Ecological anthropology deals with human-environmental (nature-culture) relationships over time and space. It investigates the ways that a population shapes its environment and the subsequent manners in which these relations form the population’s social, economic, and political life (Salzman and Attwood 1996:169). Ecological anthropology applies a systems approach (Ellen 1982; Hardesty 1997; McGee 1996) to the study of the interrelationship between culture and the environment. At the heart of contemporary ecological anthropology is “an understanding that proceeds from a notion of the mutualism of person and environment” (Ingold 1992:40) and the reciprocity between nature and culture (Harvey 1996).

One of the leading practitioners within this sub-field of anthropology was Roy Rappaport. He delivered many outstanding works on the relationship between culture and the natural environment in which it grows, especially concerning the role of ritual in the processual relationship between the two. He conducted the majority, if not all of his fieldwork amongst a group known as the Maring, who inhabit an area in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. His magnum opus, Ritual and Religion in the making of humanity (1999), was not published until two years after his death. Rich in content and rigorous in analysis, many feel that this work cannot be fully comprehended upon first blush but needs to be absorbed slowly over time. Roy A. Rappaport (1926–1997) was an anthropologist known for his contributions to the anthropological study of ritual and to ecological anthropology. ...

Universities with recognized programs in Ecological or Environmental Anthropology

University of Georgia

University of Florida

University of Kent, UK

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