ABSTRACT
My ultimate concerns in this chapter will be with (1) roles that environmental anthropologists can play in interdisciplinary research to answer questions about why environmental changes occur or don’t occur and with (2) some particular ways in which those roles can be or should, in my view, be performed. I will first distinguish research to answer “what” questions from research to answer the kinds of “why” questions with which I will mainly deal here. Next, I will present a brief exposition of methodological arguments that I and others have been developing about how causal questions, such as those about why environmental changes occur or don’t occur, should be answered. With illustrations drawn from wildfire-related research in Indonesia and elsewhere, I will then proceed to consider in detail what the arguments imply in regard to how and when anthropologists can effectively join biophysical scientists in seeking answers to questions regarding environmental change. What is being presented here for environmental anthropologists in particular is a view of causal explanation that corresponds to what Brad Walters and I were presenting for social scientists in general in Causal Explanation for Social Scientists, an anthology published in 2011 (Vayda and Walters 2011a).
