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

contradict ions" (Ellen, 1979b: 21, In consequence, subsistence
activities became "simple, undifferentiated and boringly repetitive
wherever one finds them" (Netting, 1977; see too Ellen, 19821,
This is an over-simplified view, since no-one could accuse
Malinowski (1935) of finding subsistence activities 'boring'. It is
Radcliffe-Brown whom Netting credits with having consigned "studies of
subsistence adaptation to an 'external realm' where labored
archaeologists and ethnological historians of diffusion. The topic
could safely be left with museum cataloguers of material culture or such
contemporary experts as bhe geographer, the agronomist, and the rural
sociologist" (1974:21). In the prevailing 'cultural ideology'
(Meilleur, 1987), while environmental concerns could hardly be ignored
in the fieldwork enterprise,
the treatment of ecology (generally meaning 'environment') was
seen as obligatory, but in the event something of a ritual
exercise, It became a discrete section in monographical
studies, often the first chapter; a few background facts on
the distribution of vegetation, rainfall records and
topographical features were presented in vacuo before
proceeding to the main focus, the analyt ical ly autonomous
domain of social organisation", (Ellen, 1979:4-5).
During the 1930s, it was Daryll Forde who "maintained virtually
single-handed a theoretical interest in environmental relations" (Ellen
!979:3), at least in the British school, Rather than looking at
environmental 'traits', such as climate, in isolation, Forde accepts the
environment as a complex which "does not affect human activity in any
single and comprehensive way,..physical conditions have both restrictive
and permissive relations to human activities" (1934: 4631, He also
accepts the independent status of culture: