ABSTRACT
I suggested, in Chapter 1, that anthropology’s contribution to environmental discourse might take two forms. Through its tra dition of studying human culture in all its diversity, anthropology can provide insights into how people understand and interact with their environments. In this sense, anthropology is the study of human ecology, and its relevance to environmental discourse is as great as that of any branch of ecology, if not greater, given that human activities are taken to be the major cause of environmental damage. Anthropology can also contribute directly to the develop ment of environmentalist thought, by examining environmentalism itself as a cultural phenomenon, as a particular way of understand ing the world. Chapter 2 established the theoretical background for the first of these tasks, by considering how anthropologists have understood the role of culture in human-environment relations. Chapter 3 examined the theoretical background for the second task, by showing how an anthropological analysis of environmentalism as a cultural phenomenon differs from the types of analysis offered by other social sciences.
