THE YAKHA: CULTURE, ENVIRONMENT AND DEVELOPMENT IN ...

ather than regularities in the phenomena observed - all issues
that make problematic what were taken for granted as facts or
certainties on which the validity of paradigms had rested
(1986: 8).
It seems to me to be worth pursuing the idea of a 'post-
environmentalist' human ecology in a country where, in view of its great
diversity and the uncertainty surrounding its ecological situation, the
time may be right for such an "experimental moment in the human
sciences" (ibid, ) , However, to understand the nature of such an
undertaking, it is necessary first to look at the intellectual heritage
of ecological anthropology, in order to better understand what such a
'post-modern' phase might look like.
2.3 Anthropolo~icel Approeches to the Study of the Environment
From Determinism to Possibilism
It is hard to define what ecological anthropology actually is (Ellen
1979),a3 partly because an interest in the relationship between people
and their natural environment dates from the beginning of written
history (Meilleur 1987) and has consequently been written about in many
different ways. Some early accounts accorded the environment a
determining role in human affairs and, while intellectual trends of the
19th and early 20th centuries challenged this perspective, it remained a
significant trend within the discipline, As Ellen explains:
In so much as the work of our Victorian predecessors was
evolutionist, racialist, sociologica1, historical, influenced
by Hume and the romanticists or the Benthamite school, so it
was implacably opposed to geographical determinism, But as a
product of the Enlightenment it was also residually
environmentalist (1979: 2).