Ecological AnthropologyU of MN - 3041-5041: Spring 2008

Instructor:

Richard Currie Smith Ph.D.

– Ecological Anthropologist• Energy Conservation & Load Management (Utilities)• North American Prairie Restoration (MN River Basin)• Web 2.0 Social Networking Software (Eco Groups)

EcoAnth: Course Description

• Concepts, Theories, and Methods– Eclectic - Systems Approach

• Living Systems (Gregory Bateson-Ecosemiotics)

– Environmental Issues• Global Climate change (Canadian Tar Sands)

• Human/Environmental Interaction– Cross Cultural Comparison

• Temporal and Spatial

– Illustrative focus on Particular Place• N. American Prairie (MN River Basin)

EcoAnth: Course Objectives:

• Understand sub-field of eco-anthropology,

Biodiversity = Cultural Diversity • Recognize culture as primary medium of

human/environmental interaction,

Human = Bio-physiology + Culture + Environment • Apply eco-anthropology methods to environmental

problems and issues,

Global climate change = Humans + Culture + Environment• Cultivate an ecological epistemology or way of thinking

about nature, an ecological consciousness,

Knowledge = knower + known

Modern Western Culture Dominance Over Nature Metaphor

Gregory Bateson

(1904-1980)

Ecological Anthropologist & Communication

Theorist Major Works:

“Steps to an Ecology

of Mind” (1972 [2000])

“Mind and Nature” (1979 [2002])

Gregory Bateson’s Living Systems Approach to Ecological

Restoration

– Global environmental degradation derives from the cultural ideas of modern western humans

• Restoration best accomplished by concentrating on these cultural ideas

Gregory Bateson’s Living Systems Approach to Ecological Restoration

•Culture is a biophysically embedded living communicative system through which members of a group interact with nature.

–For human’s there is no direct experience of the environment, there are no trees or rivers in the human brain only images (signs) of them.

– Perception is active action is passive

Gregory Bateson’s Living Systems Approach to Ecological Restoration

“As a method of perception - and that is all that science can claim to be - science, like all other methods of perception, is limited in its ability to collect the outward and visible signs of whatever may be truth. Science probes it does not prove.”

Gregory Bateson (1979 [2002]:27)

Gregory Bateson’s Living Systems Approach to Ecological Restoration

Following the Gnostics and JungUniverse Divided Between

• Pleroma: The non-living world of forces, impacts, universal laws- Kick a rock, prediction

• Creatura: The living world of differences, variations, patterns

- Kick a dog, probability

Gregory Bateson’s Culture as a Living System Approach

– Living System: A self-generating and self-organizing network that is greater than the sum of its interrelated and interdependent component parts – Defy the second law of thermodynamics

by creating order out of disorder (temporal distortion)

Gregory Bateson’s Culture as a Living System Approach

– Culture is a living system because it is created, altered, and intrinsically dependent upon the living systems that are human beings for its existence

– Human = Bio-physiology + Culture Environment

Gregory Bateson’s Living Systems Approach to Ecological

Restoration

– Global environmental degradation derives from the cultural ideas of modern western humans

• Restoration best accomplished by concentrating on these cultural ideas

Gregory Bateson’s Living Systems Approach to Ecological Restoration

• Modern Western culture’s epistemological

assumptions* toward nature are flawed and deep cultural change is needed

•This includes ideas about aesthetics (beauty and the sacred)

*Epistemology = Way of knowing and

thinking about nature

Modern Western Society’s Fundamental Epistemological Error

From Cartesian reductionist view dominant in

western science and society for last 300 years

• Humankind is separate from nature

– Nature is best known by breaking it into parts and analyzing the Parts

– Humankind’s rational intellect is superior to

nature

Bateson’s "Separation From Nature” Cluster of Ideas

• It’s us against the environment.• It’s the individual (or individual company

or individual nation) that matters.• We can have unilateral control over the

environment and must strive for that control.

• We live in an infinitely expanding “frontier."

• Economic determinism is common sense.• Technology will do it for us

Ecosemiotics

Source: Kull Kalevi 1998

The communicative relationship between nature and culture

EcoAnth: Course Overview

• Weeks 1-4: Theory• Weeks 5-7: Case Studies • Week 8: In Class Mid-Term Exam• Week 9: Review Exam & Group Projects • Week 10: Adaptation/Addiction • Weeks 11-12: Literary Works• Weeks 13-14: Group Project/Presentations• Week 15: Final Paper & Class Review

EcoAnth: Pedagogy

• Quality over Quantity

• Rigor and Imagination

• Abductive Reasoning

• Recursive Learning

• Peer to Peer Sharing

• Wisdom of the Class

EcoAnth: Required Texts

Theoretical • Mind and Nature: Gregory Bateson• Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Gregory Bateson

Case Studies• Intro to Cultural Ecology: Sutton & Anderson

Literary• Black Elk Speaks: John Neihardt • Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Dan O’brien

EcoAnth: Grading and Expectations

Class Participation 20% = 20 Points

Quizzes 10% = 10 Points

In Class Mid-Term Exam 20% = 20 Points

Group Project/Presentation 20% = 20 Points

Final Paper 30% = 30 Points

Total 100% = 100 Points

EcoAnth: Group ProjectGlobal Climate Change – Tar Sands Refinery

Gullible Warming

Global Warming

Sources: World Health Organization & the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, 2007

Projections of future warming suggest a global increase of 2.5oF (1.4oC) to 10.4oF (5.8oC) by 2100

EcoAnth Group ProjectS. Dakota Tar Sands Refinery

Possible Tags• Global Climate Change• Canadian Strip Mine • Indigenous Peoples• Water Pollution • Air Pollution-Toxic Chemicals• Artic Natural Gas Pipeline• Loess Hills Prairie• Historical Heritage• “Green” Refinery • Renewable Energy