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

small population may be more adaptive than a large one" (Ellen
1982: 243).
Nor may environmental versatility necessarily be an adaptive
characteristic: productive specialization can be a more favourable
option for human populations, at least in the short term. In Sahlins'
opinion,
a culture's downfall is the most probable outcome of its
successes. The accompl ished, we1 1 adapted culture is bi ased.
Its design has been refined in a special direction, its
environment narrowly specified, how it shall operate
definitively stated. The more adapted a culture, the less
therefore it is adaptable, Its specialization subtracts from
its potential, from the capacity of alternate response, from
tolerance of change in the world, It becomes vulnerable in
proportion to its accomplishments (1964),
Environmental versati lity can also mean members of one
population/ecosystem interacting economically, politically and socially
with those of another in order to take advantage of the
complementarities and contrasts of different ecological zones (di Castri
!976:245), It is not always possible to look at a single, bounded
ecosystem in an analysis of human populations.
A further problem, touched upon by Ardener (1976), is the
'functionalist fallacy', As Friedman puts it, "once one has described
the actual state of affairs, it is tautological to say that a particular
variable is adaptive simply because it has a necessary function in the
whole system" (1971), Sahlins similarly argues that "an adaptive
perspective ... must not presume that whatever is there is good, rational,
useful or advantageous" (1964). Hallpike argues quite persuasively that
in the case of human societies "the mere survival of a social feature
may have nothing to do with adaptive advantage, but instead be a case of