Against the Grain: The Vayda Tradition in Human Ecology and Ecological Anthropology [Hardcover]

To rise to the increasingly urgent challenge of understanding the relationship between human beings and the environment, scholars need to step back and re-evaluate their basic premises about how current explanations should shape the form and content of their research.Against the Grainaddresses a variety of topics in the field of human ecology, including ecological anthropology, evolutionary psychology, environmental history, and geography, and challenges scholars to re-think the adequacy of their methods and assumptions. Andrew P. Vayda concludes the volume with a critical commentary on these issues and, more widely, on the subject of explanation. The result is an extremely useful and provocative pr?cis for thinking about, re-evaluating, and rectifying scholarly research.Bradley B. Waltersis associate professor of geography & environment at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick.Bonnie J. McCayis Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, in the Department of Human Ecology.Paige Westis assistant professor of anthropology at Barnard College, New York.Susan Leesis professor emerita of anthropology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Against the Grain provides an admirable survey of Vayda's career, shows some interesting extensions and applications of his ideas, and provides an elaborated critique of contrasting views in human ecology and ecological anthropology. I recommend this book to all who explore human environment relationships and those economic botanists who wish to explore why questions in their study of plant use. Economic Botany

This is an excellent volume. Its strength lies in providing an intellectual history of an eminent anthropologist and a partial understanding of his influence on scholars and on anthropological theory, methodology, and practice over a considerable number of years. l´