Contributions of Anthropology to the study of the relation between man and the environment and agricultural production

Abstract

In the article it is performed a historical analysis of the main contributions of Anthropology to the study of the man-nature problem using different bibliographical sources. It is carried out an overview of the ecological perspective in Anthropology; the Structuralism and Symbolism, as well as the contributions of the systemic approach. Then, the cognitive symbolic approach is analyzed reaching to the Symbolic Ecology. Inside the political approach, conceptions of the World-System are collected and the three paths of the Political Ecology are described: The Neoliberalism, the Culturalist, represented by the Ecofeminism, and the Ecosocialism. Later, the contributions of Anthropology to the more specific field of farming production are described, until reaching the Agroecology and the Ethnoecology. Finally, it is pointed out the interest of the recent sociological and anthropological streams of social emancipation in order to understand the social movements of alternative ecological production and the recovery of traditional farming methods.