Andrew P. Vayda

Against Political Ecology 1

Starting with a priori judgments, theories, or biase s about the importance or even primacy of certain kinds of political factors in the explanation of environmental change s, self-styled political ecologists have focused the ir research on environmental or natural resource politics and have missed or scanted the complex and contingent interactions of factors whereby actual environmental change s often are produced. As an alte rnative to the present ple thora of programmatic statements on behalf of political ecology, a proposal is presented here for what may be called evenemental or event ecology. Our own experience in applying an evenemental approach to research on mangrove forests of the Philippine s will be drawn on for the purpose of illustration.

Progressive contextualization: Methods for research in human ecology

Theoretically or practically significant research results concerning transitory as well as persistent phenomena can be obtained by human ecologists while avoiding commitment to long-term, expensive projects, rigid frameworks, traditional disciplinary goals, and unwarranted assumptions about the stability and purposiveness of units or systems. The procedures to be followed, as illustrated by research on people-forest interactions in East Kalimantan, involve a focus on significant human activities or people-environment interactions and the explanation of these by their placement within progressively wider or denser contexts. Guides for progressively contextualizing activities or interactions include a rationality principle, comparative knowledge of contexts, and the principle of pursuing the surprising.

Event Ecology, Causal Historical Analysis, and Human-Environment Research

Research on human–environment interactions is especially challenging given its interdisciplinary character and its need to address complexly interacting causes in time and space. Event ecology has been suggested and illustrated as an approach that can effectively address these challenges. Yet, previous writings on event ecology offer only a limited rationale for the approach. This article attempts to address this shortcoming through a more explicit examination of the underlying logic and practice of event ecology. Event ecology is based on a pragmatic view of research methods and explanation, articulated by such scholars as Peirce, Lewis, and Chamberlin, that has recently resurfaced in scholarly debates. This view places at the center of research inquiry the answering of “why” questions about specific environmental changes of interest, instead of evaluating causal theories, models, or factors that are thought in advance to influence such changes. Explaining environmental change this way involves constructing causal histories of interrelated social and biophysical events through a process of eliminative inference and reasoning from effects to causes, called abduction. Precise questions, concrete event descriptions, and counterfactual analysis are central to this. In practical terms, researchers should strive to be skeptical about what constitutes evidence, yet open-minded and adaptable to unexpected findings, and be willing to employ whatever sound methods and theoretical ideas are best suited to answer the question at hand. Examples from field research experience on people–forest interactions in the Philippines and Saint Lucia are included to illustrate these features of the event ecology approach.

Holism and individualism in ecological anthropology

Rappaport, Roy A. Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People, enlarged edition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984. xviii + 501 pp. including illustrations, appendices, bibliographies, and index.

Failures of Explanation in Darwinian Ecological Anthropology: Part II

30.00 cloth,

Eric Alden Smith and Bruce Winterhalder, eds., Evolutionary Ecology and Human Behavior. Aldine de Gruyter, New York, 1992. Pp. xv, 470, tables, boxes, figures, bibliography, author index, subject index.

9.95 paper. Ellen, Roy. Environment, Subsistence and System: The Ecology of Small‐Scale Social Formations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. xvi + 324 pp. including bibliography and indices.

59.95 (cloth),

42.50 cloth,

29.95 (paper

13.95 paper. Jochim, Michael A. Strategies for Survival: Cultural Behavior in an Ecological Context. New York: Academic Press, 1981. x + 233 pp. including bibliography and index.

Current Issues in Social Science Explanation An Introduction

18.50 cloth.

War and Coping

Eric Alden Smith and Bruce Winterhalder, eds., Evolutionary Ecology and Human Behavior. Aldine de Gruyter, New York, 1992. Pp. xv, 470, tables, boxes, figures, bibliography, author index, subject index,