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

Change, Meaning and the 'Social Environment'
Some more forward-thinking ecological anthropologists have accepted
the need to broaden their horizons to include other analyses of the
human-environment relationship, Bennett, for example, considers that,
when the interest shifts toward the more dynamic cases, or to
episodes in the history of any socia! system when tradition
gives way to change, ecosystem is an inappropriate and awkward
model, It tends to impose an image of order and
predictability upon something that is often (or usually)
engaged in adaptive coping, or searching for congenial
outcomes without knowing precisely how it will all turn out
(1976: 951,
In moving away from the restrictive methodology of the ecosystems
approach, Benne t t (i b id: 94) suggests the more open-ended concept of
' adapt i ve systems' . There is no doubt that a more general ized and open
systems approach such as this offers us a better reflection of reality.
Even Friedman, who is so critical of the neo-functionalism of writers
such as Rappaport, accepts the validity of e systems approach when it
avoids teleological assumptions (1971).
It is interesting, too, to observe how Rappaport has changed his
position over the years. For a start, he has come to allow 'cognized
models' into the picture:
Nature is seen by humans through a screen of be1 iefs,
knowledge, and purposes, and it is in terms of their images of
nature, rather than of the actual structure of nature, that
they act. Yet, it is upon nature itself that they do act, and
it is nature itself upon them. Disparities between images of
nature are always simpler than nature and in some degree or
sense inexact, for ecological systems are complex and subtle
beyond full comprehension (Rappaport 1979:97),