CULTURAL ECOLOGY: A STRATEGY FOR STUDYING ANTROPOLOGY

摘要

Since the mid-twentieth century has been developed a strategy in anthropological studies, which prioritizes therelationship between culture and environment or habitat, to find the factors that affect and influence the formationof social structures. J. Steward was the founder of this school called cultural ecology and postulated like a strategythat gives priority to studies of the material conditions of sociocultural life (e.g. use of resources). This school isdeveloped during the apogee of alternative currents were unable to apply deductive hypothetical models. In thispaper, the importance that has had this strategy to build hypotheses and models is described, for example, the originof agriculture, pre-Columbian social institutions in America, the origin of patrilineal societies, use made of timehunting and horticultural societies, and the origin of values and ethics of solidarity or competition between groups.This essay was provoked by reading that the author carries out a publication of Marvin Harris, which exposed in1991 a critical history of anthropology ideas.