specific to the culture under examination—few scholars attempted to find com-
monalities that would allow for the generalization from one society or cultural
grouptoanother,orthatwouldleadtobroader theoretical understanding of the
concept of culture. Partially this was due to the influence of the eminent
anthropologist Franz Boas, who had made a strong case for the application of “his-
torical particularism,” itself a reaction to the “unilateralist” theories of his prede-
cessors. Boas vigorously disputed the notion that human culture followed a
single, sequential formula in its development, and that the historical circumstances
of societies largely shaped their path of evolution.
In the 1950s, the work of a number of scholars once again became directed at
how cultures evolve over time, and especially toward the factors that drive such
change. Leslie White and Julian Steward were two of the most influential thinkers
of this era, and Steward is generally credited with formulating the theoretical basis
for “cultural ecology.” Steward followed in large part the “neoevolutionary” per-
spective developed by White, but offered what he termed a “multilinear” explana-
tion of cultural evolution. Steward argued that while the environment did not
determinethe nature of social organization and cultural phenomena, it did confine
such evolution to a finite cluster of alternatives, any one of which might be the path
taken by any specific society, making Steward an early proponent of possibilism.
This theoretical perspective quickly became the foundation of cultural ecology,
and Steward is often credited with founding the subdiscipline. Steward’s simple
definition of his theory of cultural ecology encapsulates the essence of his broader
philosophy: “the adaptive processes by which the nature of society and anunpre-
dictablenumber of features of culture are affected by the basic adjustment through
which man utilizes a given environment” (emphasis added).
The cultural ecological approach quickly expanded to other social sciences,
among them cultural geography. To cultural geographers, a consideration of the
ecological factors affecting the development of culture effectively combined
the two schools of philosophy that had seriously divided the discipline throughout
the first 50 years of the 20th century: the determinists, who argued that culture
was entirely dependent on the ambient physical ecology; and those following Sauer
and the Berkeley School, who in response offered theoretical alternatives in the
form ofsequent occupanceand related notions. Theoretically, cultural ecology
offered to marry these two opposites by promoting the view that neither the environ-
ment nor humanity were independent actors. Rather, each influenced and shaped the
other within a range of possible relationships, and what ultimately emerged was in
large part the product of the society’s responsive strategy to the challenges pre-
sented by the physical surroundings—neither was absolutely deterministic, and
both played a pivotal role in the shaping of culture. This integrative approach was
highly useful in explaining the spatial diversity of culture, the presence of a great84 Cultural Ecology