Misunderstandings of “New Ecology” by Environmental Anthropologists: Toward Fruitful Collaboration between Environmental Anthropology and Ecology

Abstract

In recent studies in anthropology and sociology, static viewpoints are often criticized or rejected. An unfortunate result of this is that, in the fields of environmental issues, sound and realistic goals like sustaining stable conditions are sometimes rejected. However, static vs. dynamic viewpoints depend merely on the temporal and spatial scales of the phenomena treated. Thus, static viewpoints should not always be rejected, but appropriate viewpoints must be chosen depending on scales. The very famous and frequently cited paper by Scoones [1999] states that as static viewpoints had been rejected in ecology (he calls it “new ecology”), social sciences concerned with environments should also be reformed. As he noted, there was a dispute between older equilibrium theories and newer non-equilibrium theories in the field of ecology in 1970s-80s. However, this dispute centered simply on the ranges of temporal and spatial scales in which equilibrium models can remain effective. Scoones and a number of authors referring to his paper seem to misunderstand that equilibrium ecological theories are totally rejected through the equilibrium vs. non-equilibrium dispute. Here, I introduce some examples in which ecological theories have contributed to the progress of environmental anthropology. In these examples, contrary to Scoones’s opinion, equilibrium ecological theories were useful to understand the reasons and processes of transformation of socio-environmental conditions, not only the maintenance mechanisms of stable statuses.