Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Ecological anthropology focuses upon the complex relations between people and their *environments. Human populations, socially organized and oriented by means of particular cultures, have ongoing contact with and impact upon the land, climate, plant and animal species, and other humans in their environments, and these in turn have reciprocal impacts.
Ecological anthropology directs our attention to the ways in which a particular population purposely or unintentionally shapes its environment, and the ways in which its reiations with the environment shape its culture and its social, economic and political life.
There are several basic points upon which ecological anthropologists agree: any particular population is not engaged with the total environment which surrounds it, but rather with certain selected aspects and elements, which may be called its habitat, and the particular place which it occupies in that environment may be labelled its niche. Each population has its own particular orientation, or †adaptation, to the wider environment, institutionalized in the *culture of the group, particularly in its *technology, which includes established knowledge of plants and animals, weather and minerals, as well as tools and techniques of extracting food, clothing and shelter. Furthermore, a population’s adaptation is often influenced by the socio-cultural environment constituted by other human populations, their cultures and adaptations.
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