ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the biological and anthropological foundations of the ecosystem approach and the role that it came to play in each area. The historical foundations of the ecological approach in anthropology are dual: the rejection of environmental deterministic explanations led by anthropologists in the first decades of the twentieth century and the adoption of biological concepts in the 1960’s to avoid over dependence on the concept of culture. The ecosystem concept made its way into anthropology in the 1960’s and seems to have been inspired by the writings of Eugene Odum and Marston Bates. Critiques of Julian Steward’s cultural ecology paradigm led anthropologists towards a more explicitly biological paradigm. The ecosystem concept provided an elegant basis for large-scale integrated modeling and a bridge between inductive and deductive modes of research in ecology. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
