Explaining Human Actions and Environmental Changes

Autorentext
Andrew P. Vayda is professor emeritus of anthropology and ecology at Rutgers University.

Klappentext
In this collection of recent essays, Andrew P. Vayda argues for a pragmatic approach to explanation and explanation-oriented research in social and environmental sciences. He supports his arguments with causal analyses of both human actions, such as cutting down trees and fighting over resources, and environmental changes, such as forest fires; and he voices his opposition to methodological and ethnographic holism and the notion that explanation can be achieved by deploying theories rather than by obtaining evidence of the causal histories of concrete actions and events. Vayda is critical of much recent scholarship_in such areas as political ecology, local knowledge studies, discourse studies, and evolutionary human behavioral ecology_for its indifference to questions of evidence and methodology and its failure to give proper consideration to multiple and alternative possible causes of whatever is being explained. He also discusses the use and misuse of evidence and generalizations, the payoffs and pitfalls of moving from one level of analysis to another, the dos and don'ts in interdisciplinary research, the uses of statistics, and the importance of being clear about objects of explanation. This original and challenging work makes sense of the future of ecological anthropology and will be of interest to researchers in the social and environmental sciences in general.

Zusammenfassung
In this selection of essays from the past two decades, Vayda focuses on research and explanation concerned with causes of concrete events, especially human actions and the environmental changes brought about by them.

Inhalt
Chapter 1 Preface Chapter 2 Chapter 1. Causal Explanation as a Research Goal: Do's and Don'ts Chapter 3 Chapter 2. Both Ends of the Firestick: Causal Explanation of Indonesian Forest Fires Chapter 4 Chapter 3. On Knowing What Not to Know about Knowing: A Critical View of Local Knowledge Studies Chapter 5 Chapter 4. Do We Need an Anthropological Perspective on Tropical Deforestation? Chapter 6 Chapter 5. Seeing Nature's Complexity but Not People's Chapter 7 Chapter 6. Against Political Ecology Chapter 8 Chapter 7. Failures of Explanation in Darwinian Ecological Anthropology Chapter 9 Chapter 8. Concepts of Process in Social Science Explanations Chapter 10 Chapter 9. Explaining Why Marings Fought: Different Questions, Different Answers Chapter 11 Chapter 10. The Anthropology of War: Polemics and Confusion

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