). Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions . Simon & Schuster.

Ilemobade A. A. (2009). Tsetse and trypanosomosis in Africa: the challenges, the opportunities. The Onderstepoort journal of veterinary research , 76 (1), 35–40. https://doi.org/10.4102/ojvr.v76i1.59  

Robbins, J. (1999, November). Historians revisit slaughter on the plains. The New York Times . ISSN 0362-4331 

Ségurel L, & Bon, C. (2017). On the evolution of lactase persistence in humans. A nnual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, 18 (1), 297–319. doi : 10.1146/annurev-genom-091416-035340 . PMID 28426286 .

Stix, G. (2012, April) Why Pygmies are short: New evidence surprises Scientific American https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-pygmies-are-short-new-evidence-surprises/  

Storhaug C.L., Fosse S.K., & Fadnes L.T. ( 2017). Country, regional, and global estimates for lactose malabsorption in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet. Gastroenterology & Hepatology . 2 (10), 738–746. doi:10.1016/S2468-1253(17)30154-1. PMID 28690131 

Venables, Anthony J. (2016). Using natural resources for development: Why has it proven so difficult? . Journal of Economic Perspectives . 30 (1), 161–184. doi : 10.1257/jep.30.1.161 . S2CID 155899373 .  

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Environmental Determinism

Introduction, general overviews.

• Formative Works
• Interpretive Commentary
• Key Determinist Statements in the Age of Darwin
• German Environmental Determinism: Ritter, Haeckel, and Ratzel
• American and British Environmental Determinism, 1890–1920
• Migration and Diffusion Theory in Archaeology
• Marxism, Environmental Determinism, and Historical Geographic Materialism
• Wittfogel and his Critics: Hydraulic Thesis and the Early State
• Cultural Anthropology and Cultural Determinism
• The French Annales School
• English Local History and the Cambridge Group
• American Geographers
• American Environmental History: The Early Decades
• Julian Steward and the Rise of Cultural Ecology
• The New or Processual Archaeology: The Cultural Ecology of Ancient Societies
• Environmental History, 1970–Present: A Struggle over the Terms of Cultural Ecology
• Allopatric Speciation and Biogeography
• Lovelock, Gaia, and Earth Systems
• The New Geology and Punctuated Equilibria
• The New Lamarckism: The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, Niche Construction, and Epigenetics
• Earth-Systems Analysis and Plio-Pleistocene Hominin-Human Evolution
• The Environmental Impact of Advanced Industrial Society
• Neo-Environmental Determinism: Jared Diamond and the Economists since 1997
• Critiques of Neodeterminism
• Mid-Century Origins
• Climate Scientists as Historians
• Historians as Scientists
• Recent Overviews of the New Climate History
• Recent Commentary on Climate Change and the Humanities

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Environmental Determinism by John L. Brooke LAST REVIEWED: 21 January 2016 LAST MODIFIED: 21 January 2016 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199363445-0045

This article provides an outline of the intellectual history of the concept of “environmental determinism,” and its critics, and of alternative understandings of the relationship between nature and humanity. Environmental determinism argues that both general features and regional variations of human cultures and societies are determined by the physical and biological forms that make up the earth’s many natural landscapes. It is one position in a wider series of literatures that examine the relationship between humanity and the global environment, forming part of the evolving corpus of several disciplines, including geography, history, archaeology, anthropology, and economics. Environmental determinism occupies one end of a continuum, cultural determinism occupies the other; each argues that the human condition is determined simply by nature or simply by culture. Between these two extreme positions lies a broad spectrum of positions described variously as “environmental possibilism” or “environmental probablism.” The “possibilists” are very close to a cultural determinist position; the “probablist” position—in which the vast majority of work is now done – argues that there has always been a complex and evolving mutual reciprocity between nature and humanity, an understanding broadly ecological in its appreciation of interconnection. The doctrine of environmental determinism, as it bears on humanity, has roots deep in the past in efforts to understand “man’s place in nature” within and then beyond theological frameworks. From the middle of the 19th century it has been shaped by debates in evolutionary theory, between the classical Darwinian position that evolution moves gradually, driven by the random natural selection of traits, and a countervailing position, effectively, environmental determinism for nonhuman biology, that evolution is shaped by speciation events caused by geographical isolation. Work unfolding on two fronts—a rising appreciation of how environmental forces drove biological and human evolution and how human forces are driving the “Anthropocene” destabilization of earth systems—is rapidly making it clear that culture and nature have to be seen in a complex evolving relationship. This article surveys the intellectual history of environmental determinism in some detail from the era of Humboldt and Darwin forward, in relation to evolutionary theory, cultural determinism, and the evolving spectrum of more middling approaches, which can be broadly grouped under the framework of cultural ecology. It also surveys the idealist/cultural and ecological/materialist approaches in environmental history, as well as the new climate history.

Samples of important wide-ranging studies that explore the wider intellectual history of environmental determinism and its critics in evolutionary theory, anthropology, archaeology, geography, and environmental history is given here. Preston and Martin 1981 , Livingstone 1993 , and Peet 1998 are key examinations of the history of the discipline of geography, where environmental determinism had its modern intellectual origins. Gould 2002 and Eldredge 2015 present important reviews of the debates in geology regarding the critique of Darwinian theory and the emergence of modern understandings of earth-systems history. Harris 2001 and Trigger 2006 situate environmental determinism in the development of anthropology and archaeology. Arnold 1996 and Isenberg 2014 do the same for environmental history. These works are cited here rather than repeating citations throughout this article.

Arnold, David. 1996. The problem of nature: Environment, culture and European expansion . Oxford: Blackwell.

Arnold explores the tension between cultural-idealist and ecological-materialist approaches to the history of humanity and nature.

Eldredge, Niles. 2015. Eternal ephemera: Adaptation and the origin of species from the nineteenth century through punctuated equilibria and beyond . New York: Columbia Univ. Press.

Eldredge’s overview of two centuries of evolutionary thought, concentrating on Darwin’s focus on random processes of natural selection, and the rise of environmentally driven interpretations since the late 1930s.

Gould, Stephen Jay. 2002. The structure of evolutionary theory . Cambridge, MA: Belknap.

Gould’s massive account of the emergence of, and “hardening” of, the modern Darwinian synthesis, and the critical opening of the movement for an “expanded synthesis.”

Harris, Marvin. 2001. The rise of anthropological theory: A history of theories of culture . Rev. ed. Walnut Creek, CA: Altima.

A key intellectual history of anthropology, ranging from 19th-century determinisms to the Boasian cultural imperative to cultural ecology and Harris’s cultural materialism. Originally published in 1968. See, in particular, chapter 4, “Rise of Racial Determinism (pp. 80–107), and chapter 5, “Spencerism” (pp. 108–141). Originally published in 1968.

Isenberg, Andrew, ed. 2014. The Oxford handbook of environmental history . New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195324907.001.0001

A comprehensive collection of review essays on the state of environmental history; Isenberg’s introduction describes the tension between cultural/idealist and ecological/materialist approaches among environmental historians.

Livingstone, David. 1993. The geographical tradition: Episodes in the history of a contested enterprise . Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

An excellent intellectual history of geography from the 16th-century Renaissance into the 20th century.

Peet, Richard. 1998. Modern geographical thought . Oxford: Blackwell.

A definitive analysis of approaches and debates in 20th-century geography.

Preston, E. James, and Geoffrey J. Martin. 1981. All possible worlds: A history of geographical ideas . New York: Wiley.

A standard and comprehensive intellectual history of the field of geography, from Antiquity to the 20th century.

Trigger, Bruce G. 2006. A history of archaeological thought . 2d ed. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.

The definitive overview of archaeological theory, with excellent analyses of the determinist-diffusionists and the rise of cultural ecology and processual archaeology. Originally published in 1989.

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What Is Environmental Determinism?

A Topic Later Replaced by Environmental Possibilism

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• Understanding Your Forecast
• Storms & Other Phenomena
• M.A., Geography, California State University - East Bay
• B.A., English and Geography, California State University - Sacramento

Throughout the study of geography, there have been some different approaches to explaining the development of the world's societies and cultures. One that received much prominence in geographic history but has declined in recent decades of academic study is environmental determinism.

Environmental Determinism

Environmental determinism is the belief that the environment, most notably its physical factors such as landforms and climate, determines the patterns of human culture and societal development. Environmental determinists believe that ecological, climatic, and geographical factors alone are responsible for human cultures and individual decisions. Also, social conditions have virtually no impact on cultural development .

The main argument of environmental determinism states that an area's physical characteristics like climate have a substantial impact on the psychological outlook of its inhabitants. These different outlooks then spread throughout a population and help define the overall behavior and culture of a society. For instance, it was said that areas in the tropics were less developed than higher latitudes because the continuously warm weather there made it easier to survive and thus, people living there did not work as hard to ensure their survival.

Another example of environmental determinism would be the theory that island nations have unique cultural traits solely because of their isolation from continental societies.

Environmental Determinism and Early Geography

Although environmental determinism is a relatively recent approach to formal geographic study, its origins go back to ancient times. Climatic factors, for example, were used by Strabo, Plato , and Aristotle to explain why the Greeks were so much more developed in the early ages than societies in hotter and colder climates. Additionally, Aristotle came up with his climate classification system to explain why people were limited to settlement in certain areas of the globe.​​

Other early scholars also used environmental determinism to explain not only the culture of a society but the reasons behind the physical characteristics of a society's people. Al-Jahiz, a writer from East Africa, for instance, cited environmental factors as the origin of different skin colors. He believed that the darker skin of many Africans and various birds, mammals, and insects was a direct result of the prevalence of black basalt rocks on the Arabian Peninsula.

Ibn Khaldun, an Arab sociologist, and scholar was officially known as one of the first environmental determinists. He lived from 1332 to 1406, during which time he wrote a complete world history and explained that the hot climate of Sub-Saharan Africa caused dark human skin.​

Environmental Determinism and Modern Geography

Environmental determinism rose to its most prominent stage in modern geography beginning in the late 19th Century when it was revived by the German geographer Friedrich Rätzel and became the central theory in the discipline. Rätzel's theory came about following Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 and was heavily influenced by evolutionary biology and the impact a person’s environment has on their cultural evolution.

Environmental determinism then became popular in the United States in the early 20th Century when Rätzel’s student, Ellen Churchill Semple , a professor at Clark University in Worchester, Massachusetts, introduced the theory there. Like Rätzel’s initial ideas, Semple’s were also influenced by evolutionary biology.

Another one of Rätzel’s students, Ellsworth Huntington, also worked on expanding the theory around the same time as Semple. Huntington's work though, led to a subset of environmental determinism, called climatic determinism in the early 1900s. His theory stated that the economic development in a country could be predicted based on its distance from the equator. He said temperate climates with short growing seasons stimulate achievement, economic growth, and efficiency. The ease of growing things in the tropics, on the other hand, hindered their advancement.

The Decline of Environmental Determinism

Despite its success in the early 1900s, environmental determinism’s popularity began to decline in the 1920s as its claims were often found to be wrong. Also, critics claimed it was racist and perpetuated imperialism.

Carl Sauer , for instance, began his critiques in 1924 and said that environmental determinism led to premature generalizations about an area’s culture and did not allow for results based on direct observation or other research. As a result of his and others' criticisms, geographers developed the theory of environmental possibilism to explain cultural development.

Environmental possibilism was set forth by the French geographer Paul Vidal de la Blanche and stated that the environment sets limitations for cultural development, but it does not wholly define culture. Culture is instead defined by the opportunities and decisions that humans make in response to dealing with such limitations.

By the 1950s, environmental determinism was almost entirely replaced in geography by environmental possibilism, effectively ending its prominence as the central theory in the discipline. Regardless of its decline, however, environmental determinism was an important component of geographic history as it initially represented an attempt by early geographers to explain the patterns they saw developing across the globe.

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Introduction to Human-Environment Interactions Research

• First Online: 01 January 2012

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• Emilio F. Moran 3 &
• Eduardo S. Brondízio 3  

Part of the book series: Human-Environment Interactions ((HUEN,volume 1))

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Contemporary theories about the reciprocal interactions of human beings with the environment are only fully intelligible in the light of the historical roots of such theories. In this introduction we provide an overview of the major Western intellectual currents up to those that are commonly used today. Three main themes help organize this broad array of theories and approaches: environmental determinism, cultural determinism, and human-environment interaction concerned with the processual relationships between people and environment as grounded in historical, social, and ecological contexts. This chapter also provides an overview of the four parts of the book and discusses the coverage, diversity, and parallels in themes and approaches across all chapters.

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Contemporary theories about the reciprocal interactions of human beings with the environment are only fully intelligible in the light of the historical roots of such theories. Modern notions of homeostasis reflect ancient concerns and assumptions about the order of nature, just as our current fascination with chaos theory reflects a contemporary jaundiced view of the social order. Every society has philosophical explanations about the natural world and human beings’ place in it. It is through such explanations that members of a society articulate their normative rules and the broad outline of how they can best function as societies that depend on natural resources for their survival.

Human-environment interaction (HEI) provides a framework that brings together scholarship sharing both disciplinary depth and interdisciplinary scope to examine past, present, and future social and environmental change in different parts of the world. Key to all of these approaches is that they must be interdisciplinary and cut across the social and the natural sciences. While building upon disciplinary expertise, this type of work asks new questions that purely disciplinary research tends not to ask; it brings new methods and theories to the challenges posed by societal concerns and connects theory and practice in ways that address problems that arise from human interactions with environment. This volume brings senior and junior scholars together and, in so doing, connects these historically influential traditions to new and cutting-edge approaches that give us a glimpse into current and future trends in interdisciplinary science of human-environment interaction.

In this introduction, we provide a broad view of the major Western intellectual currents up to those that are commonly used today. Three main themes help organize this broad array of theories and approaches: environmental determinism—the determining effect of nature upon society, cultural determinism—that sees cultural context as the only way to understand our place in nature, and human-environment interaction—concerned with the interaction of people and environment. These themes represent three points on the intellectual spectrum. One view overemphasizes the influence of environment, while the second overemphasizes the role of human culture. The third view bridges the gap between the other two themes, providing a framework to examine HEI as dialectical and diachronic processes rather than unidirectional. Footnote 1

Deterministic explanations in HEI date back a long time in human history. Yet they seem recurrent. In academia, the history of deterministic explanations has promoted inter- and intradisciplinary divisions fueled by theoretical dualisms (e.g., nature-culture, agency-structure, materialist-idealist, rational-moral) rather than having societal problems or crosscutting questions informing the direction of scholarship. Our current environmental and societal issues defy reductionist and deterministic interpretations as well as panacea policies (Ostrom 2007 ), but we are still learning how to move from segmented to complementary disciplinary knowledge and integrative science. An emphasis on human-environment interaction recognizes the complexity of historical and contemporary factors affecting society and environment at various scales; because of the value put on fieldwork, HEI research has an explicit concern with corroborating deductive and inductive perspectives. As such, it encourages interdisciplinary collaboration constructed around shared questions, common frameworks, and metalanguages across disciplines. A glimpse into the traditions leading to these perspectives may serve as a useful reminder of the challenges and opportunities ahead.

1.1 Environmental Determinism

Determinism assigns one factor as a dominating influence over the whole system. From Greco-Roman times through the early part of the twentieth century, scientific theories stressed single-factor explanations to the neglect of the complex interactions of biological systems. At the heart of their argument was the role that their strategic location in the Mediterranean played in the acquisition and maintenance of such power. Writers rose to the task by explaining that the “middle latitudes” (i.e., Greece) were most conducive to favorable cultural developments because in that locale, humans were subject to an ideal proportion of the basic four elements (fire, water, earth, air). A hot tropical climate was believed to foster idleness and resignation (Thomas 1925 : 227), while the climate of Greece, with its seasonal changes, balanced the exposure to the elements and thus was the most conducive to progress. These ideas, which were endorsed by Hippocrates, Aristotle, and other major figures of ancient Greece, set a trend that was followed by the Romans. Roman writers cited geoclimatic reasons for the Roman conquest of the rest of the civilized world. Cicero attributed this success to the strategic location of Rome itself. Like Greek authors before him, Vitruvius felt the optimal location was one midway between the two extremes of hot and cold. He pointed to Rome’s dominance as proof of the correctness of his judgment. Because of the protection afforded classical learning in Christian monasteries and Arab centers of scholarship, the human-environment theories of classical times survived the turmoil that followed the breakdown of Roman rule (Castaglioni 1958 : 258–263).

Arab scholars elaborated on classical theories. The Arab conception of the human-environment relationship was twofold. One part consisted of an astrological explanation that considered humans to be part of the cosmos, resulting in their character and outlook being determined by the ruling stars of their environment. The other part was a purely geographical explanation based on climatic considerations (Alavi 1965 : 68). The Arab scholar Al-Mas’udi discussed the importance of the availability of water, natural vegetation, and topography in determining the sites of human settlements. He also correlated the climate to the humors of the body, showing how a certain climate can give rise to humoral imbalances and thus to particular virtues or vices (Alavi 1965 : 69–70). Arab scholars preserved and translated the Greco-Roman classics and, in the process, added some of their own interpretations to the texts. As a result, when the classics were read in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Europe, it was with the addition of commentaries by Arab and Jewish scholars from Cordoba, Seville, Toledo, Baghdad, and Damascus.

With the discovery of the East Indies and the New World, Europeans were thrust into contact with cultures and environments that differed considerably from their own. Among the adventurers, missionaries, and merchants of those days were naturalists and curious travelers; their accounts of the strange habitats and ways of native Asians, Africans, and Americans excited intellectual interest in explaining cultural and environmental differences. The role of human culture in buffering the impact of environment upon society began to be appreciated, and the scope of possible explanations for similarities and differences in human populations expanded.

In the late nineteenth century, a general trend toward organizing increasing amounts of archaeological and ethnological data resulted in an attempt to illuminate the processes by which human cultural history changes. A very simple heuristic device was quickly discovered—many cultures with similar artifacts and customs could be grouped by geographic location. Geographers and, later, ethnographers seized upon this notion. They viewed the interrelation of groups with their habitats as producing specific kinds of cultural traits. Friedrich Ratzel (1844–1904), a scholar with broad ethnographic interests who was the founder of anthropogeography, emphasized the primacy of habitat in bringing about cultural diversity (Helm 1962 : 630). He explained human cultural evolution as being spurred by the conflicts over territory between migrating peoples. His thesis thus centered on the migration of groups, which promotes the diffusion of cultural traits (Harris 1968 : 383). While diffusion may produce divergence in the original traits, Ratzel also believed that migratory peoples usually “hold fast to their natural conditions of existence [that is, culture]” (quoted in Thomas 1925 : 140).

The environmental determinist trend continued in the twentieth century with the work of geographers Ellsworth Huntington ( 1915 ) and Griffith Taylor ( 1951 ). Huntington believed that variations in temperature and humidity were beneficial, provided they were not taken to extremes. He eventually postulated what he came to regard as an ideal climate for maximum human efficiency: one with moderate seasonal changes, average humidity, and abundant storms. Although Huntington was far from naïve, he formulated his generalizations as if climate was the only important factor.

An elementary problem with these deterministic theories is their misuse of inductive reasoning. The inductive approach requires that one observe the facts and then form a generalization that will fit all the observed facts. It has been more common among determinists to formulate a generalization first and then set out to prove it with an unclear methodology and an inadequate sample. Selective sampling led to confirmation of many deterministic generalizations. At a time when so little was known about the workings of the physical world, it is striking how broad the scope of these generalizations was.

1.2 Cultural Determinism

Unlike environmental deterministic theories, which emphasize the influence of nature on human behavior and institutions, cultural deterministic theories viewed nature as a relatively static factor or backdrop, and human history and culture as shaping human communities. Franz Boas (1858–1942) proposed what has come to be called historical possibilism—that is, nature circumscribes the possibilities for humans, but historical and cultural factors explain what is actually chosen. Boas ( 1896 : 901–908) rejected the idea that the environment was a primary molder of culture and sought explanation for cultural differences in the particular cultural history of a people. Boas did not come to this position immediately, but rather after initial acceptance of the environmental deterministic views of his day. When Boas went on his trip to Baffin Island to study the Eskimo, he did so “with a strong presumption in favor of the primacy of geographical factors in the life of the Eskimo” (Boas 1964 [1888]; Harris 1968 : 265). In The Mind of Primitive Man , Boas ( 1963 [1911]) pointed out that the environment furnishes the material out of which people shape and develop the artifacts of daily life as well as their theories, beliefs, and customs (Thomas 1925 : 278). Yet while he granted that the environment had a general influence, Boas criticized the one-sided notion that the same type of environment will, in a given stage of culture, produce the same results everywhere. While the followers of Boas insisted that there was no Boasian school, there was a certain common ground that they shared. Regarding the environment, their approach was a reaction to environmental determinism. Lowie (1883–1957), for one, in his Culture and Ethnology ( 1917 ) set out to disprove the environmental deterministic notions that “culture reaches its highest stages in temperate regions,” that the concept of liberty is directly correlated with altitude, and that island inhabitants are accomplished seafarers. Lowie argued that under the same geographical conditions, radically different cultures have developed. Alexander Goldenweiser saw the environment as a static force and culture as the dynamic element that shaped the use of natural resources. He also suggested (cf. Ferndon 1959 ) that humans change the natural environment (e.g., turning forests into cultivated fields) and, as a result, make their own environment instead of being determined by it (Goldenweiser 1937 : 452–453). As we will see later, this view (that people do not adapt to environment but modify their environment to suit them) has returned as historical ecology, emphasizing historical context and agency (Balée 1998 ; Balée and Erickson 2006 ).

Alfred Kroeber (1876–1960), like other anthropologists of his day, subscribed to the Boasian credo that the physical environment is there merely to be acted upon by human culture. Kroeber’s ( 1939 ) approach in Cultural and Natural Areas can be likened to that of his contemporary, British geographer/anthropologist C.D. Forde (1902–1973). Both of them emphasized the need for collecting ecological data and viewed such data as potentially valuable in explaining cultural similarities. Forde, for example, after summarizing the history of economic systems in relation to ecology and social organization, concluded that neither an evolutionary sequence of “economic stages” nor the nature of the subsistence base could explain the changes in culture (Forde 1934 ). Economic and social activities, he concluded, are products of the long, but largely unpredictable, processes of cultural accumulation and integration.

Kroeber’s conclusions in Cultural and Natural Areas resemble those of Forde’s in Habitat, Economy and Society ( 1934 ). With that effort, Kroeber’s fleeting use of technoenvironmental explanation ended, and he turned his idea of culture area increasingly toward notions of diffusion and “areas of culture origins.” In regard to his earlier culture/environment explorations, Kroeber ( 1939 : 205) became baffled and wrote, “The interaction of culture and environment become increasingly complex when followed out. And this complexity makes generalization unprofitable, on the whole.” He noted that in each situation or area, different natural factors are likely to be “impinging on culture with different intensity” (ibid.). In spite of its merit recognizing cultural differences and the complexity of HEI as one moves from local to higher levels of analysis, an overemphasis on the singularity of local phenomenon continued to plague theoretical approaches that insist on cultural determinism, discouraging attention to comparative work informing robust generalizations.

1.3 Human-Environment Interactions

The eighteenth century was a period when natural historians concerned with human progress formulated evolutionary sequences that attempted to explain human society in terms of increased human control over nature. One of these figures, Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727–1781), foreshadows the cultural ecological approach of Julian Steward. In his Universal History (1750), Turgot interpreted the band organization of hunters as a response to the necessity of pursuing game over vast areas. Such pursuit resulted, in turn, in the dispersal and diffusion of peoples and ideas. On the other hand, where easily domesticated species were present, a pastoral way of life with greater population concentrations and greater control over resources might emerge. During this period, the Scottish School (an intellectual elite in Scotland in the eighteenth century) made efforts to correlate social organization with subsistence. A major figure of this school was historian William Robertson, whose book The History of America ( 1777 ) is a landmark for its discussion of the conditions for cultural similarities around the world. Robertson believed that cultural similarities were evidence of independent invention, arguing that similarities between the resource bases of two groups would lead to similar adaptive responses. Whenever Robertson encountered seemingly “nonadaptive” traits, he attributed such behaviors to the group’s borrowing the trait, despite its nonadaptiveness, from neighbors with whom they had had previous contact. Thus, Robertson dealt with two of the major research questions in cultural ecology: diffusion vs. innovation and explaining adaptive vs. maladaptive cultural behavior.

The Scottish School included many writers, such as Adam Smith (1723–1790), Adam Ferguson (1723–1816), David Hume (1711–1776), and James Millar (1735–1801), all of whom examined the evolution of complex societies and the cultural and materialistic forces that lead to social stratification (Voget 1975 : 90). These men looked at the interrelation of cultural units, especially those involved in the economics of a society, rather than the evolution of ideas per se. Adam Smith emphasized the division of labor as basic to understanding the increasing complexities of a modern nation (Voget 1975 : 78). Ferguson and Millar attempted to correlate various institutions, such as land tenure, marriage, and slavery, to the subsistence base found in various cultures. In so doing, they tried to correct some of the distorted accounts and explanations of prehistoric life by utilizing a variety of data sources and by avoiding racial and ethnocentric ideas about primitive “nature” or “intellect” (Harris 1968 : 29–31). Millar and others also emphasized control over resources and accumulation of an economic surplus as accounting for differing institutions. In the writings of these men, we see a growing awareness that any explanation of cultural diversity must include a consideration of a broad range of factors. They do not use single-factor deterministic explanations, nor do they overemphasize individual choice, cultural determinism, or the purposeful movement of nature toward “progress” and higher civilization. Turgot and the Scottish philosophers emphasized adaptation from one subsistence mode to another.

The nineteenth century was the heyday of the naturalists. The similarities and differences in living organisms impressed them and stimulated their search for explanations. The contributions of Charles Darwin (1809–1882) to ecological theory are particularly notable. Darwin found inspiration for his theory of evolution in the works of Charles Lyell and Thomas Malthus (1766–1834). Darwin took a copy of Lyell’s ( 1830 ) Principles of Geology with him on his HMS Beagle voyage and confided in his diary that it “altered the whole tone of [his] mind.” Through Lyell’s account of the geological record, Darwin saw an alternative to the narrow Biblical time scale and was impressed by the relationship between environmental change and modifications in biological forms. Malthus’s ( 1798 ) An Essay on the Principle of Population influenced Darwin with its idea that the natural trend of the human population was to increase unless stopped by disease, war, or famine. Darwin extended this notion to plant and animal populations.

Darwin’s synthesis appeared in 1859 under the title On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection . In this work, Darwin began by assuming that all living things are related and that the diversity of species results from a continual branching out. Such branching is a product of the process known as natural selection. According to the principle of natural selection, those organisms most fit to survive and reproduce in a given environment will outreproduce less well-adapted organisms and that species not adapted to current environmental conditions will be reduced to insignificant numbers and possibly to extinction.

If biological evolution reflected only the process of adaptation to environment, it would be a static, nonevolutionary process. For evolutionary change to occur, there must be random changes in species that are not responses to current needs but that under given circumstances give an advantage to individuals who share the trait in a population. It is easy to misunderstand Darwin’s view of natural selection. The Lamarckian idea (Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, 1744–1829) that organisms improve themselves by their own efforts and that they pass on these advantages to their offspring appeals to common sense and to the notion that evolution travels along a progressive path (Gould 1980 : 76). However, it is not in this manner that species evolve. The specter of Lamarck in evolutionary theory can be traced to his central notion that organisms respond to felt needs, and indeed, Lamarck’s ideas are relevant to the notion of specific evolution as proposed by Marshall Sahlins and Elman Service ( 1960 ) and to Steward’s ( 1955 ) emphasis on adaptive processes in local environments. In contrast, Darwinian theory emphasizes that genetic variation arises randomly and proceeds undirected. Selection acts upon unoriented variation and changes result from reproductive success. Darwinian theory’s power derives from its complexity, from its refusal to be a mechanistic theory driven by environmental determinism (Gould 1980 : 81) or by purpose. It is less appealing than Lamarck’s theory because it presents us with a universe devoid of intrinsic meaning or direction. As Roy Rappaport noted ( 1984 ), human beings have had to invent culture and ritual “to give meaning to a world devoid of meaning.” Lamarck’s theory, while failing to explain how species evolve, suggested instead how human cultural evolution occurs. It is in this realm wherein we can expect rapid acquisition of adaptive traits through ideological and behavioral change and its transmission through socialization. Technological change and cultural change work in Lamarckian ways, and they have unleashed a rate of change inconceivable in the slower, undirected process of natural selection.

Modern evolutionary theory and genetics have put to rest the simplistic notions of determinism. The functions and forms of organisms can be understood only by careful accounting of complex processes of interaction. This is best expressed in the contrast between genotype and phenotype. The genotype refers to the hereditary potential of an organism. The phenotype, on the other hand, is the product of the interaction between the genotype and the environment where the organism is located. Some species tolerate a minimum of environmental change and exhibit a minimum of phenotype variation (i.e., highly specialized species). Bacteria, for one, tolerate only minute differences in habitat temperature. The human species, by contrast, manifests great phenotypic variations and can tolerate a wide range of environmental conditions (i.e., we are a generalist species).

The development of the field of evolutionary ecology has been particularly vigorous since the 1980s (e.g., Boyd and Richerson 1985 ; Durham 1990 ; Smith 1991 ; Winterhalder and Smith 1981 ). The attention that it gives to the great complexity of the environment distinguishes it from earlier approaches. However, if one is interested in the exceptional plasticity and diversity of behavior within a species, an evolutionary ecological approach is more appropriate. It is more concerned with why diversity of behavioral outcomes occurs and less with how such adaptations effectively address the needs of species or individuals. For the latter, an adaptationist or functional approach is still more appropriate.

Steward’s early writings broke with both environmental and cultural determinism by emphasizing the use of the comparative method to test causal connections between social structure and modes of subsistence. Steward’s approach was a functionalist one, concerned with the operation of a variable in relation to a limited set of variables, not in relation to an entire social system. The cultural ecological approach proposed by Steward involves both a problem and a method. The problem is to test whether the adjustments of human societies to their environments require specific types of behavior or whether there is considerable latitude in human responses (Steward 1955 : 36). The method consists of three procedures: (1) to analyze the relationship between subsistence system and environment, (2) to analyze the behavior patterns associated with a given subsistence technology, and (3) to ascertain the extent to which the behavior pattern entailed in a given subsistence system affects other aspects of culture (Steward 1955 : 40–41). In short, the cultural ecological approach postulates a relationship between environmental resources, subsistence technology, and the behavior required to bring technology to bear upon resources.

The crucial element in Steward’s approach is neither nature nor culture but, rather, the process of resource utilization, that is, the interaction between people and their resources. The reasons for the priority he gave to subsistence are clear: Obtaining food and shelter is an immediate and urgent problem in all societies, and patterns of work at a given level of technology are limited in their ability to exploit resources. The approach is best illustrated by his study of the Western Shoshone. The Shoshone inhabited the Great Basin of North America, a semiarid land with widely dispersed resources. The Shoshone were hunter/gatherers with simple tools and relied heavily on the collection of grass seeds, roots, and berries. Steward showed how almost every resource could best be exploited by individuals—except rabbits and antelope, which required seasonal group hunting. Each fall, the Shoshone gathered pine nuts that were stored for the long, cold winter. Although in winter they formed larger population concentrations, they did not form stable social units because pine nuts were not available in the same places each year, and groups therefore had to remain fluid to adequately exploit the basin. Thus, the requirements of subsistence produced fluid and fragmentary social units. To Steward, the Shoshone presented an extreme case of the limitations placed by environment on the workable options available to a culture. Steward hypothesized that the immediate impact of environment upon behavior decreased as technological complexity improved the human capacity to modify the environment. He suggested that in complex societies, social factors may be more important in explaining change than subsistence technology or environment (Steward 1938 : 262). The research strategy proposed by Steward is all the more striking if one considers its historical backdrop. Until Steward’s time, human-environment theories either dealt in broad generalities lacking a firm grounding in empirical research or emphasized lists of cultural traits. Cultural ecology put the emphasis on careful analysis of social interaction, recording of movement, timing of work activity, and so forth. Through such research, it was possible to more effectively delimit the field of study and arrive at cause-and-effect relationships. Another, although less developed and popularized component of his theory, was a concern with levels of cultural and social integration. Steward stressed the importance of understanding complex social systems not as the average of behavioral norms. He focused on understanding levels of social-cultural integration with the idea that in any society there is a succession of horizontal and vertical organizational types along a continuum representing emergent social and political forms.

Steward has been criticized by some scholars because his approach is difficult to operationalize in the field and because it assigns primacy to subsistence behaviors. The focus on subsistence is essential to the cultural ecological approach. There are cases when other factors may have far greater control over a social system, and over the years, Steward ( 1955 : 93) expanded the scope of cultural ecology to include political, religious, military, and aesthetic features of culture. Clifford Geertz ( 1963 ) concluded in his study of Indonesian agriculture that historical and political factors are part of the total environment to which populations adapt and must not be dismissed as secondary. A few years later, Rappaport ( 1968 ) showed how ritual could play a central role in the maintenance of a society’s balance with resources. The contribution of Steward was to delimit, more than anyone before him, the field of human-environment interaction. He did so by emphasizing behavior, subsistence, and technology. The weaknesses of such an approach became apparent within a decade and spawned other research strategies.

Dissatisfaction with the research approach of cultural ecology led some scholars to search for new theories, new data-collecting techniques, and new analytical tools. The major influence on this new research approach came from general, or biological, ecology. The ecosystem concept provided a conceptual framework more satisfactory to some scientists than the behavior/social structure equation stressed by Steward. Michael Little and George Morren ( 1976 : 5) succinctly expressed the strategy: “We are concerned with those cultural and biological responses, factors, processes and cycles that affect or are directly connected with the survival, reproduction, development, longevity, or spatial positions of people. This set of questions rather than the traditional division of scientific labor defines the subject matter.”

Rappaport and Andrew Vayda gave the strongest impetus to an ecosystem approach in the field of anthropology. In fact, they preferred the term ecological anthropology because they felt that the emphasis on “culture” suggested by the term cultural ecology obscures the applicability of principles from biological ecology to the study of human adaptation (Vayda and Rappaport 1976 : 20–21). Given that humans are but one species in nature, subject to the same laws as other species, use of the principles, methods, and analytical tools of the ecological sciences would greatly add to our understanding of our own species. Vayda and Rappaport believed that anthropologists should not hesitate to adopt biological units such as population, community, and ecosystem as units of study since it allows a more comprehensive approach to ecological studies. Even the topics of research can be couched in terms that make sense across both disciplines. Vayda and Rappaport pointed out that ecologists have shared various areas of interest with anthropology: ways of defining territorial rights, ways of establishing group identity, and mechanisms for establishing buffer zones. All these can be viewed “ecologically” as regulating behavior or serving a homeostasis function. To test ecological hypotheses properly, a wealth of information is required, and no single researcher can expect to succeed in gathering it all—and it is no surprise that their own experience of field work in Papua New Guinea as part of a large interdisciplinary team studying war in that region led them to see the value of ecosystem as an integrator of work across ecology, geography, and anthropology (Vayda and Rappaport 1976 : 23).

Vayda’s study of how warfare in New Guinea is related to population fluctuations, changes in man/resource ratios, and the competition of different highland clans for gardens and pigs is a notable example of the ecological approach (Vayda 1974 , 1976 ). Rappaport, working with the Tsembaga Maring in the same region, was more concerned with how ritual serves to regulate: (l) the size of the pig herd, (2) the frequency of warfare, (3) the availability of horticultural land within reasonable walking distance of the village, (4) the length of the fallow cycle, and (5) the military strength and alliances of a tribe and the likelihood that it will hold on to its claimed territory. Footnote 2 Rappaport is not really concerned with the individual decisions of the Tsembaga Maring as they see their pig herd increase to the point that they become a threat to the human ecological system. Rather, he finds that the system “senses” the increased burden of having too many pigs. When a system threshold is reached, the elders call for a ritual pig slaughter. The ritual reduces the number of pigs and facilitates the creation of alliances between neighboring groups. Warfare follows, and its occurrence serves to distribute the population over the landscape and to return the system to “initial conditions” or a state of equilibrium.

An important issue raised by Rappaport’s study ( 1968 ) is the utility of the concept of homeostasis. As used by Rappaport, the concept was equivalent to equilibrium—a view shared by some biological ecologists and reminiscent of the Greco-Roman search for order in nature. In equilibrium models, attention is paid to how cultural practices help maintain human populations in a stable relationship with their environment. This view is the prototype of neofunctionalism, and it has its drawbacks. It views the current state of the system as the norm and overemphasizes the functions of negative feedback to the neglect of the dynamics of change accelerated by positive feedback. This viewpoint tends to preclude the possibility that behaviors might be maladaptive, which they surely are in certain situations (Alland 1975 ; Eder 1987 ).

Adaptation to environment is, however, not a simple matter of negative feedback. System correction through negative feedback operates most effectively at lower levels in a system. Higher levels operate at a more general level wherein ambiguity and vagueness permit constant reinterpretation and restructuring of system properties as responses to perturbations. Homeostasis and dynamic equilibrium do not imply changelessness. On the contrary, they require constant adjustment of system parts and even some change in structure in response to perturbations (Rappaport 1977 : 169). In other words, while systems have lower-order mechanisms geared to the maintenance of stability, they also have higher-level, less specialized responses that can reorder the system to assure its survival—a view echoed in more sophisticated ways today in terms of emergent properties of systems.

A number of problems must be recognized in how the ecosystem concept was used: a tendency to reify the ecosystem and to give it properties of a biological organism, an overemphasis on energetic flows and measurement of calories, a tendency for models to ignore time and structural change (and to overemphasize homeostasis), a tendency to neglect the role of the individual, a lack of clear criteria for defining boundaries of systems, and level shifting between field study and analysis of data (see review in Moran 1990 ). Problems of reification have been addressed in recent years by an emphasis on how individuals modify the environment and not simply adapt to a reified nature (Balée 1998 ; Boster 1983 , 1984 ; Crumley 1994 ). Today, few scholars would suggest that measurement of energy flow ought to be a central concern of ecosystem studies. Concerns have shifted to nutrient cycling, decision making, complexity in systems, and loss of biodiversity (Jordan 1987 ; Lansing 2003 ; Levin 1998 ; NRC 1999 ; NSB 1989 ). Studies show increasing attention to historical factors and even whole “schools of thought” on historical ecology, environmental history, environmental geography, and other spinoffs. The role of individuals and households has also blossomed (Lees and Bates 1990 ; Rindfuss et al. 2003 ; Roy Chowdhury and Turner 2006 ; Wilk 1990 ).

In the future, studies are likely to be most fruitful when they integrate a general systems approach with the study of how actors develop individual strategies. There is no reason why both perspectives cannot be used, and there is evidence that researchers have already begun to balance a concern for the individual with a concern for the population. One way to overcome the tendency toward static equilibrium models might be to study how populations adapt to certain kinds of stress. By studying the response of individuals to hazards, we can answer such questions as the following: Who responds? Does stress lead to changes in the structuring of the population? Are cultural patterns changed? How do people perceive the severity of the stress to which they are responding? How does the human population adjust to termination of the stress? These questions are more likely to be productive in outlining systemic interrelations in populations experiencing changing situations than in those with stable situations (cf. Lees and Bates 1990 ; McCabe 2004 ; Vayda 1983 ).

Historical ecology offers valuable insights to scholars from all disciplines interested in global environmental change, as well as a bridge between the social sciences and the humanities. History represents the recent record of what we know as the longer record of evolution, except that the historical record tends to be more detailed, more nuanced, and closer to contemporary conditions and offers provocative insights into alternatives to our current environmental dilemma. Global models tend to be coarse in scale and lack anything like an adequate representation of human variability and real biotic differences. One of the current and most exciting areas of research is the collaboration of paleoclimatologists, archaeologists, and historians in reconstructing the record of the past 300 years and eventually of the past 6,000 years (Johnson et al. 2005 ). Landscape history (Crumley 1994 : 6) refers to the study of changing landscapes over time and in space. Human beings adapt to and bring about modifications in ecosystems—and have done so for thousands, if not millions, of years. Historically informed environmental analysis is a necessity if for no other reason than to correct the misperception that past environments were “pristine” and that only recently have humans begun to have an impact on the earth (Jacobsen and Firor 1992 ). Hardly any spot on earth is unaffected by human action, and humans have brought about changes, both positive and negative, in all landscapes. This record of human impact on environment offers a rich menu of choices we have made and their consequences, providing a view of alternatives much richer than a focus on the present would ever provide—choices to avoid and alternatives to be taken. Historical ecology brings together the approaches of ethnography, archaeology, history, and paleoscience to address environmental issues at regional and global scales (Crumley 1994 ), but the marriage of environmental history with historical ecology has not been consummated (Winterhalder 1994 ). The differences between these two approaches come from the former coming from the discipline of history and therefore being reluctant to theorize, while the latter sees itself as a research program that emphasizes agency and historical context. It is not an insurmountable problem and is one that could be resolved by more interaction, given the desire of some environmental historians to ally themselves with ecological anthropological theory (Wooster 1984 ). To focus together on a given historical problem or landscape is likely to be the way forward.

In a recent and important volume, William Balée and Clark Erickson ( 2006 ) present historical ecology as a research program distinct from previous approaches. They suggest that their strategy is distinct from that of landscape ecology because they focus on how human beings bring about changes in landscapes. They take a strong position that there are no pristine environments but, rather, as soon as humans enter into an environment, it is made into a human landscape and modified by human actions for human objectives. They argue that human beings do not adapt to the physical conditions of the environment by adjusting their population size and settlement size to initial environmental conditions. Rather, they propose that humans transform those constraints into negligible analytical phenomena (Balée and Erickson 2006 : 4) through transformation of soils, drainage, cropping practices, and so on. Further, they dismiss cultural ecology, ecosystem ecology, adaptationist approaches, and systems ecology because they “ultimately deny human agency” in positively changing the environment over time (ibid.). While there is value in emphasizing how local populations modify an environment to achieve their goals (Balée 1998 ), it is an overstatement to say that the adaptation approaches deny human agency (Rival 2006 ).

One current and popular theoretical approach used by environmentally oriented anthropologists and geographers is that of political ecology. Recently, the section on cultural ecology of the Association of American Geographers, for example, was renamed the section on cultural and political ecology (cf. Jarosz 2004 ). Human ecologists have become increasingly aware that power relations affect human uses of the environment. We are now aware of the role of environmental movements in exerting pressure on political bodies, corporations, and institutions. There is a renewed awareness of the potential value of human ecology in influencing policy and understanding the future of how humans impact the environment (Brosius 1999 ; Greenberg and Park 1994 ).

Few if any places in the world today are untouched by global forces such as climate change, capitalism, media, and the reach of the United Nations (Blaikie and Brookfield 1987 ; Braudel 1973 ; Rappaport 1993 ; Wolf 1982 , 1999 ). We cannot ignore in environmental analysis the ways these relationships of local to global systems lead to particular outcomes (Moran 1982 ).

Political ecology bears great affinity with political economy, as both explore the role of power relations in affecting human uses of the environment, particularly the impact of capitalism on developing societies (Brosius 1997 , 1999 ; Gezon 1999 ; Kottak 1999 ). Unlike political economy (with its central interest on class relations), political ecology is centered on the ravages that capitalism brings upon the environment and on human-habitat relations (Johnson 1995 ; Lansing 1991 ; Peet and Watts 1994 ; Rappaport 1993 ). It has been noted that political ecology has a tendency to privilege the local scale as more desirable than other scales, often viewing larger scales as oppressive of the local, and that this “local trap” can lead to major analytical errors (Brown and Purcell 2005 ). As a relatively new approach, political ecology still lacks a robust theory or a settled paradigm (Biersack 1999 ). The scale preference noted above is just one of several philosophical and theoretical traps that remain to be solved. As it matures, one sees some trends developing closer to the concerns of the environmental social sciences (Bates and Lees 1996 ; Crumley 1994 ) while others develop closer to so-called critical theory and cultural studies (Biersack 1999 ; Peet and Watts 1996 ).

At present, the bulk of political ecological analysis has stayed well within the concerns of the social sciences and distant from the physical and biological sciences in its data collection and methods of research. It has been more concerned with cultural and political critique and has only rarely presented a substantive body of environmental data as part of the analysis of political ecology. In short, it has been stimulating on the politics but less substantive on the environmental side. Vayda and Bradley Walters ( 1999 ) take issue with what they consider to be the dominant role claimed for political and political-economic influences in advance of the research (Bryant and Bailey 1997 ) instead of empirically examining a broader set of factors in which the outcome of what is most important is not known in advance. Lisa Gezon ( 1997 , 1999 ), among others espousing political ecology, focuses on examining how people engage politically in contesting access to resources but only rarely presents environmental data on the resource being contested. Vayda and Walters ( 1999 : 170) argue that ignoring the biological data can lead to unwarranted conclusions about the primacy of political influences. This may be a sign of political ecology’s need to address the valid concerns of environmentalism and other political causes. But if its results cannot be integrated with the enormous efforts at understanding human dimensions of global change, conservation biology, environmental NGOs, and other local and regional agencies engaged in environmental protection, it may grow marginal to the very policy world it wishes to influence. It is important for political ecologists to join biophysical scientists in examining together the complex forces at play. As any other complex adaptive system, human ecosystem outcomes are nonlinear, have emergent properties, and can be remarkably counterintuitive. Political ecology and other ecologies used by environmental social scientists need to seek ever new ways to integrate knowledge and advance understanding of the complexities inherent in ecological systems.

One of the fields that expanded in reaction to environmental problems was institutional analysis. The field of institutional analysis has been interdisciplinary from the beginning, drawing on anthropology, sociology, political sciences, economics, and geography, among other disciplines, but fundamentally concerned with the management of common-pool resources (Acheson 2006 ; Agrawal 2003 ). There is significant overlap between political ecology and institutional analysis but enough differences in terms of intellectual community, research framework, and design to treat their development as distinct.

During the 1960s and the early 1970s debates on the catastrophic effects of human behavior, the uncontrolled increase in population and pollution, in addition to the dangers of irreversible environmental damages caused by overexploitation of natural resources at local and global scales, triggered the development of a variety of government regulations and policies to reduce and control the impact of human activities on the earth’s resources (McCay and Acheson 1987 ). The drive to regulate through government intervention was made even more urgent by an extremely influential paper by Garrett Hardin ( 1968 ) published in the journal Science. Based on this work, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” the unsustainable exploitation of natural resources and environmental services, caused by an increase in population and maximization of per capita consumption in the absence of rules of use, could be controlled only through privatization or centralized government. This oversimplification of common-pool resource management (Dietz et al. 2003 ; Ostrom et al. 1999 ) stimulated an extremely fertile area of investigation, focused on institutional arrangements to function as mediator between population and natural resources.

Institutional analysis of empirical case studies based on ethnographic work carried out by anthropologists soon uncovered the existence of a variety of successful institutional arrangements for the management of natural resources (McCay and Acheson 1987 ; Ostrom 1990 ). This analysis not only revealed that humans were not inherently destructive of their environment but also showed that what can be characterized as rational behavior (i.e., individuals maximizing some objective function) does not necessarily result in the negative outcomes Hardin suggested (Ostrom 1990 ). Research efforts within the largely interdisciplinary community involved with institutional analysis helped to identify two nodes that could contribute to solve the problem of common-pool resource management: restricting access to resources and creative incentives for responsible use. They also recognized several challenges facing the global commons (e.g., oceans, atmosphere, fisheries), among them the problems involved in expanding local- and national-level arrangements to manage global environmental resources, the effect of cultural differences in defining common rules, the primacy of national political and economic interests, understanding the complexity introduced by the interaction of various resources, and the rapid rate of environmental and social change (Brondízio et al. 2009 ; Ostrom et al. 1999 ).

Attention to common-pool resources occurred parallel to and in connection with the rise of indigenous and local social movements and reclamation of access to resources. This occurred as a reaction to expanding agrarian systems into land held under various institutional arrangements, a boom in the creation of parks in previously occupied forests, and a looming crisis for global fisheries. Building upon the now classic work of political scientist Elinor Ostrom ( Governing the Commons , 1990 ), this field has developed with a rare combination of theoretical concern (e.g., collective action, game theory) and applied contributions. It arrived at a consensus about several elements significant to the successful management of common-pool resources at least at the local level. Thomas Dietz et al. ( 2003 ) discussed some of the key elements for effective management of common-pool resources: (1) effective, clear, and low-cost monitoring of resources; (2) moderate rates of change in resources and social settings; (3) intense communication and dense social networks within communities (also defined as high social capital); (4) the possibility of excluding outsiders from the resource at low cost; and (5) common agreement and support for the institutions in place.

A combination of “actor”- and “community”-centered approaches was particularly suitable for framing and testing the environmental outcomes of specific institutional arrangements. This line of investigation was formalized, for instance, in the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework (Tucker and Ostrom 2005 ). In the words of Catherine Tucker and Ostrom ( 2005 : 87), IAD depends on “theories of rational choice, collective action, common property, and social capital,” and it focuses on “the action situation, which is composed of participants, positions, actions that respond to information and relate to potential outcomes, and the costs of benefits associated with actions and outcomes.” Environmental conditions were important in this approach since they influenced the actors’ choices and defined part of the single actor’s assets and information.

Research on institutional analysis has also centered attention on scaling up lessons learned at the local level to larger scales (Berkes 2006 ), which is indicative of the strong presence of institutional perspectives within interdisciplinary research programs concerned with human dimensions of global environmental change (Young et al. 2008 ). Several examples illustrate the productive engagement of anthropology with institutional research, such as studying the intersection of community management and policy intervention in irrigation (Trawick 2001 ), fisheries and markets (Acheson 2003 ; McCay 1998 ), comanagement systems (Castro and McGrath 2003 ), and commodity markets (Brondízio 2008 ; Tucker 2008 ), among others. This research community continues to grow in an interdisciplinary manner, taking a less dogmatic approach toward the determinants of change in human and environmental systems. Recent efforts in institutional analysis have focused on developing a social-ecological system (SES) framework to support multilevel interdisciplinary research (Ostrom 2009 ). The basic structure of Ostrom’s SES framework is organized in four main domains of analysis (resource systems, resource services and units, governance systems, and actors), each of which has a nested set of tiers of level-specific variables (McGinnis 2011 ; Ostrom 2009 ; Nagendra and Ostrom, submitted to Ecology & Society ). An SES allows for the development of a shared lexicon of variables at different levels, data types and code systems, and integration, and as such it represents a promising tool to support collaborative research and cumulative knowledge on human-environment interaction.

1.4 A Road Map to the Chapters

Chapters in this volume embody the challenges of linking disciplinary expertise and interdisciplinary approaches to the practice of HEI research. In different degrees, chapters contribute ways of overcoming deterministic explanations (cultural, environmental, technological, or otherwise) in favor of historically and politically situated human interactions with the environment. We are aware that this coverage is not exhaustive, but it offers a microcosm of contemporary HEI research in terms of thematic, theory and methodology, level of analysis, and regional coverage. Drawing on research from eleven countries across four continents, chapters bring perspective from various specialties in anthropology and human ecology, institutional analysis, historical and political ecology, geography, archaeology, and land change sciences.

The ensemble of chapters in this volume also aimed at providing, although not all inclusive, a comprehensive sample of theoretical approaches and levels of analysis, regional problems, methodological design, and data collection tools, lending themselves useful to comparative research and to the training of graduate and undergraduate students. The rich array of methods deployed across chapters includes various applications of remote-sensing data (illustrating various forms of fusion of data with different spatial resolution); standard and participatory GIS; statistical, archival, and policy analyses; market surveys; and institutional analysis tools (e.g., IAD), in all cases informed by field research. This is perhaps the hallmark feature of contemporary HEI, that is, the imperative of understanding issues from both a bottom-up perspective informed by the empirical reality of people and localities, analyzed however within a regional framework. Chapters break away from reductionists’ disciplinary confines to illustrate cross-sectional, longitudinal, and comparative approaches applied to indigenous, rural, peri-urban, and urban contexts. Field research techniques include a range of ethnographic and standard survey tools used to collect sociodemographic, health, and nutritional data; household- and community-level organization; institutional analysis; experimental economics; vegetation ecology; land-use/cover change (LUCC) inventories; and not least archaeological techniques.

The four parts are organized to reflect approaches to four dimensions of HEI research: health and adaptation approaches, land change and landscape management approaches, institutional and political-ecology approaches, and historical and archaeological approaches. These parts reflect not only attention to different societal problems but illustrate the complementarity of different analytical foci to these problems. While the book is organized in four thematic parts, one will find significant cross-sectional overlap in research approaches and underlying concepts across chapters. This indicates the shared conceptual and methodological basis and shared terminology within the interdisciplinary HEI research community. It is a recognition that the issues at hand cannot (and should not) be approached in isolation, that is, as contained within the domains of either social or physical science. It is this shared understanding of theory, concepts, and methods that offers a metalanguage for collaborative and comparative research addressing problems of societal interest. We see common underlying themes and factors intrinsic to HEI being analyzed across chapters, such as local livelihoods, the impacts of development and policy making, trajectories of urbanization, community and household change, changes in property regimes, conflicts between people and protected areas, and the pressure of globalization on resource systems. One of the underlying crosscutting themes is LUCC. This is not surprising, as it represents an integrative theme in HEI that links external pressures, human behavior and decision making, institutions, and biophysical process from local to global scales. Chapters ground the analyses of these themes in historical and institutional contexts, paying attention to trajectories of change and the interplay between sociodemographic, cultural, environmental, and political-economic variables; in other words, they approach problems by avoiding deterministic interpretations or decontextualized analysis.

The first part of the book brings together three dimensions of research on population health and adaptation, which capture, on one hand, the long-term impact of national development projects and regional transformations on indigenous people, and, on the other hand, emerging infectious diseases. The latter is a growing field of research that opens new interdisciplinary bridges between social, environmental, biological, and medical sciences in HEI research.

These chapters illustrate applications of several theories relevant to HEI research, while placing particular studies within broader trends of fertility, nutritional, and epidemiological transitions. The first and second chapters are unique for their rich longitudinal ethnographic perspectives capturing the ways development programs and major sociocultural transformations around and within indigenous areas have contributed to change the lives and livelihoods of indigenous people in lowland South America and the highlands of Tibet. By placing cases within broader comparative trends, these chapters speak to issues relevant throughout the world. The third chapter, on the other hand, benefits from a case study approach to reveal relationships between environmental and socioeconomic change in the spread of important global diseases such as SARS, Nipah virus, Ebola, malaria, and Lyme disease. Placing infectious diseases within the context of different forms of people-wildlife interaction, the chapter reviews pathways related to wildlife consumption, different forms of LUCC, and primate-based ecotourism. In discussing these pathways, it calls attention to the ways human behaviors act as direct or indirect drivers of change facilitating the spread of infectious diseases. This analysis is particularly relevant to inform our understanding of current and future trends in infectious diseases and possible mitigation pathways.

Chapters in Part II offer a rich array of studies on land change and landscape management across four continents, addressing problems of wildlife management, people and protected areas, and forest conservation across a range of private, public, and common-property regimes. As other chapters in this volume, it contributes to the emerging literature on landscape management and ecosystem services, in particular, by bringing attention to institutional arrangements, policy and economic incentive systems, and sociodemographic and cultural dimensions influencing decision making. The range of research approaches is equally informative to HEI research as it combines participatory GIS and qualitative methodologies, meta-analysis of case studies, institutional analysis, and a variety of remote-sensing techniques coupled with field assessments. Chapter 5 uses a participatory GIS and qualitative approaches to integrate the views of different stakeholders involved with red deer management in Scotland. It focuses on understanding (and finding solutions to) the mismatches between deer ecology and the institutional organization of landscapes bounded by different property and management regimes. Chapter 6 , on the other hand, reveals a gradient of sociodemographic and economic conditions surrounding protected areas throughout India. Reviewing the drivers and pressures on 15 protected areas, four of which are studied in detail, it calls attention to the challenges of conservation in areas of high population pressure. As the previous chapter, it calls attention to the importance of considering conservation within a landscape perspective and the limits of conserving islands of resources in an increasingly interconnected world. Chapter 7 provides a comprehensive overview of forest protection in private areas in the United States; it highlights different forms of interactions between private and public decisions regarding the use of forest resources. Using an institutional perspective, it offers a useful approach to examine forests as bundles of property rights and bundles of ecosystem services interacting differently at different scales. Finally, Chap. 8 focuses on the challenges of monitoring landscapes representing a gradient of land-cover types in the African continent. Three case studies (Uganda, Botswana, and Namibia) are examined in detail to review the overlap between vegetation gradients and institutional arrangements representing different types of management areas.

Expanding on approaches to institutional analysis illustrated in the preceding part, Part III brings together five cases discussing the role of local histories, national policies, infrastructure change, and economic pressures and opportunities upon the evolution of institutional arrangements affecting natural resource management and urbanization. Chapters provide analysis representative of different social groups—from farmers and fishery communities to urban residents—living along a gradient of rural-urban settlements across the Americas. They illustrate the sophistication of institutional approaches in incorporating multiple methodologies and research tools, including longitudinal and cross-sectional approaches, experimental economics, remote sensing and GIS, surveys, and institutional analysis frameworks (i.e., IAD). Benefiting from longitudinal ethnography and historical research, Chap. 9 provides a long-term perspective to the evolution of institutional arrangements in the Amazonian floodplains. It examines the roles of federal agencies, NGOs, local fisheries unions, and local residents and reviews the advances and pitfalls of efforts to regularize and regulate land tenure and local resource management systems. Chapter 10 brings an experimental economics perspective to examine the role of incentives and sanctions on rural populations’ behaviors toward natural resources in Colombia. It calls attention to the limits and potentially counterproductive results of penalty systems on small farmers’ land-use decisions. Chapter 11 takes a comparative perspective to examine small farmers living within and around national forests in two contrasting regional realities of Brazil, that is, the Atlantic Forest in the state of São Paulo and the lower Amazon in the state of Pará. It pays particular attention to the role of national policies affecting small farmers in protected areas, some of which encourage production while others restrict their ability to make land-use decisions in areas of national forests. Building upon long-term ethnographic research, Chap. 12 provides a careful review of phases of institutional evolution in rural Honduras and its implications for local well-being and the forest environment. Integrating remote-sensing analysis and local socioeconomic indicators, it points to the mixed outcomes of economic and institutional changes to the local population. Closing this part, Chap. 13 focuses on the fast process of urbanization in the United States and the differential roles of federal, state, and local land-use policies in shaping the directions of urbanization and exurbanization. Contextualized within a broader literature review, it examines in detail urbanization cases in the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Arizona and integrates institutional and policy analysis within a spatial framework, which allows the authors to compare the outcomes of different land-use policies and their regional particularities.

Finally, Part IV is dedicated to studies highlighting the value of historical and archaeological approaches to HEI. Ranging from decadal to centennial to millennial, these cases employ a range of methods to study trajectories of land-use intensification resulting from demographic and economic pressures and mediated by institutional arrangements and property systems. Chapters illustrate the influence of colonial policies in Uganda, discuss a unique group of colonists from Japan in post-WWII Brazil, and suggest the expansion of manioc-based agriculture in the Amazon resulting from European conquest. As in previous parts, one finds a diverse set of methodologies and evidence supporting historical approaches to HEI. Together, these chapters illustrate the integration of archival research, institutional analysis, meta-analysis of published studies, remote sensing of various time depths, vegetation ecology, and archaeological field investigation. Chapter 14 describes the fascinating history of Japanese colonization in the Amazon and their trajectories toward a leading position in global black-pepper production following WWII. After a crash in the black-pepper economy, the community pioneered intensive agroforestry using local and exotic fruit crops. The study goes further in examining the consequences of agroforestry intensification for land-cover change, carbon sequestration, and other ecosystem services vis-à-vis a growing tendency toward conversion to pasture in the region. Chapter 15 extends the time scale to the late nineteenth century to examine the impact of English colonial policies on land tenure in the West Mengo region of Uganda. Using aerial photographs, satellite imagery, archival research, and several fieldwork methods to assess land use and institutional arrangements, it reveals that contrary to dominant narratives of degradation by smallholders, the area has experienced increased tree cover since WWII concomitant with increased pressure for natural resources from urban and rural areas. The closing chapter of the volume takes us back to fundamental questions about the intensification of agriculture in pre-Colombian South America and the rise of sociopolitical complexity. It offers a fascinating account of the connection between language dispersal and diversity and plant and agricultural domestication in the region. It flips traditional theories of environmental determinism explaining the structure and distribution of pre-Colombian Amazon societies. It argues for the lack of evidence indicating intensive agriculture as the basis for large pre-Colombian populations in the region’s floodplains and proposes a provocative hypothesis suggesting that diverse forms of intensive agroforestry, water resource management, and trade and regional resource acquisition as central to the economy of the region until the arrival of Europeans.

In the concluding chapter, authors review some of the underlying themes of the book and call attention to the recurrent challenges of developing cross-scale analysis and integrative frameworks to overcome deterministic approaches to HEI. We invite the reader to enjoy the richness of each localized chapter while exploring the various thematic, theoretical, and methodological threads connecting them independent of temporal and spatial scale or region of the world. Together, they are representative of a broader “epistemic community” concerned with advancing understanding of the interdependence of social and environmental problems through a network of interdisciplinary collaboration build upon the complementarity with disciplinary knowledge.

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Moran, E.F., Brondízio, E.S. (2013). Introduction to Human-Environment Interactions Research. In: Brondízio, E., Moran, E. (eds) Human-Environment Interactions. Human-Environment Interactions, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4780-7_1

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By DAVID CORREIA

Environmental determinism is the theory that the physical environment, including the climate, sets hard limits on human society. Scholars and authors who subscribe to this theory, most notoriously Jeffrey Sachs and Jared Diamond (more on them later), argue that we can look to patterns of environmental change or geographical difference as a way to understand trajectories of human and social development and, by so doing, explain why some societies flourish while others languish in poverty or even collapse.

Tread carefully around such arguments.

It’s a compelling and seemingly intuitive argument but, like Social Darwinism for example, it is not the science it makes itself out to be. As geographer Dick Peet has described it, environmental determinism is not rigorous scholarship but rather the “ideology of an imperial capitalism.”

Environmental determinism plagued academic disciplines such as anthropology, economics and geography in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries where, according to the late geographer Neil Smith, it “had an obvious appeal as a kind of royal shortcut to human science.” Its adherents found success as the willing tools of empire as they happily explained away the poverty and misery of imperialism (and its privileges) as a function of natural processes. Cold northern climates produce hardy and thrifty people who therefore flourish. Meanwhile, the unrelenting heat along the equator produces lazy people condemned to forever languish in patterns of poverty as predictable as the trade winds.

The theory lost its luster in the early to mid-twentieth century as decolonization scholars launched attack after attack. The intellectual backlash focused on geography, the discipline most closely associated with environmental determinism. Ivy league institutions in particular, embarrassed by such obvious associations with imperialism (they prefer their associations to be less transparent), dropped geography departments en masse. Chastened, the discipline back peddled, ashamed by geography’s enthusiastic service to imperialism.

The embarrassment meant that environmental determinism was largely ignored rather than buried, and as a result it has mounted a surprising comeback in recent years. Blame Sachs and Diamond for this. Sachs, while an economist at Harvard, repackaged old-fashioned environmental determinism as the “ecology of underdevelopment.”  As he wrote in a 1999 article in The Economist, “If it were true that the poor were just like the rich but with less money,” he wrote, “the global situation would be vastly easier than it is. As it happens, the poor live in different ecological zones, face different health conditions and must overcome agronomic limitations that are very different from those of rich countries. Those differences, indeed, are often a fundamental cause of persisting poverty.”

Here Sachs, a key advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, makes the crackpot but quintessential environmental determinist argument. The redistribution of wealth won’t resolve global inequality. Why? Because the geographical and unequal distribution of affluence and poverty is not a result of unequal power relations but rather is a function of complex geographic and climatic dynamics that have nothing whatsoever to do with histories of colonial conquest and capitalist expansion. The argument, of course, relies on a premise that ignores histories of conquest—what Marx, in reference to colonialism, called primitive accumulation.

"In times long gone-by,” wrote Marx in Capital, Volume I, in a brilliant parody of determinist apologia, “there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living…. Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labor, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly although they have long ceased to work."

For Marx, the unequal distribution of wealth was historically created in ruthless patterns of capitalist accumulation. In addition, as the quote above so sarcastically implies, the social relations that sustain this inequality require elaborate ideologies capable of explaining away plunder as the work of nature. Enter environmental determinism.

And so we get people like Sachs, who sees “the poor” as an ecological category living far off in a strange land instead of, as Marx sees it, as a social relation. In Sachs’ world, the poor were always bound to be poor while the rich were bound to be rich.

Sachs was able to make this argument because Jared Diamond had more recently parlayed it into a Pulitzer prize in his 1997 book Guns, Germs and Steel. Here he argued that we need not look to histories of colonialism to understand “the Fates of Societies,” (his subtitle for the book), but rather we must focus on physical geography and climate if we hope to understand why the world is divided into rich and poor. In his hands Europe’s ability to subjugate and colonize Africa was merely an accident “of geography and biogeography—in particular to the continents’ different areas, axes, and suites of wild plant and animal species. This is, the different historical trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate” (p. 401).

In a funny way, Diamond is right. Though his glib reduction of the history of violent colonialism to mere “real estate” is meant to draw the reader’s attention away from history and toward nature, to the close reader the reference does the opposite. Real estate, as most of us know well, is a thing of value only because it exists as private property. And property, of course, is about the power to exclude, forever enforcing the unequal distribution of resources as a way to preserve class difference.

In a scathing review in the journal Antipode in 2003, a host of prominent human geographers pilloried Diamond’s work. Andrew Sluyter called it “junk science.” Paul Robbins, more kind than Sluyter, chided Diamond for harnessing “a thoughtful and fascinating body of evidence to an explanatory dead horse.”

But Robbins was just being clever. He knew full well that you can’t beat a dead horse. Academics attacked arguments such as those by Sachs and Diamond because the cruel logic of environmental determinism is, unfortunately, anything but dead. And, in a troubling development, it has found purchase recently among climate change scientists.

Environmental determinism, it seems, has found a new home. No longer housed in geography departments, it has taken up residence in geology, environmental science and earth science departments.

This new “scientific” version of climate determinism took center stage at last month’s annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. There researchers from West Virginia University described the results of recent tree ring data from Asia in which, they argued, a particularly wet period in the thirteenth century corresponded to the rise of Ghengis Khan and the spread of the Mongols. According to researchers, wet conditions would have been particularly advantageous to nomadic Mongol herders.

Well maybe, but more likely the rise of the Mongols had something to do with the enormous size of Khan’s army. And apparently the past is littered by the wreckage of history’s climate victims. A host of recent studies have linked civilization collapse in Asia, South America and Africa to climate change. Just as in the past, we’d best tread carefully around such arguments.

For starters there may be a more useful correspondence to consider: the prevalence of claims by climate scientists of a link between climate and the collapse of past civilizations corresponds to the return of environmental determinist explanation in the mid-1990s. In 1995, around the same time that Diamond found success peddling his determinist snake oil, researchers reported in the prestigious journal Nature that population growth and drought was a likely cause of the demise of the Maya civilization. This work kicked off a cottage industry among climate scientists who suddenly found correspondences everywhere they looked: Mesopotamia, west Asia, Egypt, the Maghreb.

The recent raft of historical climate collapse stories are troubling for a number of reasons. First, what many of these studies refer to as “collapse” is in fact a slow population decline over a period of, often, hundreds of years. The “collapse” of the Maya occurred, for example, between 750 AD and 900 AD: hundreds of years of decline (what scientists mean by “decline”, by the way, is rarely defined in the scientific literature) that overlaps with a period of climate change. “Climate change,” like “collapse” also is frequently ill-defined; often these “abrupt” shifts in temperature and precipitation are, in fact, changes that occur over hundreds of years and millions of square miles. In the case of the Maya, the period of dramatic climate change occurred during a two-hundred year period between 800 AD and 1,000 AD—a period that marked the driest in the middle Holocene.

In addition, it should be noted that the increase in historical climate collapse research corresponds to the popularization of the wide acceptance of contemporary anthropogenic climate change research. Whether researchers are explicit or not, the rationale for historical work on the link between climate and collapse, particularly among funding agencies and the general public, has everything to do with the current climate crisis. These are the what’s-in-store-for-us stories that many peddle in the hopes that it may galvanize a broad-based movement to interrupt current patterns of global greenhouse gas emissions.

There are two problems with this thinking. First, we may want to ask what kind of contemporary climate politics the rhetoric of collapse engenders. There is, no doubt, a real urgency to the problem posed by climate change. The climate is indeed changing and transforming in ways not conducive to humans and other beings. The idea of a climate catastrophism, however, so prevalent in the rhetoric of historical climate change research, displaces and defers this urgency. If our fate is apocalypse, after all, what good is grassroots organizing? Moreover, the false panic of apocalyptic rhetoric provides the rationale to ignore the current suffering of the marginalized and the disenfranchised. When we strip away the apocalyptic rhetoric, we can see that we are not all in this together. But apocalyptic rhetoric forecloses the possibility of radical democratic politics. It makes politics, in fact, impossible. In its place we are forced to entrust our futures to a non-democratic techno-managerial elite, to the apparatuses of state bureaucracies, to the military, and even to the corporations who profit from climate catastrophism.

As a result of this state of affairs, catastrophism research proliferates and finds purchase among a powerful minority who fear the potential of radical and democratic climate change struggles—particularly the possibility that it could challenge existing patterns of class and race privilege. And they can’t have that.

This article appeared previously in CounterPunch , Climate & Capitalism , and La Jicarita

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Essay # 1. Rise of Environmental D eterminism:

The philosophy of environmental determinism is, perhaps, the oldest surviving philosophy that can be traced back to the classical antiquity. ‘Among the ancients, a people and their country were inseparable, and where unusual customs or strange physiognomies were found a cause was sought in one or other of the physical elements-climate, relief, or soil’.

Environmental determinism is an exclusive philosophy in human geography, centered around humankind—whether humankind to be looked upon as a ‘passive being’ or as an ‘active force’, reacting to his environment and changing it.

In other words, in the deterministic view of struggle and survival (i.e., the environment controls the course of human action), humans are not free to have their own choices and their achievements are to be explained as consequences of natural conditions.

Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, came out with the very old idea that ‘all history must be treated geographically and all geography must be treated historically’. This idea was an implicit recognition of determinism. Herodotus further observed that geography provided the physical background, the stage setting, in relation to which historical events occurred.

Hippocrates (c. 420 BC) contrasts the easy­going Asiatics living in a very favourable region with the penurious Europeans, who must seek through greater activity some amelioration of their poor environment. He also contrasts the tall, gentle, brave folk of the most windy mountain lands with the lean, sinewy, blond inhabitants of the dry lowlands.

Plato (428-348 BC) insisted that the observable things on the Earth were only poor copies of ideas, or perfect predicates from which observable things had degenerated or were in the process of degeneration.

However, he was not an extreme determinist like his predecessors; rather, he missed the chance to change the whole history of speculation concerning man-land relations by identifying man as a destructive agent. Eudoxus, a contemporary of Plato, however, developed the theory of climate based on increasing slope away from the Sun on a spherical surface, and emphasised the importance of climate in the life of man.

Aristotle (384-322 BC) is credited with the most speculative concept of environmentalism of his period. He markedly differed from Plato who was rather hesitant to accept the extreme form of determinism. Aristotle tried to conceptualise the varying habitability with differences of latitude.

He contended that the parts of the Earth close to the equator, the torrid zone, were uninhabitable; that the parts of the Earth far away from the equator, the frigid zone, were constantly frozen and also were uninhabitable; and that the temperate zone in between constituted the habitable part of the Earth. ‘Ekumene, the inhabited part of the Earth, was in the temperate zone, but much of it, said Aristotle, was not inhabited because of the ocean.

Emphasising the importance of climate in shaping the human skill and sustainability, Aristotle observes in his Politics:

‘The inhabitants of the colder countries of Europe are brave, not deficient in thought and technical skill, and as a consequence of this they remain free longer than others, but are wanting in political organization and are unable to rule their neighbours. The people of Asia, on the contrary, are thoughtful and skilful without spirit, whence their permanent condition is one of subjection and slavery’.

Greeks, however, living in the intermediate region, he considered, combined the best qualities of both.

Eratosthenes (c. 234 BC) redefined Aristotle’s zones of habitability, but he also emphasised the climatic determinism while describing the ekumene, the inhabited Earth. Posidonius, who lived shortly before the time of Christ, however, contradicted Aristotle’s assertion that the equatorial part of the Torrid Zone was uninhabitable because of heat.

The highest temperatures and the driest deserts, he said, were located in the temperate zone near the tropics and the temperatures near the equator were much less extreme. It is not clear whether he refuted the contemporary assertion of climatic control on human activities because his belief concerning the habitability of the equatorial region was overlooked.

Strabo (64 BC-20 AD) carried forward Aristotle’s standpoint on habitability in his book Geography. Like Eratosthenes, he also redefined the habitable part of the Earth, the ekumene, but held the view of environmental control on human activities. He sought to explain how shape, relief, climate, and space relations of Italy affected the rise and strength of Rome.

Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolemaus), who lived in the second century after Christ, repeated Aristotle’s heritage of equating habitability with latitude, and the effect of the position of the celestial bodies on human affairs.

With the death of Ptolemy came to an end the geographic horizons that had been developed and widened both physically and intellectually by the Greeks. But the concept of equating habitability with latitude developed by Aristotle did not die out and was carried forward by successive generations. However, the deterministic idea of the classical antiquity lacked empirical validation.

Essay # 2. Environmental Determinism in the Middle Ages :

The Middle Ages were a dark period for the development of science in Europe. At best, scholars made accurate, but sterile copies of the works of the ancients, rejecting anything which did not conform to the dogmas of the church.

Ptolemy became the major authority in the medieval Christian world, and his works were translated from Arabic into Latin by Plato of Tivoli in 1138. The geographical ideas of Aristotle, particularly of his deterministic concepts, were made available in Christian Europe by translation from the Arabic in the twelfth century.

The first medieval writer to make use of Aristotle was Albertus Magnus, whose book on the nature of places combined astrology with environmental determinism. The Greek theory of equating habitability with latitude became strongly implanted in medieval writings. Albertus even went beyond the Greeks.

From them, he accepted the idea that people who lived close to the limits of the heritable Earth turned black; but then he insisted that if black-skinned people should move into the temperate latitudes they would gradually turn white.

One of the major controversies in the medieval Christian Europe was ‘whether or not the torrid zone was habitable’. Cardinal Pierre d’Ailly, in his book published in the early fifteenth century attempted to explain climatic determinism, but he did not take any stand regarding the habitability of the Torrid Zone. Aeneas Silvius (Pope Pius II) in his book published in the mid-fifteenth century, while subscribing to the deterministic idea, insisted on the possibility that the Torrid Zone was habitable.

The Arab scholars during the medieval period greatly subscribed to the Greek idea of environmental determinism though some of them contradicted Aristotle’s zone of habitability by new findings based on observation. One of the earliest Arab scholars’ lbn-Hawqitl insisted on the fact that considerable number of people lived in those latitudes that the Greeks thought to be uninhabitable.

His assertion was based on his voyage along the African coast to a point some 20° south of the equator. Nevertheless, he supported the idea of environmental control on human affairs.

Al-Masudi, who died about 956 in Egypt, was clearer in his assertion on environmental control. He was quite emphatic in describing the effect of environment on the mode of life and attitudes of people. To him, ‘the powers of the Earth vary in their natural vegetation and topography’.

Al-Maqdisi, who in 985, prepared a new division of the world into 14 climatic regions, also described human activities, particularly in the torrid and temperate regions, emphasising the importance of climate on human actions.

Al-Biruni in his book on India (Kitab-al-Hind) in 1030 also made implicit references to the impact of monsoon on the Hindu culture, particularly while describing the cultural landscape and the socio-economic institutions of contemporary India. His views on the monsoon were based on his visit to India.

Ibn-Sfiia or Avicenna, who is credited with the concept that ‘mountains were being constantly worn down by streams and that the highest peaks occurred where the rocks were predominantly resistant to ‘erosion’, also referred to the natural laws bringing changes in the landscape. It was a deterministic view, highly idealistic in nature’.

Ibn-Batuta, who travelled widely during the fourteenth century, confirmed what Ibn-Hawqal had implied earlier that the Torrid Zone in East Africa was not torrid and that it was occupied by numerous native populations as the environment there suited them. Nevertheless, he was an ardent supporter of the deterministic concept.

Ibn-Khaldun was the last Arab scholar to have contributed to and enriched the medieval muslim deterministic concept. His book Muqaddimah, in 1377, begins with a discussion of man’s physical environment and its influence, and also with man’s characteristics that are related to his culture or way of living rather than to the environment.

He repeated the old idea of climatic determinism that the people turned black when they lived too close to the Sun and that when black people moved to the temperate zone they gradually turned white and produced white children.

The physical environment impressed its characteristics on people in many subtle ways. Ibn-Khaldun insisted that the momadic culture was expressive of the desert environment. It may be said that he was the first scholar to have turned his attention especially to man-environment relations.

Essay # 3. Renaissance and Determinism :

Though the medieval Arab scholars strongly contradicted Aristotle’s Ptolemic concept of habitable zones, but they strongly subscribed to the idea of determinism. However, the idea of environmental determinism was revived with full enthusiasm in Western Europe during the renaissance. Explorations, discoveries, voyages and expeditions to different parts of the world from the early fifteenth century onwards substantiated the idea of determinism with new information.

In 1490, almost 20 years after the first Portuguese ship crossed the equator into the southern hemisphere without burning up, an Italian writer published a compendium in which he described the Torrid Zone as sterile and uninhabitable.

Notwithstanding the revival of the idea of determinism during the renaissance, the German cosmographer Sebastian Munster hardly made any explicit reference to the idea of determinism. However, Cluverius’s book on Italy, published posthumously in 1624, and his six-volume compendium of geography, which also appeared in the same year, did contain some references to the concept of the habitability zones.

British scholar, Nathaniel Carpenter, who prepared a compendium in English, gave numerous examples to show that human character was determined by climate. He fully accepted the Aristotelian Ptolemaic concept that the habitability of a place was a function of its latitude.

The enlargement of geographic horizons during the Age of Exploration provided much speculation regarding the influence of the natural environment on human behaviour. Jean Bodin, in 1566, sought to describe the people of northern lands as brutal, cruel and enterprising; those of the south as vengeful, cunning, but gifted with the capacity for separating truth from falsehood. Inhabitants of temperate regions are more talented than those of the north, more energetic than those of the south and they alone possess the prudence necessary for command.

One of the most influential of the eighteenth- century determinists was the French political philosopher, Montesquieu. One of the major themes in his work on laws had to do with the influence of climate on politics.

He sought to explain the determining effect of climate and soil on the character of the people as a guide to the law-giver. People in cold climates are stronger physically, more courageous, more frank, less suspicious and less cunning than those of the south who are like old men, timorous, weak in body, indolent and passive.

Northerners who go to live in south quickly lose their vigour and acquire the passivity of those around them. Consequently, the hot climate is the cause of immutability of religion, manners, customs, and laws in the eastern countries. Legislators must take cognizance of these physical facts.

Soil (i.e. ‘the goodness of the land’) is less potent than climate, but nevertheless has great influence on the form of government. Monarchies are more frequency found in fruitful countries, and republics in sterile ones. The barrenness of the Attica soil established there a democracy, and the fertility of Lacedaemonia an aristocratic institution.

However, Kriesel (1968) points out that a careful study of Montesquieu’s works shows that he recognised the importance of other factors than climate alone—such factors as religion, the maxims of government, precedents, and customs. In any one country, as some of these factors act with stronger force, the others are weakened. Kriesel, therefore, describes him as a possibilist rather than an environmental determinist.

Nevertheless, Montesquieu was very persuasive in his discussion of the effect of differences of climate on behaviour. In fact, he drew up generalisations about climatic conditions by continents rather than by zones of latitude. Yet, he made the theory of climatic influence so plausible that these ideas persisted long after his time.

‘The aim of the writers of the renaissance period, like that of their predecessors, was to understand the variation in the character of human types. They did not start from an interest in the earth; natural forces were mainly called in to supply reasons for human variation which otherwise were inexplicable…. Consequently, there was no systematic approach; each writer drew conclusions from his own experience and contradictory conclusions were common’.

The eighteenth-century geographers, in fact, were not very much active in the framing of the concepts of determinism. One of the reasons was that contemporary geography was yet to become anthropocentric; moreover it was still dominated by the conviction that its function was purely descriptive.

Human’s relation to its environment was not looked upon as a proper subject for geographical research. Nevertheless, many of the current concepts were incorporated in the geographical descriptions of different parts of the Earth.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was not a true determinist; rather he set forth a new concept of a chorological science, i.e. a subject which studies things which were mutually coordinated; not subordinated, in space. He believed that the geographical synthesis is distorted when nature is regarded as dominant and man as subsidiary. Nevertheless, he provided a short description, discussing the local geographical condition as having influenced the inhabitants on the coast of New Holland, and few more things like the impact of climate on the nature of man’s sustainability.

August Zeune (1808), however, in his attempt to define natural regions by their unique interrelations of all physical and biological phenomena, was led almost inevitably to develop the thesis. ‘Spaniards’, he observed, ‘must be lazy, languishing, sensual, and inflammable with all the burning passions natural to a hot climate. In like manner the speech of peninsular Italy on account of the proximity of the sea has many sibilants and almost no gutturals, just as Low German, because the moist air of the north coastal lowlands is softer and more drawling than the harsher, quicker High German of the upland regions further south’.

Essay # 4. Environmental Determinism in the Nineteenth Century :

The nineteenth-century geographers were more involved in framing deterministic hypotheses and attempting at empirical validation of such hypotheses through field observations and experiences. Two of such geographers of the early part of the century—Carl Ritter and Alexander Humboldt—known for their ‘positivist’ approach based on empiricism, had attempted to give a new dimension to the idea of determinism and such hypotheses. Carl Ritter’s anthropocentric viewpoint fastened their growth.

Ritter’s view of science sprang from his firm belief in God as the planner of the universe. He regarded the Earth as an educational model for man, where nature had a God-given ‘purpose’ which was to show the way for man’s development. Ritter did not regard the shape of continents as accidental but rather as determined by God, so that their form and location enabled them to play the role designed by God for the development of man.

His teleological viewpoint, therefore, seems to be a manifestation of an ‘implied determinism. In fact, he sought to combine a basic teleological standpoint with a critical scientific precision, and offered an ambiguous explanation of determinism.

Many people said that Ritter was not a determinist because he was much cautious to indulge in facile generalisations. Furthermore, though he was interested in the effect of the Earth on man, the reciprocal action of man on Earth was to him equally significant.

He believed that the unity of nature would be severely jeopardised if nature was regarded as dominant and man as subordinate to it; he felt that there was a mutual interaction between the two. Ritter, in fact, pursued ‘idealism’ in his explanation to this concept of unity of nature vis-a-vis the hypothesis of determinism.

Humboldt viewed the problem of determinism in a remarkably clear scientific manner. He realised that environment influenced man, but earlier was not convinced that evidence was available to permit the formulation of a hypothesis.

Elaborating the influence of the configuration of the Mediterranean on the evolution of early civilisation, he writes, ‘The influence of the sea was speedily manifested in the growing power of the Phoenicians and in the rapid extension of the sphere of general ideas’.

Humboldt included man and his works in the concept of nature and natural areas, but he did not consider man as a primary determinant— probably because he worked in an area in which nature was so overwhelmingly dominant. This he experienced during his long American travel during 1799-1804. Primarily, Humboldt was a determinist.

Nevertheless, he believed in the ‘areal associations of natural and organic phenomena’ in which he emphasised, what Hartshorne had traced, a chorological viewpoint, i.e. mutual coordination and interaction between various kinds of phenomena in which nothing could be regarded as dominant or subsidiary. Humboldt provided an ‘aesthetic’ explanation to develop his concept of the unity of nature. However, he made a reductionist approach to the idea of determinism.

Frederic Le Play (1879), the renowned French sociologist of the century, provided a broad portrayal of the socio-geographic structure of human societies. He postulated that the development of the European people took place in three very different geographical environments, namely, the steppes, the maritime shores and the forested lands. The Asiatic steppes were the home of stable nomadic families under the control of patriarchs.

On the maritime shores of Europe with their fishing resources, the boat and the habitation were patrimony of the family which was made up of parents, all unmarried children, and the eldest named son with his family. Forested land covering great areas of much variety, with grass openings, heath and varied soils, was the birth place of the unstable family that had also developed in the urban environments of Europe and had spread to America.

Demolins, who was the pupil of Le Play, provides an analysis of the social structures of the world’s people on the basis of what he calls their ‘geographical environment’, their resultant type of work, and their resultant type of social organisation (based on the family unit). A historical interpretation runs through his work published in two volumes in 1901 and 1903.

Groups develop or become markedly characterised in a particular geographical (physical) milieu and then move onwards, so that their social systems undergo changes in new and different environments. The environment rigidly controls the most extreme form of geographic (environmental) determinism.

The basic idea of Demolins is expressed in the preface to the first volume as follows:

‘The primary and decisive cause of the diversity of peoples and races is the route which has been followed by the peoples. It is the route (the environment) which created race and social type…. It has not been an indifferent matter for a people which route they followed- that of Great Asiatic steppes, or of the Tundras of Siberia, or the American Savannas, or African forests. Unconsciously and fatally these routes fashioned either the Tartar Mongol type, Eskimo-Lapps, the Red-skin or the Negro. In Europe, the Scandinavian type, the Anglo-Saxon, the French, the German, the Italian, and the Spanish are also the result of the routes through which their ancestors passed before arrival at the present habitat’.

Demolins carried forward Le Play’s deterministic concept and stated that ‘the presence of an exclusive grass cover determines a uniform mode of work— art of pastoralism’ (ibid.). This means a complete dependence on animals, chief among which is the horse. The steppe is essentially adapted to the horse and it is the horse that adapts the steppe to man.

The horse fills many roles; it provides food, it confers mobility. Mobility makes possible the work of the shepherd, preserves the link between families, maintains religious unity of the steppe and on occasion enables the great horders of Genghiz Khan or Tamurlaine to assemble and to conquer. Patriarchal family is characteristic of the steppe.

Essay # 5. Environmental Determinism in the Twentieth Century :

The Davisian concept of ‘Ontography’ in 1902 was a mere manifestation of continuation of the Darwinian idea of ‘natural selection and struggle’. Ontography, therefore, is some kind of crude determinism, which is necessarily concerned with the ‘rational correlation of the items that fall under two categories: on the one hand, the items of inorganic conditions that constitute the physical environment of living forms, and on the other hand, the items of organic response made by living forms to their environment’.

The organic response of the living forms to their physical environment is expressive of adaptation to the environment, which necessarily involves ‘selection’ according to the suitability, and ‘struggle’ in the light of natural resistance. Ontography is an idealist concept expressive of the Darwinian determinism, which W. M. Davis conceptualised to account for his hypothesis on determinism within a geographical framework.

The most influential determinist of the early twentieth century, belonging to the Darwinian- Ratzelian heritage, was the American geographer Miss Ellen Semple. She wrote her book Influence of Geographic Environment (1911) to introduce Ratzel’s ideas in Anthropogeographie to the English- speaking world.

The opening para of the book makes the following statement:

‘Man is a product of the Earth’s surface. This means not merely that he is a child of the Earth, dust of her dust; but that Earth has mothered him, fed him, set him tasks, directed his thoughts, confronted him with difficulties that have strengthened his body and sharpened his wits’… she has entered into his bone and tissue, into his mind and soul’.

On the influence of climate, Semple says:

‘The influence of climate upon race and temperament has a direct and indirect effect cannot be doubted, despite an occasional exception. The northern people of Europe are energetic; provident, serious, thoughtful rather than emotional, cautious rather than impulsive. The Southerners of the sub-tropical Mediterranean basin are easy-going, improvident, except under pressing necessity, gay, emotional, imaginative, all qualities which among the Negroes of the equatorial belt degenerate into grave racial faults … the blond Teutons of the north are a bleached out branch of the brunette Mediterranean race. This contrast in temperature is due to climate. A comparison of northern and southern people of the same race and within the same temperate zone reveals numerous small differences of nature and character, which can be traced back directly or indirectly to climatic differences, and which mount up to a considerable sum total’.

Commenting on the deterministic hypothesis of Miss Semple, Derek Gregory (1981, 1986) points out that she ‘spoke of geographical factors and influences, shuns the determinant and speaks with extreme poison of geographic control’. But Montefiore and Willian (1955) argued that ‘claims of this sort failed to recognise that determinism was not a universal hypothesis capable of empirical validation, but rather a logical structure of cause- effect which required to be translated into the scientifically creditable vocabulary of ‘necessity’ and ‘sufficient’ conditions, and while many geographers had been drawn to ‘possibilism’ as an alternative, others have in fact attempted to establish a more rigorous, even ‘scientific’ determinism’.

E. G. Dexter (1868-1918) and Ellsworth Huntington (1876-1947) stressed the importance of climatic determination. Dexter in 1904 published an empirical study of weather influences which attracted wide interest and which significantly affected later workers.

He compared the daily temperature, atmospheric temperature, humidity, wind, sunshine, and precipitation with the records in New York City and in Denver, Colorado, in respect to the behaviour conditions investigated, and found statistically significant correlations between weather and conduct, suicide and other crimes.

Huntington was often described as an imaginative thinker and interpreter of the effects of climate on human life. Correlating the periods of drought with historical dates, he developed the hypothesis that the great outpourings of nomadic people from Central Asia, which led to the Mongol conquests of India and China and the invasion of Eastern Europe in the thirteenth century, could be explained by the drying up of the pastures on which the nomads were dependent.

He presented this view in his book The Pulse of Asia in 1907. In 1915, he wrote another book Civilisation and Climate, in which he developed the hypothesis that man’s civilisations could only develop in regions of stimulating climate and that the monotonous heat of the tropics would forbid attainment of the higher levels of civilisation. He did much to establish the fact that there have been significant post-glacial changes of climate and that these played an important role. In his last book, ‘Mainsprings of Civilisation in 1945, Huntington suggested that diet was as important as climate as an explanation of human energy.

One of the American geographers, Albert Perry Brigham, who was a contemporary of W. M. Davis had held a relatively mild approach to the hypothesis of determinism. His book Geographic Influence in American History appeared in 1903; the same year in which Allen Semple’s book on the same subject was published. Brigham emphasised the origin of what he called ‘geographic condition’.

Brigham in 1915 urged upon the geographers to proceed with caution and commonsense in asserting the existence of influences and that every possible test should be made to ascertain the validity of any general principles that were suggested.

He was especially critical of generalisations concerning the influence of climate. He appeared critical of vague and unproved assertions of climatic influence on racial character, skin colour, or man’s institutions. The infinitely variable factors of the total environment, he insisted, produce diverse results upon body and mind.

In America, particularly in the field of human geography, social Darwinism was under attack, and indeed most of the historians and other social scientists had already rejected it. Many geographers were also ready to follow Brigham in rejecting strict environmental determinism in avoiding simple cause and effect explanations for complex associations of things on the Earth’s surface. But not all the geographers were aware of the validity of the criticisms of Davis’s scheme of human response to physical controls.

The persuasive teaching of Semple, the creative work of Huntington, and to a lesser extent the work of Whitbeck (1926) continued to gain support for some kind of environmental control of human behaviour. Long after the physical cause and human response paradigm had been dropped, some geographers continued to use the language of ‘geographic factor’ and ‘environmental control’.

Sir Halford J. Mackinder, the lone British geographer of the early twentieth century who had carried forward the Darwinian paradigm of determinism in his early ideas, reached the conclusion that ‘no rational political geography could exist which is not built upon and subsequent to physical geography’. He also opined that history without geography was mere narrative and that since every event occurred in a particular time at a particular place, history and geography, which deal respectively with time and place, should never be separated.

Mackinder applied the Darwinian idea of selection and struggle in his first work The Geographical Pivot of History in 1904, in which he argued: ‘European-civilisation is the outcome of the secular struggle against Asiatic invasion … through the steppe. There came from the unknown recesses of Asia … in all the centuries from the fifth to the sixteenth, a remarkable succession of Turanian nomadic people … against the settled peoples of Europe. A large part of modern history might be written as a contemporary upon the changes directly or indirectly ensuing from these raids’.

The geographical pivot was inaccessible on all sides by natural barriers except to the Caspian Sea-Ural opening to the west which necessarily provided mobility for the Asiatic tribes to the European mainland. The horse and the camel were the main sources of mobility for the Asiatic nomads to carry on raids on the European natives. The idea of the horse- camel mobility of Mackinder resembled the view of Le Play of the nineteenth-century France, who also held that the horse was the only source of mobility in the steppe lands.

The famous dictum of Mackinder’s ‘heartland concept’ in his subsequent work Democratic Ideals and Reality in 1919- ‘who rules East Europe … commands the world’ sought to generalise what he had said in 1902 that no political geography could exist unless it was built on physical geography. Moreover, he attempted to generalise that East Europe was so positioned geographically vis-a- vis the Heartland that any attempt to command/ rule the Heartland necessarily required the control of East Europe.

The position of East Europe, according to him, was geographically so viable that the further warfare would be decided to a greater extent on the soil of East Europe. Mackinder’s generalisations of environmental determinism were, thus, based on historical evidences and contemporary political events. His generalisation, particularly of the expectation and pressure of the Heartland state on the European-Asiatic coastal lands, remained valid for some decades in international politics.

Russian geography had been traditionally exercised by the environmentalist thesis which received an important impetus particularly through the efforts of L. Mechnikov, N. Baranskiy and G. Plekhanov. However, Mechnikov was rather ambiguous in his approach to the environmentalist hypothesis. He pointed out that though ‘river as a synthesis of all physical geographical conditions was one of the factors that determined the development of human societies, but at the same time man had played a significant part in the formation of the geographical environment’.

He further stated that ‘one should seek the principle of the rise and character of primitive institutions and their subsequent evolution not in the development itself but in the relations between the environment and the capacity of the people inhabiting a given environment for cooperation and solidarity’.

N. Baranskiy in 1926 argued that ‘the influence of natural conditions on man is taken into account in the Marxist scheme of social development to the extent in which these natural conditions form a natural basis for the material productive forces which determine the productive relations and through them the legal and political superstructure and, finally, forms of social conscience.’ But this was attacked and finally devastated in 1938 when Stalin decreed that although the environment accelerates or retards the speed of development of society, ‘it was not a determining influence’.

In the post-Stalin era, Plekhanov came out with an explicit statement which resembled Baranskiy’s paradigm of 1926. Plekhanov asserted that the ‘peculiarities of the geographical environment determined the development of the productive forces, the development of the productive forces determined the development of the economic forces and directly after them also all the other social relations’.

The Marxian philosophy, for Plekhanov, appeared to be the application to social development of the Darwinian paradigm of the adaptation of biological species to the conditions of the environment. Before closing the discussion on environmental determinism, it is necessary to conclude that the hypothesis of determinism appears to be as old as the human history itself.

Different periods of human history since the classical antiquity had different perceptions about it, necessarily based on pre-conceived and ‘carried-over’ notions over centuries. The Age of Exploration and Renaissance in the early medieval period provided some material grounds to the hypothesis of determinism, so that some form of generalisations could be made on it.

During the early part of the nineteenth century, geographers, social and natural scientists and others sought for the empirical validation of the hypothesis of determinism, citing examples of how people responded to their environments. But it was not until the rise of Darwinism in the mid-nineteenth century that the hypothesis received a new scientific dimension to further its universal accountability.

It was made possible as a result of a ‘paradigm shift’ in the contemporary socio-biological thinking which tended to compensate weakness that remained in the hypothesis. The nineteenth-century Darwinian tradition seems to have well continued to the first half of twentieth century with much scientific precision, explanation and validation.

However, people in advanced societies, who were conscious of their material cultures and capacities vis-a-vis the natural control, sharply reacted to the extreme generalisations of the environmental determinism, and doubted their universal application/validation.

To some people, massive innovation-diffusion made the deterministic-paradigm inadequate to account for man’s creative genius, and creativity in shaping his environment. Therefore, an alternative paradigm was sought for. This led to the development of the paradigm of possibilism in which man was presented as an active rather than a passive agent.

Glacken (1956, 1967), however, attempted to identify three-different modes of nature-society or man-environment relations which appear to have permeated the history of Western thought:

1. Humanity in harmonious relationship with nature;

2. Humanity as determined by nature; and

3. Humanity as modified by nature.

The man as modifier and conqueror of nature has dominated modern thought though the other two perspectives have by no means been completely absent. Wittfogel (1929) made a forceful attack on the tenets of environmental determinism in modern geography in the late 1920s of the past century. He said that human labour organised in different social forms tended to mould nature into different material bases for economic development of regional societies.

This is what created the distinctive regional cultural traits, rather than, the environment per se. This man made himself- Societies are human creations rather than natural/environmental creations. Wittfogel, however, was not opposed to the idea of natural forms being a potent influence or factor in man’s life on the Earth.

To substantiate this view, he attempted to draw attention to the climatically determined need for irrigation which in the East (China and India) gave rise to a line of social development that was greatly at variance with the one followed in the rainfed agriculture being practised and pursued in the West, giving rise to entirely different kinds of civilisation in the two cultural realms.

Essay # 6. Darwinism and Determinism :

In geography; Darwinism was interpreted primarily as evolution in the sense of a ‘continuous process of change in a series of transformation’. Charles Darwin was primarily concerned with the mechanism of the change or, as The Origin was subtitled, ‘the preservation of favoured races in struggle for life’.

Darwinian ideas, in fact, revolutionised the early nineteenth century hypothesis on determinism. They provided a mechanical explanation to such hypotheses as an alternative to the ‘teleological explanation’ of Ritter and the ‘aesthetic explanation’ of Humboldt to the hypothesis of determinism.

The contemporary hypothesis on determinism, particularly since the mid-nineteenth century, seemed to have been greatly influenced by the major Darwinian themes which include:

(a) Change through time or evolution, a general concept of gradual or even transition from lower to higher or more complicated forms;

(b) Association and organism man as part of a living ecological organism; and

(c) Idea of natural selection and struggle.

The first theme of the Darwinian heritage sought to identify the forces and processes which tend to constitute the natural laws which, in turn, tend to cause changes within time-frames. Or, in other words, biological evolutionary processes necessarily manifest the operation or action of natural laws that the life had evolved from the amoeba through multitudinous forms to man under the selective action of natural forces. It was inevitable for the late nineteenth century geographers and other scientists to see in the differentiation of man the operation of natural laws.

The idea of change through time, or evolution, was taken up by the American geographer William Morris Davis in his famous cycle-of-erosion model of landform development in 1899. Even the subsidence theory of Darwin himself points to the fact of the operation/action of natural processes on the evolution of the coral reefs. The same standpoint seems to have been applied by the scientists in the latter part of the nineteenth century to account for the evolution of humankind.

Haeckel elaborated the idea of association and organism and outlined a new science ‘Ecology’ in 1869, which is the study of the mutual relations of all organisms living in one and the same place and of their adoption to their environment.

This science attracted the attention of geographers and was saturated with Haeckel’s materialistic philosophy. Man was only one of the organisms to be studied and was along with all other living things equally in the grip of surrounding forces. Perhaps Darwin’s most significant contribution to ecological thinking was to include man in the living world of nature.

The idea of ‘selection and struggle’ found its first legitimate expression in the view of British philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) who elaborated what is known as ‘Social Darwinism’. He believed that human societies closely resembled animal organisms and that human societies must struggle in order to survive in particular environment much as plant and animal organism’ do. Social Darwinism provided a new dimension to the contemporary thinking on determinism.

In fact, the Darwinian philosophy of selection and struggle seemed to have been necessarily based on cause-effect relationship as it sought to clarify the environmental influence, selection and adaptation depending upon the requirement of the way of life. Most Darwinian writers on the effect/influence/ control of environment were content to look for cause-effect relationships without enquiring too closely into the process.

Friedrich Ratzel (1844-1904) pioneered systematic human geography much on the basis of Darwinian philosophy and methodology, and he treated the contemporary hypothesis on determinism exclusively on a new explanatory dimension. He developed a new paradigm of natural science in human geography, in which he stressed the extent to which men lived under nature’s laws. He regarded cultural forms as having been adapted and determined by natural conditions.

Ratzel attempted to modify his environmental determinism in his later work. A different emphasis dominated the second volume of Anthropogeographie (1891) which discussed the concentration and distribution of population, settlement forms, migrations and diffusion of cultural characteristics. He did not merely explain phenomena in human geography in terms of natural conditions, but stressed the significance of the historical development and cultural background of populations.

The first volume (1882) treats the causes of human distributions, i.e. the dynamic aspect of geography, and the second, published 10 years later, deals with the facts of distribution, that is, the static aspect of geography. The first volume is an application of geography to history, and the second the geographical distribution of man’.

The Darwinian idea of ‘selection and struggle’ was explicitly used by Ratzel in his political geography, giving a new paradigm to the sub-branch. This idea, in fact, led Ratzel to develop what is called the ‘increasing space consciousness and conception’ on a national level.

In 1896, he provided a model for the spatial growth of states, in which he sought to give a ‘realist’ expression of the idea of selection and struggle through the concept of ‘lebensraum. ‘Just as the struggle for existence in the plant and animal world always centres around a matter of space, so the conflicts of nations are in great part only struggles for territory’.

It is clear that the organic analogy for Ratzel not only provided a simple and powerful model in analytical, but deterministic political geography, but also an apparently scientific justification for political behaviour. Through his new paradigm, Ratzel sought to justify the organic concept of Spencer, particularly in the light of idea of evolutionary struggle. The evolution and growth of states, therefore, are conditioned by the operation and action of natural laws under given time and space situations.

There is no doubt that Darwinism, necessarily, provided a new scientific impetus to the hypothesis of determinism, giving a new direction towards empirical validation of the hypothesis. About the same time or a little earlier than the publication of The Origin in 1859, the study of social statistics began to reveal an extraordinary regularity in social behaviour. Everything seemed to point to one and the same conclusion, that man was not as free as had been thought, and that his actions were largely controlled by natural or economic laws.

Environmentalism in history is well-documented in History of Civilisation in England by Buckle. To him, civilisations in Africa and Asia were most powerfully influenced by the fertility of soil and those in Europe by climate. Climate, he said, tended to influence labour in many ways.

Excessive heat enervates the labourer; a more moderate temperature invigorates him, while a short summer broken by a long winter in which low temperatures interrupt work encourages desultory habits. Less obvious, but equally closely connected is the relationship between climate and wages.

Buckle further pointed out that in a country like India, climate and fertility combined to produce dense population and low wages, an unequal distribution of wealth which in turn created inequality in the distribution of power and social influence.

A civilisation, he added, in the New World reflected the power of climatic influences. He continued that in India, Mexico, Peru, Egypt where Nature overpowers man, religion is one of complete and unmitigated terror. Everywhere the hand of nature is upon us, and the history of human mind can only be understood by connecting it with the history and the aspects of the material universe.

Buckle seeks to mention historical events as the outcome of man modifying Nature and Nature modifying man; yet it is Nature itself which determines when and how man shall be so active. In other words, natural powers are in every instance dominant; the determinism is complete.

The Darwinian environmentalism seemed to have no impact on the contemporary Russian thinking, simply because of the fact that in Russia itself greater studies of evolution were made. Those who conceived of the viewpoint of the role of man as passive, seemed to have developed independent standpoints, and they were mostly historians and social scientists, trained in geography.

The famous Russian historian, Sergey Solovyev, pointed out that the nature of a country had important significance in history as the national character to a large extent depended on it. Vasily Klyuchevsky studied the effect of the forests, steppes and rivers on the history of Russian people. He said that each of these separately, by itself, took a lively and original part in guiding the genre de vie of the Russian people.

The Russian historians and other scientists seemed to have rejected the more extreme form of environmental determinism stemming from Spencer and Ratzel, and also the use of biological analogy to describe sequences of landforms as proposed by Morris Davis.

However, some of the historians did support the ideas of climatic influence on national character or of the critical importance of the large Asian rivers in providing the setting for the development of early civilisations. But the geographers as a whole avoided such extremeness.

Environmentalism had its maximum development in the nineteenth century. Geographers, historians, social scientists and biologists made valuable contributions to its understanding. But the rise of Darwinism in the latter part of the century not only provided a new dimension to it, but also made room for some form of scientific validation of the hypothesis of determinism. The Darwinian legacy continued well beyond the nineteenth century, as more and more scientists and geographers of the twentieth century drew scientific bases for their empirical generalisations.

Essay # 7. Stop-and-Go D eterminism:

Striking a balance between extreme determinism and extreme possibilism, Griffith Taylor developed a new philosophy, called ‘stop-and-go determinism’ or neo-determinism, in the early 1940s. It may be, he stated, that the well-endowed parts of the world offer a number of different possibilities for making a living, but in some nine-tenths of the Earth’s land area nature speaks out clearly- This land is too dry, or too cold or too wet, or too rugged’. Any settlers who fail to heed this nature-given limitation must face disaster.

Elaborating his philosophy of ‘stop-and-go determinism’ Taylor observes- ‘Protagonists of the possibilist theory instance the carrying of fertilizer to the Canadian prairies, or the remarkable development of somewhat sterile northern Denmark as examples of human control which have determined the utilization of the regions concerned. I do not for a moment deny that man plays a very important part, but he does not take fertilizer to the ‘barren grounds’; nor would the Danes have developed their less attractive regions, if they had been free to choose among the good lands of the world.

They have merely pushed ahead in Nature’s ‘plan’ for their terrain. Even when their example is followed in other similar parts of the world it will only indicate that man has advanced one more stage in his adjustment to the limits laid down by nature. Man is not a free agent.

‘The writer then is a determinist. He believes that the best economic programme for a country to follow has in large part been determined by Nature, and it is the geographer’s duty to interpret this programme. Man is able to accelerate, slow or stop the progress of a country’s development.

But he should not, if he is wise, depart from the directions as indicated by the natural environment. He is like the traffic-controller in a large city, who alters the rate but not the direction of progress; and perhaps the phrase ‘stop-and-go determinism’ expresses succinctly the writer’s geographical philosophy’.

It will be seen that Nature has only ‘in large part’ determined the programme; man who plays an important part determines the rest. Moreover, man only follows nature’s programme if ‘he is wise’; presumably he can act foolishly, which admits the possibilist contention that within broad limits set by environment man can choose, at the very least Taylor concedes him the choice between wise and foolish action. Possibility of choice is also suggested by the name ‘Stop-and-Go Determinism’, since traffic lights are not usually placed on one-way streets which have no interconnections.

Commenting on the philosophy of ‘stop- and-go determinism’; Tatham remarks- ‘Man, not environment, judges an action as wise or foolish by reference to some aim or goal he considers desirable. Until such a goal has been set up, wisdom and folly have no exact meaning. Taylor’s definition suggests that the goal must be adjustment to Nature’s plan, the carrying out of Nature’s programme. From among the possibilities of wise and foolish action how man can recognize this plan? Obviously, as the proponents of possibilism admit, the opportunities offered by any environment are not all equal. Some demand little effort from man, others continual struggle; some yield large, others meagre returns. The ratio between effort and return can be looked upon as the price nature extracts from man for the particular choice he makes’.

Tatham further adds – ‘Once the possibility of alternative action is conceded, then it is difficult to see how ‘Stop-and-Go Determinism’ can claim that man is not a free agent. That his liberty is curtailed all agree. In no environment are the possibilities limitless, and for every choice a price must be paid; proponents of possibilism admit this but within these limits freedom to choose exists. Man makes his choice, but man himself judges its relative wisdom or folly by reference to goals he himself has established. Limits to man’s freedom beyond those generally recognised by possibilists are … those imposed by man’s conception of wisdom.

There is nothing indeed that contradicts the assertion of Febvre that “there are no necessities but everywhere possibilities and man as master of these possibilities is the judge of their use” … Despite the extreme Determinism phraseology, closer examination then reveals ‘Stop-and-Go Determinism’ to be very different from the old Determinism. It introduces the idea of choice, and since it conceives of choice being guided by consideration of a goal that is to be attained, it could just as logically be named ‘Pragmatic Possibilism’ or ‘Stop-and-Go Determinism’.

However, Taylor made it clear that he was not an old-fashioned determinist who sought to make extreme statements about the effect of climate on man, but who never sought to put their statements to scientific validation and examination. Here is what he had to say, with considerable satisfaction, about the outcome of his arguments concerning potential settlement in Australia- ‘Thirty years ago I predicted the future settlement pattern in Australia’.

At Canberra (in 1948) it was very gratifying to be assured by the various members of the scientific research groups there, that my deductions (based purely on the environment) were completely justified. This aspect of geography is Scientific Determinism.

The Marxist geographer of the former Soviet Union, V. Anuchin (1960) had identical standpoint on the philosophy which Griffith Taylor had developed in the 1940s. Anuchin still insisted, against formidable opposition, that determinism (in the sense of indirect causalties or mediation) was ‘one of the indispensable facets of dialectical thought’.

Indeterminism ‘sharply separates and counterpoises human society to the rest of nature’ and so ‘rejects geography as a science’. An argument like this was about more than scientific status, of course, and its political resonances were unmistakable.

Anuchin’s neo-determinism was charged with restoring ‘the causal connection among phenomena and the unity of the material world’, but at the same time it had to transcend the classical doctrine and understand the qualitative difference between various categories of the world.

In short, ‘monistic geography’ had to reaffirm the essentially materialist dialectic between man and nature. While recognition of this was at the heart of classical Marxism and was unequivocally accepted by earlier radical tradition in geography, it was suppressed in modern structural Marxism, and remained peripheral too much of modern Marxist and radical geography.

R. Peet observed that such a theoretical base was as yet ‘conspicuously weak’ and largely untouched. But the scars of the debate over environmental determinism are at last beginning to heal. The physical environment is no longer seen as the exclusive preserve of a physical geography estranged from the human and social sciences. In part, of course, this flows from (and feeds back into) the rise of political movements concerned about environmentalism and environmental issues.

It is also in part the product of development within physical geography itself, and particularly the emergence of an applied physical geography, and in part the product of developments within the human and social science. It is now apparent that the emergence of an structuration theory which has one of its concerns the constitutive character of society-nature relations has done much to clarify the significance of what Marx once described as the process whereby people act upon ‘external nature’ and change it and thereby simultaneously change their own nature.

Debate over environmental determinism and possibilism continued into the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and was actively pursued in the United Kingdom in the first decade after the Second World War. O. H. K. Spate in 1957 proposed a middle ground with the philosophy of probabilism (the view that although the physical environment does not uniquely determine human actions, it does nevertheless make some responses more likely than others—’human action was represented as not so much a matter of an all-or-nothing choice or compulsion, but a balance of probabilities’. This view was in fact perfectly compatible with the original Vidalian concept.

‘Thus the lengthy discussion among geographers about whether man is a free agent in his use of the Earth or whether there is a “nature’s plan” slowly dissolved as the antagonists realized the existence of merit in each case. Some geographers proceeded independently to study man-environment interactions outside the confines of these debates.

But while environmental determinism was a view strongly held and widely preached by geographers about whether man is a free agent in his use of the Earth, respect for the discipline declined somewhat in the eyes of the academic community at large, which rejected the paradigm. As a consequence, geography’s next paradigm, which had strong roots in environmental determinism, was very much an introspective and conservative one’.

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Essay on “Environmental Determinism”

The philosophies, approaches and practices which inform and flow from a concern with the environment are known as “environmental determinism.”

The essence of the deterministic school of thought is that the history, culture, lifestyle and stage of development of a social group, society or nation are exclusively or largely governed by the physical factors (terrain, climate, drainage, fauna and flora) of environment.

Image Source: theoceanproject.org

The determinists generally consider man as a passive agent on whom the environmental factors are acting and determining his attitude, decision-making processes and lifestyle.

An interest in the influence of the environment on people can be traced back to classical antiquity.

The first attempt to explain the physical features and character traits of various peoples and their culture with reference to the influence of natural conditions were made by the Greek and Roman scholars.

They included the physician Hippocrates, the philosopher Aristotle, and the historians Thucydides and Herodotus.

Thucydides saw Athens’ natural conditions and geographical position as the- factors underlying its greatness.

Aristotle explained the differences between Northern Europeans and Asians in terms of climatic causes.

He argued that the inhabitants of cold countries (Europe) are courageous, brave, but unintelligent, lacking in political organization and capacity to rule their neighbours.

He also thought that the people living in warm climates of Asia were intelligent but lacking in courage and so slavery is their destiny and their natural state.

The people of Greece, on the other hand, who occupy “the middle position (mid-latitudes) geographically,” he (Aristotle) sees as endowed with the finest qualities and thus destined by nature itself to rule all over.

The Greek scholars correlated the easy going ways of Asiatics living in the favourable environmental conditions, while the penurious Europeans had to work hard for some amelioration of their poor environment.

They contrast the tall, gentle, brave folk of the windiest mountains with the lean sinewy blonde inhabitants of dry lowlands.

Aristotle emphatically attributed the progress of certain nations to their favourable environmental conditions.

Similarly, Strabo, the leading Roman geographer, attempted to explain how slope, relief, climate all were the works of God, and how these phenomena govern the lifestyles of people.

Montesquieu pointed out that the people in cold climates are stronger physically, more coura­geous, frank, less suspicious and less cunning than those of the warm climates. The people of warm climates are timorous, timid, and weak in body, indolent, lethargic and passive.

The environmental determinism continued to dominate the writings of Arab geographers. They divided the habitable world into seven kishwars or terrestrial zones and highlighted the physical and cultural characteristics of races and nations living in these zones.

Al-Battani, Al-Masudi, Ibn-Hauqal, Al-Idrisi and Ibn-Khaldun attempted to correlate the environment with the human activity and their mode of life. Al-Masudi, for example, asserted that the land where water, is abundant, the people are gay and humorous, while the people of dry and arid lands are short-tempered.

The nomads who live in open air are marked by strength and resolution, wisdom and physical fitness.

George Tathan, a leading historian of the 18th century, also explained the differences between peoples with reference to the differences between the lands in which they lived.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant was also a determinist, who stated that the people of New Holland (Indonesia, East Indies) have half closed eyes and cannot see to any distance without bending their heads back until they touch their backs.

This is due to the innumerable flies which are always flying in their eyes. Kant further stressed that all the inhabitants of hot lands are exceptionally lazy and timid.

Timidity engenders superstition and in lands ruled by kings leads to slavery. Kant strongly argued for a scientific base to the study of geographical or environmental phenomena which he considered to be just as essential as the exact sciences.

In support of his hypothesis of influence of climate, he stated that animals and men who migrate to other countries are gradually affected by their new environment. For example, the brown squirrels which migrate to Siberia turn grey and the colour of white cows in winter turns grayish.

The environmental causation continued throughout the 19th century when geographers themselves used to regard geography above all as natural science.

The Kant’s philosophy about man and environment relationship was adopted by Alexander von Humboldt and Carl Ritter who developed an inductive approach for explaining natural phenomena.

Ritter, the leading German geographer, adopted an inductive approach and introduced the environmental determinism in the early 19th century.

Ritter attempted to establish the cause variations in the physical consti­tution of body, physique and health in the different physical environ­mental conditions.

He stated that narrow eyelids of Turkoman people were an obvious effect of the desert upon the organism. Many of his students attributed geography “as the study of relationship between the density of a people and the nature of their land”.

Many geographers of his school declared that their main task was to identify the influence exerted by geographical conditions on material culture and the political destinies of inhabitants of a given region, both past and present.

Humboldt, one of the founders of modern geography and a contemporary of Ritter, also asserted that the mode of life of the inhabitants of mountainous country differs from that of the people of the plain.

The deductive and mechanistic philosophy earlier advocated by Newton was continued in the work of Darwin.

In 1859, he published the classic work Origin of Species in which he charted the development of life, and advanced theories on evolution.

For the followers of determinism, this is the most significant publication since it suggests a relationship between environment and organism and, moreover, charts a develop­mental sequence.

The scientific milieu in the later half of the 19th and early 20th centuries was dominated in part by Darwin’s idea, deductive approaches and an acceptance of the Newtonian cause and effect relationships.

Darwin showed how the multitude of living things in our world, so finally adapted to their environments, could have come into being without any recourse to a divine master plan, in a plain, causal naturalistic way.

Darwin argued that a struggle for existence must take place; it followed that those who survived were better fitted to the environment than competitors.

Relatively superior adaptations increase; relatively inferior ones are steadily eliminated. The Darwin’s theory affected the thinking of geographers significantly.

Fitting well into this intellectual environment, the theme of environmental determinism, developed mostly by geographers, was the prevailing view in German and American geography at the turn of the 20th century.

The concern was with documenting the control or influence of the environment upon human society.

The founder of the scientific determinism was Friedrich Ratzel. He supplemented ‘classical’ geographical determinism with elements of Social Darwinism and developed a theory of the state as an organism (Lebensraum) which owed its life to the earth which was ever striving to seize more and more territory. Ratzel argued that “similar locations lead to similar mode of life”.

In support of his argument, he cited the example of British Isles and Japan and asserted that both these countries have insular locations, which provide natural defence against the invaders.

Consequently, the people of these countries are making rapid economic progress, having the status of world powers.

Ratzel, a follower of Darwin, believed in the survival of the fittest and saw man as the end-product of evolution, an evolution in which the mainspring was the natural selection of types according to their capacity to adjust themselves to physical environment.

He was convinced that the course of history, the mode of life of the people, and the stage of development are closely influenced by the physical features and location of a place in relation to mountains and plains.

In his deterministic approach, he gave more weight age to location in relation to topographic features. He opined that location of a place determines the attitude and lifestyle of its peoples.

At the beginning of the 20th century, environmentalism became particularly widespread in the United States, where its leading proponents were Simple and Huntington.

Simple was the direct descendant of Ratzel. She preached the philosophy of her master and thus was a staunch supporter of determinism.

The book Influences of Geographic Environment, which she wrote, starts with the opening paragraph: “Man is a product of the earth’s surface.

This means not merely that he is a child of the earth, dust of her dust; but that the earth has mothered him, fed him, set him tasks, directed his thoughts, confronted him with difficulties that have strengthened his body and sharpened his wits, given him the problems of navigation, or irrigation, and at the same time whispered hints for their solution.

She has entered into his bones and tissue, into his mind and soul. On the mountains she has given him leg muscles of iron to climb the slope; along the coast she has left these weak and flabby, but given him instead vigorous development of chest and arm to handle his paddle or oar.

In the river valleys, she attaches him to the fertile soil, circumscribe his ideas and ambitions by a dull round of calm, exacting duties, and narrow his outlook to the cramped horizon of his farm.

Upon the windswept plateaus, in the boundless stretch of the grasslands and the waterless tracts of the desert, where he roams with his flocks from pasture to pasture and oasis to oasis, where life knows much hardship but escapes the grind of drudgery, where the watching of grazing herd gives him leisure for contemplation, and the wide ranging life a big horizon, his ideas take on a certain gigantic simplicity, religion becomes monotheism, God becomes one, unrivaled like the sand of the desert and the grass of the steppe, stretching on and on without break or change.

Chewing over and the end of his simple belief as the one food of his unfed mind, his faith becomes fanaticism; his big special ideas, born of that ceaseless regular legitimate fruit in wide imperial conquest.”

Man no more can be scientifically studied apart from the ground which he tills, or the lands over which he travels, or the seas over which he trades, than polar bear or desert cactus can be understood apart from his habitat.

Man’s relations to his environment are infinitely more numerous and complex than those of the most highly organized plant or animal.

So complex are they that they constitute a legitimate and necessary object of special study.

The investigation which they receive in anthropology, ethnology, sociology, and history is piecemeal and partial, limited as to the race, cultural development, epoch, country or variety of geographic conditions taken into account.

Hence, all these sciences, together with history (so far as history undertakes to explain the causes of events) fail to reach a satisfactory solution of their problems largely because the geographic factor which enters into them, all has not been thoroughly analyzed.

Man has been so noisy about the way he has ‘conquered nature’ and nature has been so silent in her persistent influence over man that the geographic factor in the equation of human development has been overlooked.

Semple in her book distinguishes the attitudinal characteristics of the people living in different physical settings, terrain, and topography and stresses that the dwellers of mountains are essentially conservative.

There is little in his environment to stimulate him to change and little reaches him from the outside world.

Hence, innovation is repugnant to him. As a matter of fact, the process of diffusion of new ideas and innovations in the hilly tracts of isolation and relative isolation is slow as compared to the well linked plain parts of the world.

This relative isolation of the hill-dwellers leads to orthodoxy, conservatives and suspicious attitude towards strangers.

They are extremely sensitive in their traditions and do not like criticism. They have strong religious feelings and an intense love for family.

The bitter struggle for existence makes the hill-man indus­trious, frugal, provident and honest. Contrary to this, the people of plain parts of Europe are energetic, serious, thoughtful, rather than emotional, and cautious rather than impulsive.

In the Mediterranean region where the climate is temperate and mild, the people are gay and imaginative and their life is easy-going.

Huntington, the American geographer, who wrote the monumental book The Principles of Human Geography in 1945, was a protagonist of environmental determinism.

He made the most decisive step since the time of Hippocrates towards something new and conclusive in environ­mental causation thinking.

So, over many years, he was engaged in devel­oping the idea of climate’s leading role in the advancement of civilization.

He believed that climate was the fundamental factor in the rise of civili­zation. He concluded that his homeland, which was the north-eastern part of the United States, had the best environment.

He even produced a map, based primarily on the opinions of the North Americans, which showed that temperate climates had the highest level of health and energy and civilization.

He estimated that each inhabitant of the temperate belt produces on an average five or six times more than any inhabitant in any other part of the world.

The basic philosophy of Huntington was that the supreme achieve­ments of civilization in any region were always bound up with a particular type of climate and variation in climate led to ‘pulsations’ in the history of culture.

He suggested that the best climates for work were those in which there was variety and in which the temperatures fell within a certain range.

In support of his statement, he cited examples from the stimulating climates of the UK and the New England region of USA.

He associated with the climatic cycles the Golden Age in ancient Greece, the Renaissance in Western Europe, and cyclical fluctuations in iron production or the price of shares.

Huntington divided the world in the mild and harsh climatic zones and established that the ancient civilizations (Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Indus, and Chinese) flourished in the fertile river valleys of mild climates.

He also established the hypothesis of invasion and tribal warfare. The great outpouring of nomadic people from Central Asia which led to Mongols’ conquest of Turan, Turkistan, China and India and the raids in Eastern Europe in the 13th century could be explained by the drying of pastures on which the nomads were dependent.

According to Huntington, the religion and racial character are the products of climate.

A temperature of about 20°C and variable atmospheric conditions (temperate cyclonic weather) are the ideal for the high mental and physical efficiencies. Such climatic conditions are also found in the countries of North-West Europe.

The advancement of Europeans in the fields of science and technology has thus been attributed to climatic conditions by Huntington.

The underdevelopment of tropics, he explains, is owing to the humid, hot, oppressive weather which makes the people lethargic, lazy, inefficient, timid and indolent.

The subsequent geographers like Halford J. Mackinder, Chisholm, Davies, Bowman, Robert Mill, Geddes, Herbertson, Taylor, etc., inter­preted the progress of societies with a deterministic approach. Many of the scholars made it vividly clear that climate influences the physical properties of soil which ultimately determines the cropping patterns, dietary habits, physique and attitudes.

Mac Carrison demonstrated conclusively that the greater stature, strong constitution and superior physical resistance of the Sikhs of North India as compared to the Tamils of South India are a direct result of the superior Sikh diet and particularly its greater richness in protein.

The Khasis of the plateau of Meghalaya have in general a poor physique because the protein intake in their diet is significantly low.

Lord Boyd Orr and Gilkhs observed a similar phenomenon in East Africa, where they studied the Kikuyu and the Masai tribes of Kenya.

The Kikuyus are farmers living on a diet of cereals, tubers and legumes; the Masais, on the other hand, are cattle raisers, whose diet includes meat, milk and ox-blood, which they take from the animals.

These two human groups living side by side in the same environment differ profoundly in their physical measurements. This difference is the direct result of their fundamentally different diets.

Similarly, there is no doubt that the low stature and poor physique of most of the masses of India is the result of starvation, under-nourishment and malnutrition.

How closely soil and vegetation influence the health and stature of peoples and animals have been explained by Karl Mackey.

He cites the case of Shetland ponies in the following words: “On the Shetland Island, at the northern extremity of the British Isles (60°N), are found the smallest horses in the world, only about three feet in height.

Traditionally, it used to be thought that these Shetland ponies constituted a separate race of horses, stabilized by inbreeding, until some businessmen decided to supply the American market by raising these* ponies in USA.

To their great disap­pointment, the ponies born under the new conditions got bigger and bigger generation after generation until they were the same size as horses of other ‘races’.

The fact is, there is no separate race of ponies. Even after hundreds of generations, when the ponies were taken to areas with richer soil they regained the characteristics of their ancestors.”

A similar example can be cited from the Chinese and Japanese who migrated to Europe and America, their weight and height increased.

The Pygmies also lose their characteristics when transplanted to plain regions where agriculture and cattle raising provide much more varied food. Thus, the short-statured races became tall-statured races.

Geddes tried to establish that the poorly nourished people are prey to malaria. In support of his hypothesis, he stated that the meat eating Muslims in India are much less subject to malaria than are the Hindus with their vegetarian diet.

The influence of physical factors on food habits and the consequent effect on the rate of birth in the different regions can be seen from the fact that the high birth rates (above 30 per 1,000) are all confined to tropical countries.

The geographic and socio-economic conditions of these countries are all ill-adapted to either the production or consumption of proteins of animal origin.

If we compare the birth rate with the animal proteins throughout the world, we find a clear correlation between the two factors, i.e., the fertility going down as the consumption of such proteins rises.

For example, the daily intake of animal protein in Sweden and Denmark is 65 and 60 grams and the birth rate is 10 and 13 per 1,000 respectively, while in India and Malaysia only about 10 and 12 grams of animals’ protein is consumed respectively and the corresponding birth rate in these countries is 23 and 26 per 1,000 (2011).

It may be an overgeneralization as many other factors like literacy, education and health, standard of living and socio-cultural attributes also contribute to birth rate, yet there is no denying the fact that the quality of diet has a close bearing on the increase, decrease and longevity of population.

There are evidences showing that terrain, topography, temperature, moisture, vegetation and soil, both individually and collectively, affect the social and economic institutions and thereby the mode of life of people, yet the role of man as the transforming agent of his physical surroundings is quite pertinent. In fact, works of man reveal many facts for which environmental forces alone can give no satisfactory explanation.

For example, similar environment does not always invoke the same response. Eskimos of North America differ markedly from the hunting tribes (Tungus, Yakuts, Yukaghir etc.) of Siberia. Pygmy hunters share the equatorial forests of Central Africa with agricultural Negroes in a remarkable symbiosis.

The Khasi, Garo and Jaintia tribes of Meghalaya and the Lushais of Mizoram, living under almost similar climatic and environmental conditions, have marked variations in physical traits, physique, dietary habits, standard of literacy, and attitude towards life.

It is also observed that the same physical conditions of land could have quite different meanings for people with different attitudes towards their environment, different objectives in making use of it and different levels of technological skill.

The Gujjars and Bakarwals of Jammu & Kashmir prefer to settle on slopes and to utilize these slopes for pastures while the Kashmiris like to settle in leveled areas and to utilize their arable land for paddy cultivation.

The former are nomads (transhumants) while the latter are cultivators. In agricultural areas it was clear that slope had one meaning for the man with a hoe and quite another for a man with a tractor drawn plough. It might be that the introduction of machinery could reduce the arable area of a country or change the kind of soil considered desirable.

People of one kind of culture might concentrate in the valleys (Masai and Kikuyu of East Africa) whereas another people in the same area might concentrate their settlements on fertile uplands.

Waterpower sites that were useful for the location of industries before the advent of steam engine lost that attraction when power came from other sources.

Environment undoubtedly influences man, man in turn changes his environment and the interaction is so intricate that it is difficult to know when one influence ceases and the other begins.

Many landscapes that appear natural to us are in truth the work of man. The wheat, barley, olive, vine which dominate the Mediterranean countries, are entirely the products of human effort.

The apple and almond orchards of Kashmir, Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh are the creations of man. Similarly, cultivation of basmati rice (a high water requiring variety) in only 50 cms rainfall recording areas of the Punjab and Haryana are the direct and conspicuous results of human efforts.

Countless such examples from the developed and the developing countries can be cited. Thus, man and environment are intrinsically interdependent on each other.

After the Second World War, the philosophy of environmentalism was attacked. Many geographers in USA, Britain, Germany, Canada and other countries were drawing attention to the one-sided approach adopted by the environmentalists in their interpretation of historical reality to their exaggeration of nature’s active role and the fact that they only acknowledge man as capable of passive attempts at adaptation.

Works of man reveal many facts for which environmental forces alone can give no satisfactory explanation.

Environmental determinism is regarded by many people as overly simplistic because it neglects the cultural factors that affect human behaviour.

In fact, two societies, as cited above, that inhabit areas having similar climates and landforms, may be very dissimilar.

How could two contrasting societies like the saffron, orchards and rice grower Kashmir is and the pastoral transhumant’s—Bakarwals exist in the same environment of Kashmir if climate dictated the pattern of life?

Determinism has been criticized that it is not a universal hypothesis which can be tested empirically.

Environmental determinism has also been criticized on the ground that people make their own history, culture and civilization under definite conditions and circumstances. Men act through a world of rules which our action makes, breaks and renews.

Thus, we are the creatures of rules, the rules are our creations; we make our own world—the world confronts us as an implacable order of social facts set over against us. And thus, man is not the product of his environment but the creation of his social rules and customs.

Spate criticized the fanatic approach of environmental determinists. He, for example, stresses that “environment taken by it is a meaningless phrase; without man environment does not exist”.

Equally important is his indication of the need to consider the psycho-physiological influence of the geographical environment via social structure.

In the final analysis, Spate concluded that geographical environment is only one of the factors of territorial differentiation and “it acts through society; cultural tradition has a certain autonomous influence”.

Recently, an Australian author Wolfgang Hartake argued that while the role of physical factors might well be relatively unimportant in the fringe zone of Frankfurt, “it is hard to imagine the extreme climatic conditions not playing a direct role in any human activity which occurs in the Sahara”.

Similar argument is put forward by Hartshorne; he rejected environmentalism purely on the grounds that the latter separates nature and man, and thus is “disruptive of fundamental unity of the field,” i.e., contradicts the concept of geography as an integrated science.

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Environmental Determinism

Environmental Determinism Naturally, you don’t expect that the early people who lived in the far north of the globe to be black skin color or the people who lived near the equator to be white skin color. As well as sea people to be skilled hunters and people living in the woodlands to be skilled fishers. Our social and cultural development is affected by the weather that surrounds us and also the geographical position that we live in, this is this belief is called environmental determinism.

Although environmental determinism has been acclaimed throughout history, it has been lately declining; it has also been divided into various subsets including, climate, economic growth and many more. Since ancient times, many prominent Greek philosophers leaned on the idea that they were more developed than other societies due to their great climate. Plato, Aristotle and Strabo were supporters of these ideas; it was Strabo who wrote that the psychological disposition of races is influenced by the climate. An East-African writer, Al-Jahiz, related environmental determinism with the theory of evolution to explain skin colors.

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He believed that environment aspects of the black basalt rocks in the Arabian Peninsula were the cause of the dark-skinned African people and animals. An Arab sociologist, scholar and also first officially known environmental determinist, Ibn Khaldun, who wrote the Muqaddimah (1377), stated that most dark human skin color is due to the hot climate in the region. This belief was supported by many people but was later flamed around the years 1930s because it was believed it was a justification for imperialism and racism.

Environmental determinism reached its maximum point in the 19th century when the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel and his students, Ellen Churchill Semple and Ellsworth Huntington, used it as the central theory of discipline and was quickly expanding. By the early 1900s environmental determinism was being replaced by environmental possibilism because it was said that environmental determinism was to broad of an explanation and it generalized cultures and behaviors just because of direct observation. By the 1950s environmental determinism was fully replaced by environmental possibilism.

Environmental determinism has various subsets, one which is the climatic subset, sometimes known as the equatorial paradox, which was studied greatly by Ellsworth Huntington. The climatic subset is a theory to be part of a geographical economy. It is believed that the tropical climate regions or countries tend to be less developed than the countries further to the equator. Following this theory “about 70% of the economic development of a country can be predicted from the distance between that country and the equator“[1]. A clear example of this may be Canada whose GDP of 2011 was $1. 78trillion U.

S dollars and is located far north of the equator, Nicaragua who’s near the equator and has a GDP, as of 2011, of $7. 3billion U. S dollars. Also, Chile who is southern more of the equator has a GDP of $248. 59billion U. S Dollars as of 2011 as well [2]. This theory has counter-examples due to high investments done within the country and also resources such as oil, fish, wood, and many more. Another subset of environmental determinism is the economic growth. Geography is a great influence in the economic growth because people usually tend to move to more productive areas where you tend to have easier access to resources.

Usually, countries that have a vast access to fresh water, aren’t land locked, have great climate, good soil, good route access and are closer to the sea, tend to be the most prosperous. Of course this may change depending of what kind of resources you have, some desert countries tend to have oil and become and exception. Environmental determinism has shown a great impact of culture. People who are used to live near the tropical sea tend to eat a lot of fish food, usually know how to swim and according to a Jamaican stereotype, they are more relaxed.

People who live in the snow or really intense cold weather are usually more depressed, slow, have higher rates of suicides and mostly, and have more tendency for hot drinks. Finnish and Russians have a vodka drinking stereotype, meanwhile tropical climate countries like Nicaragua and Puerto Rico are usually more into rum. We also have Chile and France who have a chilly weather and tend to drink more wine. Environmental determinism has been around for ages, it has slowly been fading away since new theories are coming up and many exceptions and showing.

Many famous philosophers, geographers, scientists and even writers support the idea of environmental determinism, which can be related to the theory of evolution and can be an explanation of the different skin colors that not only us, humans, have developed but also many other types of animals in different regions. Environmental determinism can be used to determine about 70% of a country’s economy because you can tell by the geographical position of the country if it’s land locked, has fresh water access and also vast resources.

Cultures are formed around environmental determinism; Nicaraguans, for example, tend drink mostly rum since it’s easy to produce in this weather and they are used of it. Also, it may be normal for Canadians to eat lots of fish and salmons because they are cheaper there and so they make typical food out of them but in the Middle East, this may be totally different for them because they are not used to these types of food since it isn’t part of their environment. Quotations [1] http://neohumanism. org/c/cl/climatic_determinism. tml [2] world bank Sources http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Environmental_determinism#History http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Muqaddimah http://geography. about. com/od/culturalgeography/a/envdeterminism. htm http://www. studymode. com/essays/Environmental-Determinism-462306. html http://www. laphamsquarterly. org/voices-in-time/environmental-determinism. php? page=all http://neohumanism. org/c/cl/climatic_determinism. html http://www. britannica. com/EBchecked/topic/189178/environmental-determinism

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