Nuaulu Settlement and Ecology


Book Description

This book is about the pattern of settlement and ecology of the Nuaulu, a group of sedentary swidden cultivators and hunters of southcentral Seram (Eastern Indonesia). It has three inter-related aims: to describe and account for nuaulu settlement; to outline and exemplify a suitable method of assessing the fine inter-action of cultural and ecological variables in small scale communities; and to explore the usefulness of a generative form of analysis in this respect. The fieldwork among the Nuaulu was undertaken between December 1969 and May 1971, and again for three months in 1973. After some basic introductory information, the analysis proceeds by first examining the residential component of the settlement patterns in terms of the processes which determine its location, form and composition. Next, the role of non-domesticated resources in local ecology and the processes of settlement generation in the domesticated component of the Nuaulu environment is investigated. In the final section the general theoretical and methodological issues raised in the introduction are examined in the light of the preceeding analysis.




Nuaulu Settlement and Ecology


Book Description

Chapter I. Ecology, generative analysis and settlement patterns -- Chapter II. Nuaulu ethnography and envrionment -- Chapter III. The location and structure of Nuaulu villages -- Chapter IV. Non-domesticated resources and the ecology of settlement -- Chapter V. Sources and social oorganization of cultivated land -- Chapter VI. Site selection and garden preparation -- Chapter VII. Garden development and ecological succession -- Chapter VIII. Analyzing settlement: the wider relevance of the Nuaulu case -- Appendices: A. Local climatic data and Nuaulu ecology -- B. Local minerals and soils -- C.A note on data collection relating to land holdings -- D. Measurement of consumption and energy expenditure.







Nuaulu Religious Practices


Book Description

How religious practices are reproduced has become a major theoretical issue. This work examines data on Nuaulu ritual performances collected over a 30 year period, comparing different categories of event in terms of frequency and periodicity. It seeks to identify the influencing factors and the consequences for continuity. Such an approach enables a focus on related issues: variation in performance, how rituals change in relation to material and social conditions, the connections between different ritual types, the way these interact as cycles, and the extent to which fidelity of transmission is underpinned by a common model or repertoire of elements. This monograph brings to completion a long-term study of the religious behaviour of the Nuaulu, a people of the island of Seram in the Indonesian province of Maluku. Ethnographically, it is important for several reasons: the Nuaulu are one of the few animist societies remaining on Seram; the data emphasize patterns of practices in a part of Indonesia where studies have hitherto been more concerned with meaning and symbolic classification; and because Nuaulu live in an area where recent political tension has been between Christians and Muslims. Nuaulu are, paradoxically, both caught between these two groups, and apart from them.




Environment, Subsistence and System


Book Description

Human ecology is ultimately part of a general theory of society. This is the argument developed here by Roy Ellen, whose exploration of the interplay between social organization and ecology in small-scale subsistence systems has direct bearings both on the investigation of human environmental relations in general and on contemporary social theory. He argues that while ecological study of non-industrial societies cannot be elevated to the status of theory, domain or discipline, it can be represented as a single 'problematic' that historically has acquired some degree of autonomy and which continues to make a significant contribution to a wider anthropology. Dr Ellen introduces his subject matter through an extended and systematic discussion of some major frameworks developed within the last hundred years to examine and explain facets of the relationship between culture, social organization and the environment: determinism, possibilism, cultural ecology, systems theory and ideas derived from modern biology. He follows this with a detailed review and appraisal of important recent research involving the use of ecological models, methods and data. This original and innovative study of the pre-eminently social character of human ecological relations will be of considerable interest to all students and researchers concerned with understanding the nature of the relationship between human beings and their environments.




Hunters and Gatherers (Vol I)


Book Description

All that is central to the dynamic process in human society is evident in the study of hunter-gatherers - peoples whose subsistence way of life reflects the original form of human adaptation. This is the thesis of these wide-ranging volumes in which internationally leading scholars consider hunter-gatherer peoples in Africa, Asia, Australia and North America and reflect theoretically on the hunter-gatherer condition.Volume 1: Hunters and Gatherers - History, Evolution and Social ChangeVolume II: Hunters and Gatherers - Property, Power and Ideology




The Forest of Taboos


Book Description

Contends that the ambivalence felt by all humans about sex, death and eating other animals can be explained by a set of coordinated principles that are expressed in taboos. Valeri evokes the world of the Huaulu, to show the attractions of the animal world which invades the human world in many ways.




Environmentalism


Book Description

Located in a wide spectrum of current research and practice, from analyses of green ideology and imagery, enviromental law and policy, and local enviromental activism in the West to ethnographic studies of relationships between humans and their enviroments in hunter/gatherer societies, Enviromentalism: The View from Anthropology offers an original perspective on what is probably the best-known issue of the late twentieth century. It will be particularly useful to all social scientists interested in environmentalism and human ecology, to environmental policy-makers and to undergraduates, lecturers and researchers in social anthropology, development studies and sociology.




Landscape Ethnoecology


Book Description

Although anthropologists and cultural geographers have explored "place" in various senses, little cross-cultural examination of "kinds of place," or ecotopes, has been presented from an ethno-ecological perspective. In this volume, indigenous and local understandings of landscape are investigated in order to better understand how human communities relate to their terrestrial and aquatic resources. The contributors go beyond the traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) literature and offer valuable insights on ecology and on land and resources management, emphasizing the perception of landscape above the level of species and their folk classification. Focusing on the ways traditional people perceive and manage land and biotic resources within diverse regional and cultural settings, the contributors address theoretical issues and present case studies from North America, Mexico, Amazonia, tropical Asia, Africa and Europe.




Redefining Nature


Book Description

How can anthropology improve our understanding of the interrelationship between nature and culture?- What can anthropology contribute to practical debates which depend on particular definitions of nature, such as that concerning sustainable development?Humankind has evolved over several million years by living in and utilizing 'nature' and by assimilating it into 'culture'. Indeed, the technological and cultural advancement of the species has been widely acknowledged to rest upon human domination and control of nature. Yet, by the 1960s, the idea of culture in confrontation with nature was being challenged by science, philosophy and the environmental movement. Anthropology is increasingly concerned with such issues as they become more urgent for humankind as a whole. This important book reviews the current state of the concepts of 'nature' we use, both as scientific devices and ideological constructs, and is organised around three themes:- nature as a cultural construction;- the cultural management of the environment; and- relations between plants, animals and humans.




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