Deterministic Particularism

Anthropologists, geographers, political ecologists, and many other practitioners of social science are wary of environmental determinism. One must constantly be on guard for the accusation that too much importance has been assigned to environmental variables, such as soil quality or regional climate, when explaining cultural variables, such as economic prosperity or biological variables, such as ‘health.’ In addition, anthropologists threw out ‘historical particularism’ by the 1940s, labeling it as too inductive and atheoretical. Perhaps a healthy dose of a few isms is not such a bad thing.

Environmental determinism might be considered the null hypothesis to explain many cultural patterns, especially economic ones. In a recent paper, a colleague of mine and I argue that ecologists have had it backwards for many decades. Perhaps the most productive regions in the world are not the tropics, but instead soil, land, and plant productivity are highest at the temperate latitudes where growing season length is moderate and soils have been reworked by glaciation regularly on the scale of geological time. Tropical soils are relatively stable and are depleted in soil nutrients. One of my colleagues, in an attempt to discard the economic and cultural connotations of the term ‘third world countries’ has even replaced the term with ‘tropical countries.’ The new moniker highlights the correlation between economically poor countries and the locations, the tropics, where soils are also poor. Hmmm…

But there is another, more pressing need for environmental determinism, which relates to the history of social sciences and the trend toward humanism over science. Post-modernists diabolically label “nature” as a concept; that is, we create nature. Great! Thanks.  An accusation that someone is environmentally deterministic in anthropology, for example, is tantamount to labeling someone an academic leper! Humans have attained a seat on an academic throne of immense importance; culture is preeminent, and IT is the subject matter. Some colleagues in environmental philosophy recognize that a problem in today’s increasingly global society is that humans are separated from nature, more urban than rural, and thus more and more distant from ‘the environment.’ These philosophers argue that ethics (values that drive choices) only change through experience or direct encounters with phenomena—so, environmental ethics change with direct encounters with the environment. We (humans) are finding, like it or not, that at some scale, in fact at all scales, the environment has the final say on humanity’s ability to survive and cooperate globally. Perhaps a more clearly stated acknowledgement that the environment is causal in terms of human adaptation and survival is not such a bad thing after all. Would a more deterministic perspective lead us to experience and value ‘nature’ (or whatever you want to call it) more often and in more meaningful ways?

Now, at least in terms of anthropology, we threw out another, related ism far too carelessly. Historical particularism was the anthropological paradigm of Franz Boas, one of the founders of American anthropology in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The paradigm is usually castigated as ‘too inductive’ because Boas promoted collection of information on world cultures above generalization. In light of history, this description is quite limited and unfair. First, what was Boas responding to? He came after Lewis Henry Morgan, Herbert Spencer, and others who promoted a model of progressive evolution with European cultures at the top of an ethnocentric pyramid and the rest of the world’s cultures somewhere beneath. Boas saved us from our ethnocentric selves, yet the progressive evolutionary paradigm continues to rear its ugly head from time to time in anthropology and elsewhere. Second, what does historical particularism actually mean? It means that to understand a particular culture, one must study its historical development in context. This is nothing other than relativistic and evolutionary thinking in the most powerful theoretical fashion. That Boas was busy generating information on the histories of particular cultures in their environmental contexts instead of generalizing (falsely) about their position relative to European societies does not mean that he was atheoretical. On the contrary, he was careful!

What the world needs today is what Gene Anderson calls ‘horizontal ties’ in his book The Pursuit of Ecotopia. Cultures should be appreciated for what they are, unique historical (vertical) manifestations in different parts of the world for different lengths of time, with unique, fascinating histories that actually explain (make sense of) many of the cultural differences that people find so difficult to understand and tolerate. Much of the difference between any two or more cultures might have something (or much) to do with diversity in environmental contexts. It is a small risk to be labeled particularistic or deterministic to make this point. However, given what we know about culture, cultural relativism, environmental variability (in many shapes and forms), why would we think otherwise?

Source Literature

Anderson, E. N. 2010. The Pursuit of Ecotopia: Lessons from Indigenous and Traditional Societies for the Ecology of Our Modern World. Praeger, Santa Barbara, CA.

Huston, M. A. and S. Wolverton. 2009. The Global Distribution of Net Primary Production: Resolving the Paradox. Ecological Monographs 79:343—377. 

Rozzi, R. 1999. The Reciprocal Links between Evolutionary-Ecological Sciences and Environmental Ethics. Bioscience 49:911-921.