A. Cultural Perspectives on the Environment
Culture reflects human adaptation to the environment and the dynamic interaction between people, their culture, and their environment has persisted for millennia. In pre-history, the human-environment relationship was an almost automatic survival response. With the advent of modern humans, culture became closely linked to the environment through the rituals and customs of society.
The assumption...is that on the one hand culture can be understood primarily only in terms of cultural factors, but that on the other hand no culture is wholly intelligible without reference to the non-cultural or so-called environmental factors with which it is in relation and which condition it.There is no reason to believe that the level of technological prowess or advancement of a people reflects their level of culture. Innovations such as the television suggest to some that there is an inverse relationship between advances in technology and culture. "Clearly, cause and effect run in both directions in the relationships between culture and progress." Technological advancement often does lead to momentary declines in the coherence of culture.
Culture does not change at the same rate as the environment. This condition produces a time lag between cultural and environmental behavior. Cultural habits, because of this lag, can lead to a historical "legacy" of behavior. The cultural legacy is the imprint of ancestral lifestyles onto more modern lifestyles, despite the fact the world may change in both economic and environmental terms.
Even after the woolly mammoths were nearly extinct in Eurasia and North America, people continued to carry out rituals associated with the mammoth hunt. When environmental change occurs, such as the extinction of certain species, humans do not discontinue the general cultural practices that were part of the subsistence patterns, but rather, focus their efforts on a substitute or like product. After the mammoths died, buffalo (eventually) became the dominant resource for Native Americans and new rituals arose around the buffalo hunt.
The Catholic prohibition of eating meat on Friday was arguably driven in part by the human devastation and labor shortages due to the bubonic plague during the Dark Ages. The loss of people led to fewer beef and grain producers, thereby substantially reducing consumer incomes. Many farm lands were abandoned and meat prices became incredibly high. The "fish option" thus, reflected economic reality. Under a Papal ukase in the Middle Ages consumers switched one-seventh (days in a week) of their meat consumption to fish. The meat ban also served to benefit communities that were more dependent on catching and exporting fish (especially Italian coastal cities loyal to the Pope). Catholics still eat fish on Fridays.
Every culture changes with time. The fact that many different cultures exist today illustrates the different ways that societies have adapted to their environments and the divergent ideas and ideologies that emerged in various environments in the world. The point here is that explaining culture is more than translating a topographical map to some set of corresponding cultural features, as cultural determinism theory would suggest. Culture is a reflection of the complicated mix of many aspects of the human experience. Anthropologists and sociologists identify three relevant environmental factors that explain differences in cultural evolution:
(1) the mode of adaptation to a changing environment via culture,
(2) the technology that accompanies this adaptation, and
(3) the diffusion of cultural practices and introduction of new technologies through trade.
The approach here towards culture and environment is realist. Julian Steward and other realists, for example, use a "multi-linear evolution" framework to explain culture, an approach which focuses on how societies share cultural values and how those values impact the environment. This conception is a constellation "of features which are most closely related to subsistence activities and economic arrangements. The core includes social, political and religious patterns as are empirically determined to be closely connected to the arrangements." Steward looks at, for example, population density and settlement patterns, the course of adapting to the environment, and how humans introduce innovations into culture.
Clifford Geertz' realist approach is more cybernetic in nature: a demographic approach to explaining culture that focuses on "a complex network of mutual causality," including energy flows and materials use cycles. Critics of this approach believe these interpretations tend to over-emphasize energy flow models and other functionalist explanations, while neglecting historical and unique cultural factors.
Marvin Harris' viewpoint of "cultural materialism" is decidedly deterministic and realistic in approach to culture. Harris suggests that it is the stress of population pressure that causes a differential cultural use of available environmental resources.
Harris describes the material roots of culture in a variety of environmental settings: from explaining the particular role of cattle in Hindu cultures (it is far more efficient to keep cattle for dung and dairy products than to eat its meat), to the lack of pork in Muslim countries (pigs do not do well in arid climates and the meat turns bad quickly there). Cannibalism, according to Harris, is a systemic manifestation (in Papua New Guinea, Central America, and elsewhere) of overpopulation and scarce foodresources.
Given the different resources that shape culture, there are naturally cultural contradictions between people's cultures. Harris points to several examples: Chinese detest cow milk, but like dog meat; Western peoples are lactophiles, dairy-product consumers, but are repelled by the thought of consuming the meat of a pet. Hindus not only avoid dog, but would never eat the meat of the sacred cow. In the United States, beef has taken on an almost "holy" quality among consumers. This idolization differs in that the Americans love to eat the cow.
The possession of the same domesticated animals does not produce the same utilization.
While the Tungu rides his reindeer, other Siberians harness their animals to a sledge; the Chinaman will not milk his cattle, while the Zulu's diet consists largely of milk.
The role of the pig also varies across cultures and environments. There are "pig lovers," such as the indigenous populations of New Guinea, and "pig haters," such as the people ofthe Middle East. The pig to the Tsembenga of New Guinea is a form of wealth that is accumulated by individuals and later disbursed back to the community in ceremonial feasts occurring in seven year cycles. The Tsembenga cycle of pig production is closely linked to their cultural, economic and environmental cycles.
B. The Role of Trade
Similar to the Tsembenga system, Kwakiutl Village leaders in the U.S. Pacific Northwest accumulate material possessions through tribute over time and re-distribute them back to the community in a rite known as the Potlach ceremony. The collection and dispersal of material possessions is not limited to non-European cultures. Christmas in the United States has become a blend of ceremony andcommercialism, in some ways resembling the collection and donationcycle of the Kwakiutl. In some industries such as computers, which are usually devoid of religious content, Christmas now accounts for 5 percent of the annual revenues. Most Christmas toys now sold in the United States are in fact made in China.
Some regard trade as an end to itself. As they did elsewhere in the world, British (and later Australian) explorers/colonizers gave gifts (Western trade goods) to peoples they encountered. World War Two hastened interaction with New Guinea peoples, and Allied nations sought their support in the jungle war against the Japanese. The initial interactions involved the exchange of gifts. Native peoples began to worship the gifts they received. Some New Guineans reacted not only by being lured into the war and the capitalist world, but to regard the gifts as holy. The tribes assumed that the makers of the fantastic products must be deities of some sort and waited in vain for their gods to return with more trade products, thus spawning the "cargo cults." Goods became a focus of worship simply because they were traded.
Trade is a critical factor in the relationship between the environment and culture. Trade facilitates the diffusion of material goods and technology and through this process alters the culture-environment relation. Trade also provides a conduit for cultural diffusion and can change environmental and cultural relations in the process. With trade, resource demands on the local environment are no longer reflected in and exclusively related to the local culture and environment conditions.
The introduction of trade upsets the delicate relationship between culture and environment that has evolved over millennia as resources have become commodified into products. For example, fur bearing mammals have long been used for basic clothing. The extinction and near-extinction of many fur-bearing animals in North America in the 17th and 18th centuries (by the Hudson Bay Company and others), is partly the result of changing European fashions. By the same token, Africans killed elephants and rhinoceros for meat for many eons, but the current annihilation of these two animals is driven not by demands for the meat, which is now discarded, but by demands for the horns and tusk, which are used in many kinds of cultural medicines.
What kinds of trade policy produce what types of environmental problems? Cultures that are trade-oriented, such as the ancient Phoenicians and Venetians in the Middle Ages, or today's Hong Kong and Singapore, probably face a different set of environmental problems than countries whose economies are less trade-oriented. Countries that are resource exporters may face environmental problems that are extractive or source-related, while those that are importers may have problems that are waste- or pollution-oriented. Culture can act to prioritize trade and environmental issues, which can be very subjective. Indians could be major exporters of beef and Americans of bald eagle feathers. Both choose not to for cultural reasons. Culture can thus provide the parameters for possible trade.
Every culture's subsistence strategy is determined in some part by the environment in which it exists. This is not to say that the form and structure of a culture, as well as the psychological attributes of a particular group, are simply the product of a few environmental factors. A given environment can facilitate the emergence of certain subsistence strategies but not others. The environment, in this view, sets limits, but does not determine history (a view known as "environmental possibilities"). This view includes other factors, such as a group's history, knowledge of techniques, and possession of material artifacts, that determine a people's subsistence strategy. Environmentalism focuses on how a group views the environment and how it can appropriate resources from the environment through culture and trade.
C. A Normative Approach to Cultural Trade and its Regulation
There is a growing consensus of opinion that trade should not grow at the direct expense of the environment or culture. There are principles in the Rio Declaration and in the WTO's Trade and Environment Committee (and elsewhere) that lay out some of the basic guidelines for regulation of trade as it relates to the environment. However, such principles with respect to culture have not been crafted. How do people accept and resist cultural change brought on by technology, transmitted through trade and evidenced in the changes in the environment?
Who owns cultures and who owns habitats? The fact is that any judgement must be weighed somewhat equally, for at least a populist electoral sentiment. This means legislation on specific aspects of theculture, environmental and trade relationship, but also normative decisions on what are legitimate and sought-after policy goals and objectives.
One normative approach to crafting regimes and rules related to culture, especially in the context of protecting it, would be to use the concepts and precepts applied to protecting the environment. This would then translate into a set of cultural rights that would apply to trade situations.
The Five Principles of Cultural Protection in International Trade
Every culture has the right to survive and to take extraordinarysteps to assure its survival with respect to international trade and its impact on domestic cultures.
2. The Principle of Diversity
All cultures not only have the right to survive, thus promoting diversity of human culture types, they also have the right to a diverse set of practices and beliefs.
3. The Principle of Least Distortion
In trade disciplines, including those applied to environmental issues, countries can legitimately protect environmental rights but must do so in a manner that is the least trade-distortive. This principle should also apply to trade where culture is at issue.
4. The Principal of Sustainable Cultures
Cultures have the right to exist in diverse circumstances, but also may need to change to meet changes in the world. Cultures are not static, nor are they without consequence. Cultures are dynamic and sometimes must change.
5. The Principal of Ownership
Individual cultures and the material representations of those cultures can be owned in the sense that they can belong to aspecific country or locale. By the same token, cultures have rights to adequate compensation for the use of an aspect culture by other cultures.
Defining the optimal point where legitimate claims to protect culture are differentiated from illegitimate claims, is of course the difficult part in recognizing cultural rights within the international trading system, especially as they relate to the environment.
These cultural rights need to be enshrined with the WTO disciplines as soon as possible, meaning at least within the context of the next round of multilateral negotiations.