Environmental Anthropology

3 credits · Graduate credit

Contemporary approaches to environmental anthropology have largely moved from the study of human adaptation to specific environments to research on the causes of environmental degradation. Anthropologists have also shifted their attentions from the ritual regulation of human-environmental relations to context in which competing ideologies about nature are in dialogue. Finally, assumptions about the operation of relatively closed ecosystems have given way to attention to the accelerated circulation of persons, things, and ideas through globalization. Anthropologists interested in political ecology study the institutions and forces that increasingly mediate anthropogenic impacts on the environment.