ABSTRACT
The importance of ecologie factors for the form and distribution of cultures has usually been analyzed by means of a culture area concept. This concept has been developed with ref-erence to the aboriginal cultures of North America. Attempts at delimiting culture areas in Asia by similar procedures have proved extremely difficult, since the distribution of cultural types, ethnic groups, and natural areas rarely coincide. Coon speaks of Middle Eastern society as being built on a mosaic principle— many ethnic groups with radically different cultures co-reside in an area in symbiotic relations of variable intimacy. Referring to a similar structure, Furnivall describes the Netherlands Indies as a plural society. The common characteristic in these two cases is the combination of ethnic segmentation and economic interdependence. Thus the “environment” of any one ethnic group is not only defined by natural conditions, but also by the presence and activities of the other ethnic groups on which it depends. Each group exploits only a section of the total environment, and leaves large parts of it open for other groups to exploit.
From American Anthropologist, 58: 1079–1089. Copyright © 1956 by the American Anthropological Association. Reprinted by permission of the publisher and the author. Fredrik Barth is Professor of Social Anthropology, Universitet I Bergen.
