FOREWORD 
By Juuian H. StEwarp 
Director, Institute of Social Anthropology 
In its studies of native American communities, the 
Institute of Social Anthropology not only seeks to 
present cultural descriptions and analyses that will 
constitute valuable data for a practical understanding 
of the peoples, but it strives to contribute to the 
formulation of the scientific problems involved and 
to the development of a methodology for their solu- 
tion. The most important fact about these peoples 
is that they have always been and are today intensive 
horticulturists, despite many changes since the Span- 
ish Conquest. Consequently, if their potentialities 
for future change under the stream of national influ- 
ences are to be appraised, it is of the utmost impor- 
tance to understand their agrarian basis of life and 
the behavior patterns influenced by it. 
Anthropology in general has paid very inadequate 
attention to land use and to the complex of socio- 
economic activities revolving around it. An obvious 
explanation of this is that studies of environments 
and their exploitation lie beyond an anthropologist’s 
technical skills and require the special knowledge of 
a cultural geographer. A more fundamental reason, 
however, is that the problem of environmental con- 
_ditioning of culture has not been properly formu- 
lated and that anthropologists approach it with some 
trepidation. They tend to think of the problem as 
one of production and consumption, that is, of eco- 
nomics. But to avoid the suspicion of advocating 
economic determinism, little effort is made to relate 
exploitative activities to social structure and social 
behavior, and cultural determinants are sought in 
other directions. Another reason for the slight con- 
sideration given economic factors is that the concepts 
are taken from Euro-American civilization. In this 
culture, technology is so advanced that essential sub- 
sistence needs are quite secondary in importance, and 
man’s adaptation to his environment is cushioned by 
thousands of technical processes and scores of socio- 
economic institutions. Economics has become a 
series of specialized considerations dealing with the 
production and consumption of goods, and if any 
thought is given its limitations on social and political 
structure it is mainly intuitive or philosophical. In 
more primitive cultures, every exploitative activity 
requires the adaptation of many other activities that 
are not ordinarily thought of as economic. In stating 
the problem, therefore, the term “human ecology” is 
preferable to “economics.” This term has the advan- 
tage of implying that the problem is not one of 
demonstrating that certain institutions which are eco- 
nomic in the narrow sense directly cause certain 
social institutions, but that a series of modes of 
behavior and institutions are connected through vari- 
ous kinds and degrees of interdependency. 
The main problem of human ecology is to ascertain 
the limitations which each set of exploitative activi- 
ties places on other modes of behavior. To meet its 
essential wants of food, clothing, housing, and manu- 
factured goods, any society exploits its particular 
environment by means of its special technology. 
There are only a limited number of ways in which 
seeds of different kinds can be gathered, game 
hunted, or the soil cultivated. Each set of subsistence 
activities in turn somewhat restricts the manner in 
which individuals may associate with one another, 
live together in social groups, and carry on certain 
group activities. In some cases, the limits of varia- 
tion in socioeconomic patterns are so narrow that a 
change in the social structure could be effected only 
through a revolution in technology. In other cases, 
considerable latitude is possible, and purely historical 
factors can be seen to have a definitive role. 
Certain very primitive peoples, such as the seed- 
gathering Paiute and Western Shoshoni, had a soci- 
ety that was predetermined within narrow limits by 
ecological factors. To survive, these people had to 
disperse in family units during the greater part of 
the year. Large and permanent villages were pre- 
cluded for want of ability to acquire and transport 
sufficient stores of food to central points where 
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