Critique of “Guns, Germs, & Steel” and Cultural Ecology

*First off, my apologies if this is a little late in the game. I started this entry the day we watched the film and never actually posted it. Hopefully it is still fresh in your minds!*

In the National Geographic documentary “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies,” Jared Diamond argues that much of human behavior, culture, and social structures are determined by the environment and resources it offers. Of the theories we have encountered thus far, I have found this one to be one of the most reasonable. Not only did Diamond attempt to tackle one of the biggest questions any anthropologist—or human, for that matter—has wondered, but I think he does a rather eloquent job of doing so.

Why do certain civilizations survive and conquer others?

He dismissed the idea that Eurasian hegemony is a result of any sort of intellectual, moral, or genetic superiority. Rather, he suggests that “geographic luck” is responsible for some civilizations being more successful than others. Geographic luck consists of a good environment, which leads to technological advancements and, ultimately, civilization. The ideal environment has high protein plants that are easy to plant and harvest and large, plant-eating, social animals with an internal social hierarchy that mature early, reproduce often, and work well with humans. He suggests that groups in places such as Papua New Guinea are more than capable of mastering their environment but they just didn’t have the right one.

This is just about the only major connection between cultural ecology and the ideas of cultural relativists like Boas and his students. Both theories state that no culture is inherently superior to another. Cultural relativism was largely developed in response to Western ethnocentrism, but is largely anti-evolutionism and not really geographically deterministic. Cultural relativism holds that an individual’s beliefs and activities should only be understood in the context of his specific culture. This delegitimizes comparison between and across cultures.

More connections can be made between functionalism and cultural ecology. Structural functionalism acknowledges the importance of a social system, and like cultural ecology, does not place much importance on the individual. Psychological functionalism focuses on individual needs, but acknowledges that cultural and social institutions function to meet basic needs, then later develop into secondary needs. This is compatible with cultural ecology in that in order to develop these complex social and cultural institutions or behaviors, basic biological and physiological needs must be met first. Cultures that must devote all of their time to responding to these most basic needs won’t have time to develop and fulfill these secondary needs. However, a major difference between cultural ecology and functionalism is that both functionalist theories are synchronic, meaning that they only focus on one cross-section of time; whereas Diamond’s cultural ecological approach is diachronic in nature, focusing on all of history.

Another major focus of cultural ecology is materialism. Marx believes the driving force in history is the struggle between producers and exploiters. Applied to the inequality of civilizations, Eurasian civilizations are the exploiters and Papua New Guineans are the producers. Marx stated that human labor leads to class consciousness, and it is in the nature of Eurasian civilizations as capitalists to exploit classes they view as beneath them. Marx sees the world as made up of processes, relations, contradictions, and conflicts, not unlike Diamond. However, he does not believe it is founded in fixed entities or structures.

This is where structuralism seems to be more compatible with cultural ecology. Consistent with both theories, similar patterns of development reflect fundamental similarities in the structure of the human mind. Levi-Strauss believed that ethnologists are a special kind of ecologist. An underlying mental structure in everything is what leads to universal unity, allowing ethnologists to compare different cultures out of context to find these structures. An ecologist stresses the importance of this context, in that environment provides an intellectual puzzle, and from these puzzle pieces (materials and resources in the environment), humans create their intellectual world. Diamond might say that Eurasians were working with a 1000-piece puzzle while Papua New Guineans ended up with the “ages 3 & up” puzzle.

Perhaps the most obvious theoretical connection that can be made here is to evolutionism. His work offers further support for E.B. Tylor’s concept of psychic unity and Lewis Henry Morgan’s independent invention, their explanation for why different civilizations across the globe with no contact or influence from each other developed similar technologies, traits, and institutions. The only conflicting ideas between evolutionism and cultural ecology appear to be ethnocentrism and the idea of certain cultures being intellectually superior to others. Diamond stresses that a lack of ingenuity is not what is holding back these civilizations. Although I think that this is a rather noble way of defending those less advanced, some might say that his views do not give enough credit to human influence or activity in those advanced civilizations. However, if this is the worst to be said about cultural ecology, I believe it still holds a pretty strong argument.

-- Mariah!