Original scientific paper
Some Observations Concerning Cultural Ecology
Snježana Čolić
; Institute for Social Research of the University of Zagreb
Abstract
The article deals with the main features of cultural ecology as well as with some methodological issues arising within the framework of this approach. The author is trying to point out the difficulties appearing in connection with the usage of the principle concepts such as environment and adaptation in the explanatory sense. She wishes to demonstrate the impossibility to specify any one of the operational concepts (adaptation, environment, system) involved in the cultural-ecological approach. Adaptation is the process referring to cultural systems and their environments. Culture and environment partake in a reciprocal relationship. However, along with the technological development, the dynamic factor in the equipoise culture-environment has been all the time becoming more culture and less environment per se. Therefore, if the environment itself becomes predominantly the product of culture, the attempts to define culture in terms of environment may prove tautological.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
155577
URI
Publication date:
31.12.1988.
Visits: 853 *