Ethnoecology
His "Hanunoo Color Categories" study helped scholars understand the relationship between classification systems and conceptualization of the world within cultures.
Other scholars such as Berlin, Breedlove, and Raven endeavored to learn more about other systems of environment classifications and to compare them to Western scientific taxonomies.
Franz Boas was one of the first anthropologists to question unilineal evolution, the belief that all societies follow the same, unavoidable path towards Western civilization.
Boas strongly urged anthropologists to gather detailed ethnographic data from an emic standpoint in order to understand different cultures.
Steward coined the term cultural ecology, the study of human adaptations to social and physical environments, and focused on how evolutionary paths in similar societies result in different trajectories instead of the classic global trends in evolution.
In this context, TEK consists of a community’s shared ideas when considering subjects such as the acceptable uses of plants and animals, the best approach to maximizing the potential uses of land, the social institutions in which members of society are expected to navigate, and holistically, their worldview.
[10][11] The study of TEK frequently includes critiques of the theoretical division between cultural systems and ecosystems, interpreting humans as an integral part of the whole.
Within the discipline of ethnoecology, there is a clear emphasis on those societies that are deemed "indigenous", "traditional", or "savage", a common trend in anthropological pursuits through the 20th century.
For example, social scientists have attempted to understand the markers inner-city youth use to identify a threat to their livelihood, including the wearing of gang colors, tattoos, or protrusions through clothes that may represent or be a weapon.
Instilled with recognizing dangers at an early age, and who these threats come from, a set of beliefs are held by the members of the society on how to live in their country, city, or neighborhood.
Similarly, social scientists have begun to use ethnoecological surveys in ethnographic studies in attempts to understand and address topics relevant in Western society as well as prevalent around the world.
[21] In this way, the idea of a corresponding, but not adversarial, relationship between society and culture was once in itself baffling and defiant to the generally accepted modes of understanding in the earlier half of the twentieth century.
[21] As time went on, the understood dichotomy of nature and culture continued to be challenged by ethnographers such as Darrell A. Posey, John Eddins, Peter Macbeth and Debbie Myers.
Dove and Carpenter contend that some anthropologists have sought to reconcile the two through a "translation", bringing the ethnological understandings and framing them in a modern dialogue.
