Environmental determinism: what it is, characteristics and examples

This is environmental determinism, a very influential anthropological and philosophical perspective.

In trying to explain the differences between cultures and the degree of development between nations, several factors have been taken into account, such as the influences between cultures, their history, genetics and geographical position, among many others.

Environmental determinism is a particular approach of anthropology and geography, which has placed special emphasis on the characteristics of the environment. which has placed special emphasis on the characteristics of the environment, climate and geographical features to try to explain the cultural traits of different human groups.

This approach, whose origins are found in Classical Antiquity, was very popular in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although it was not without controversy. We will now discover what environmental determinism is.

What is environmental determinism?

The environmental determinism is an approach of anthropology and geography that maintains that the environment, especially physical factors as the geographical accidents, the resources and the type of climate, determines the patterns of the human group that settles in a certain territory, in addition to having a social development directly dependent on the environment that it has been given to inhabit.

The most radical environmental determinists maintain that all ecological, climatic and geographical factors would explain human cultural differences rather than social and genetic factors, outside cultural influences and history. Their main argument is that the physical characteristics of an area, especially the climate, profoundly impact the psychology of the inhabitants. of the inhabitants.

It can also happen that a person develops a behavior that adapts him better to his environment and the rest of the people, seeing that it is advantageous, imitate it, extending this new cultural trait.

A classic example of environmental determinism can be found in the explanation given by several 19th century anthropologists. These associated the fact that a culture was farther away from the tropics with a higher degree of cultural complexity and technological development, because, according to them, the climates of the tropics were farther away from the tropics than the tropics. because, according to them, tropical climates were more benign than cold ones, with more resources. Tropical cultures, having easier access to such resources, had a more comfortable life and did not have to develop complex survival strategies unlike those living in cold places, which developed greater intelligence.

Another example of environmental determinism is the idea that island cultures have very different cultures from continental ones, mainly due to their physical isolation. Although with the passage of time, transportation to the islands has improved, making it easier to enter and leave them and, in turn, there has been greater intercultural contact, the inhabitants of any island have the idea of belonging to a more conservative and closed, "pure" world than the inhabitants of the islands.than the inhabitants of mainland regions.

Classical background

Although modern ideas of environmental determinism have their origins in the 19th century, it is worth mentioning that the idea that the environment can influence the culture of a human group is quite old.

Great classical thinkers such as Strabo, Plato, and Aristotle argued that it was the climatic characteristics of Greece that had allowed the Greeks to be a more developed civilization compared to societies in warmer or colder territories, having benign climates but not enough to not have to develop a sophisticated society and knowledge. compared to societies in warmer or colder territories, having benign climates but not enough not to have to develop a sophisticated society and knowledge.

Other thinkers not only associated the environment with the cultural and psychological aspects of a human group, but also believed that the environment explained the physical characteristics of races. An example of this is the thinker Al-Jahiz, an Arab intellectual who believed that environmental factors explained skin color. He believed that the dark skin of Africans, various birds, mammals and insects was due to a high amount of black basalt rocks in East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.

Modern times

Despite their classical antecedents, current environmental deterministic ideas have their rise and origins at the end of the 19th century, established mainly by the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel, who made them the who made them the central theory of his thinking. Ratzel's theory was developed after the publication of Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species" in 1859, a book in which he explained how the characteristics of the environment influence the development of a species, with the now classic example of the Galapagos finches or the evolution of the spotted moth in England during the Industrial Revolution.

Environmental determinism would become very popular in Anglo-Saxon countries and would arrive in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century through Ellen Churchill Semple and Ellsworth Huntington, two of Ratzel's students. Huntington is credited with having related the economic development of a country to its distance from the geographic equator.Huntington, indicating that both tropical and polar climates are not beneficial for economic development, while temperate and cold climates are, coinciding with the Anglo-Saxon countries and their colonies.

The decline of environmental determinism

Despite its success in the early 1900s, the popularity of environmental determinism progressively declined in the 1920s. The reason for this is that many of the premises advocated by the environmental determinists had been shown to be false and prejudicial.The latter were very much associated with a racist and imperialist ideology typical of Anglo-Saxon countries. His assertions about how climate and/or geography affected culture were made a priori, without properly testing whether this was true, something typical of pseudosciences such as phrenology.

While asserting that the environment can condition the culture that settles in it is not entirely wrong, asserting that it totally determines the cultural traits of a given social group is an exaggeration. The most radical environmental determinists completely ignored the influences of other cultures, history, social phenomena and other non-environmental causes in explaining why a culture was the way it was.

The environmental determinists, biased by white supremacism, ignored that Throughout history there have been countless highly developed cultures that were in climates that, according to them, should not be beneficial.. Examples include Ancient Egypt, Mesoamerican civilizations, Japan, India, China and Korea. They also ignored that the fact that the United States, Germany, Australia or South Africa had a greater economic development was not due to their geographical position, but because they were culturally influenced by England, the cradle of the Industrial Revolution.

As a counter-response to environmental determinism the theory of environmental possibilism or geographic possibilism was developed by the French geographer Paul Vidal de la Blanche. He stated that the environment establishes limitations for cultural development but this does not completely define what culture will be like. The culture of a human group will be defined by the opportunities and decisions made by the people who make it up, facing environmental constraints.

Example of scientific research on environmental determinism

Although environmental determinism as it was conceptualized at the end of the 19th century was progressively abandoned, it is considered that the environment can determine certain cultural traits.

An example of this is the research carried out by Talhelm and English's 2020 group, in which they relate the degree to which social norms are respected to whether the underlying culture has grown rice or wheat.

Across the globe there are all kinds of peoples who have planted different types of crops, with rice and wheat being very common.. In China there is a rather curious fact that there are different cultures that, despite having the same language, being under the same political government and having the same ethnicity, have very different visions of what it means to break social norms depending on whether their ancestral culture grew rice or wheat.

The researchers explain that rice cultivation has always been more labor-intensive than wheat cultivation, communities where the former has been cultivated have been forced to exchange tasks among their members to ensure that the crop does not die out. to ensure that the crop does not spoil. In addition, rice cultivation involves more steps and resources than wheat cultivation, which forced the villages to have a more carefully designed structure.

By having to share tasks, members of rice-growing villages have developed a strong sense of respect for social norms and reciprocity. Not returning a favor or not participating in social events is viewed more negatively in rice-growing China than in wheat-growing China.

This has also been seen in Japan, Korea, and even in African rice-growing territories, where a collectivist culture prevails. Moving away from the social norm in these countries can make the subject a social outcast.

In contrast, in the Western world, such as the United States or Western Europe, there has been a greater tradition of wheat cultivation, with some exceptions. In the West straying from the social norm, as long as it does not involve crime or harm to others, is not as frowned upon as in the Far East, and is perceived more as a simple act of selfishness or vindication of individualism rather than an attack on society.

Bibliographical references:

• Talhelm, T. and English, A. S. (2020). Historically rice-farming societies have tighter social norms in China and worldwide. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117 (33) 19816-19824; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1909909117