Читать книгу Political Ecology - Paul Robbins - Страница 38

In contrast to the pragmatic policy approach of hazards, a separate group of modern scholars took as their focus an academic exploration of the development and expression of culture, especially on and within the environment. Cultural ecology, as the field would come to be known, approached human–environment issues ecosystemically: humans would be seen as part of a larger system, controlled and propelled by universal forces, energy, nutrient flows, calories, and the material struggle for subsistence. Unlike hazards, cultural ecology sought universal and generalizable rules of human–environment interaction. But like hazards, it would falter on the same conceptual and practical problem: accounting for and understanding change in a complex modern political economy. The crisis of explanation confronted by cultural ecology would become the fulcrum on which political ecology would be levered into prominence.