Overall Score:
| Target Readership | Sen. Secondary | For help with criteria, click here | ||||
| Presentation/Style |  |
|
|
|||
| Content | |
|
|
 |
||
| Literature | |
|
|
|||
| Originality | |
|
|
|||
| Overall | |
|
|
|||
Contents:
1 - The biology of culture; 2 - Humans in their natural habitat; 3 - Some useful concepts; 4 - Culture and physical health; 5 - The quality of life and mental well-being; 6 - Evolution and human behaviour; 7 - Cultural arrangements in farming and urban societies; 8 - Warfare; 9 - Impacts of culture on the living environment; 10 - The transition to a new phase in human history; 11 - Towards a cultural renaissance.
Review:
The idea of culture and society evolving alongside human physiological development and the concomitant alterations in the natural environment has a chequered history. Leaving aside the early racist aspects it remained somewhat of a backwater until Diamond's 1977 text Guns, Germs and Steel which suggested that culture had played a far greater part than we might have realised. It's popularity led to a renewed interest in the field of biohistory as this author refers to it. Since then work on Easter island and its collapse due to cultural factors has been noted making this an interesting field.
The idea of culture shaping landforms has been around for many years but only a few syllabuses ever called attention to it. What Boyden aims to do is to increase interest in this field and give biohistory a greater recognition. He starts with a history of culture from the birth of language to the first culture/nature interactions and problems. Chapter two argues for a baseline - a time before major cultural changes in the environment (defined here as beginning with the agricultural revolution). This baseline should be humans in their most 'natural' form as hunter-gatherers. This baseline is put into context in chapter three where human activity is divided into four in a division reminiscent of Rostow's model. These three chapters form the basis of the work. Part two, the remaining chapters, are seen as essays each addressing a specific them of culture/environment interaction. We start with culture and health - a look at the changes in disease patterns as a result of culture. We lose some elements but gain others such as malaria due to changing food-gathering patterns and lung diseases due to changes in food consumption (in this case, tobacco). Chapter five considers our mental health. As with chapter four there is no clear answer: we gain some things and we lose others. The next topic is the controversial one of evolution and behaviour. To what extent is behaviour genetic? This is a confronting essay with cases dealing with religion, innate behaviour etc. Chapter seven, looking at culture and farming takes on a less contentious area akin to early work on sociology and peasant studies. This does not mean to say that the impact was any less as problems of ownership and transnational corporations today attest. Warfare alters landscapes. In chapter 8 we see how changing stances and weaponry have changed landscapes. Culture itself causes changes. Modern lifestyles demand energy and require the translocation of species from their original habitats both areas which cause considerable changes. Up to this point we see a series of items which has caused a great deal of (usually negative) alteration i.e. culture has degraded the ability of the environment to cope. The final two chapters argue for a more 'bio-sensitive' way of dealing with the environment. As others call for reduced economic impact, Boyden calls for reduced cultural impact.
This small text has a range of good ideas in it. There's much to make one think and as such it would make an ideal source book to get people to challenge the current situation.