Roy Ellen - Contributions To Anthropology

Contributions To Anthropology

Roy Ellen has influenced many fields of anthropology including cultural ecology contributing to the knowledge base of ethno-biology, and environmental anthropology among others. One of Ellen’s strengths is his ability to connect themes and theories to create a more holistic depiction of an issue. His work offers a unique synergistic perspective on human cultural evolution and our relationship to the environment. He believes they co-exist but are not static and can change according to circumstances overtime. His findings have informed the studies of subsistence behaviors, the social impact of deforestation, inter- island trade and questions the relationship between nature and culture. “Forest Knowledge, Forest Transformation: Political Contingency, Historical Ecology, and the Renegotiation of Nature in Central Seram”(2008) is one of Ellen’s most influential works. He applied a historical perspective in order to understand the Nuaulu’s current relationship with nature. He offered that nature co-evolves with humans. Changes that have accelerated in the last 20 years such as cash cropping and forest extraction have renegotiated the Nuaulu’s relationship with nature. “How people conceptualize nature depends on how they use it, how they transform it, and how in doing so they invest knowledge in a different part of it” (2008: 326). He is influenced by Leslie White’s energy capture theory. The technology available has a great impact and changes people’s perception of nature, as it is instrumental in the evolution and advancement of our species.

The work of Roy Ellen contributed to anthropologist’s understanding of the interrelationship between nature and culture and helped anthropology contribute to practical debates that depend on definitions of nature such as sustainable development. He focused on the evolution and transmission of ecological knowledge and environmental stress in the context of sustainable development. In response to environmental stress, or instability such as political conflict or economic hazards he found that traditional knowledge enables local populations to cope. Ellen theorized that humans needed to adjust to new conditions, cope with dangers or improve existing conditions through modifications to their behavior. He found individuals adapt through their economic and social relationships.

Roy Ellen’s research helps us understand the ways in which culture and nature are synergistic and important to human evolution. Humans have utilized nature by living in it and assimilating it into culture as we have evolved.

Roy Ellen is one of the foremost British anthropologists associated with ethno-biology and has made major contributions to field. Ellen helped renew interest in the study of classification with his book “Categorical impulse: Essays on the Anthropology of classifying behavior”(2008). In the book he synthesized the studies of cognitive and ethno-sciences with symbolic anthropology providing a holistic perspective on classification. Roy Ellen’s new approach attempted to bridge the gap between the two contradictory approaches of cultural and cognitive by utilizing a more processual approach and “cross- fertilizing” the two. He engaged both psychological and anthropological ideas to combine the two approaches effectively. He believed that the existing assumptions of cultural uniformity on the ethnographic analysis of categories were not correct, as variation was evident. He utilized the animal classifications of the Nuaulu people to present his point. His point being that in regards to the classifications of animals made by the Nuaulu people, one must pay attention to different types and contexts of variation. According to Ellen, “In a single body of data there may be variation according to many criteria which are often cross-cutting and reinforce each other irregularly.”(1979: 337) There are various reasons and ways people classify and categorize as a result of both culture construction and the cognitive approach. Ellen states what he believes to be inevitable is the fact that the “products of classifying behavior reflect the immediate social conditions of the situations in which they are used”(1979: 337). In other words, factors such as environment, culture, society and the state in which they exist are heavily influential on the way people classify things.