Technology and Evolution: Revamping a Relation for Regional Environmental History in Latin America
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32991/2237-2717.2024v14i1.p175-202Keywords:
technology, niche construction theory, historical ecology, posthumanismAbstract
This paper explores the topic of technology as an input for Latin American environmental history, taking up, on the one hand, a critical approach to the relationship between technology and the environment and, on the other, recalibrating the scope of the historical horizon from which it can be technology as a guiding thread of research in environmental history. If the posthumanist turn in the social sciences is taken into account, the focus of attention of environmental history goes back beyond the great periods of modernity. Likewise, if the resource of the longue durée is dispensed with and if the interfaces with the natural sciences such as ecology, geology, among others, are considered, environmental history often makes use of an evolutionary framework as an explanatory resource. By virtue of the above, it is necessary to address what type of evolutionism is consonant with the epistemic assumptions of contemporary environmental historiography, I discuss Niche Construction Theory and Historical Ecology, especially in relation to the decentering of the anthropos, as well as in terms of envisioning an integral environmental history in Latin America.
References
Adams, Richard. The Evolution of Urban Society: Early Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica. New York: Routledge, 1966.
Baleé, William y Clark Erickson. “Time, Complexity and Historical Ecology”. En Time and Complexity in Historical Ecology, editado por William Baleé and Clarck Erickson, 1-20. New York: Columbia University Press,2006.
Bate, Luis Felipe y Alejandro Terrazas. “Apuntes sobre las investigaciones prehistóricas en México y América”, Boletín Antropológico, 24: 67(2006): 167-219.
Beatty, John.“The Evolutionary Contingency Thesis”, en Conceptual Issues in Evolutionary Biology editado por Elliot Sober,217-247. USA: MIT Press,1995.
Boyd, Robert y Peter Richerson Peter. The Origin and Evolution of Cultures, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Coe, Michael and Kent Flannery. “Microenvironments and Mesoamerican prehistory”, Science 143,(1964): 650-655.
Denevan, William. “Una perspectiva histórica sobre el descubrimiento de Campos Elevados (Camellones) prehispánicos en Sud América”. En Agricultura Ancestral. Camellones y Albarradas. Contexto social, usos y retos del pasado y presente, editado por Francisco Valadéz,17-24. Quito: Abya-Yala, 2006.
Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs and Steels: The Fate of Human Societies. USA: W.W.Norton, 1997.
Dollfus, Olivier. “The tropical Andes: a changing mosaic” en Anthropological History of Andean Polities, editado por John Murra, Nathan Wachtel y Jacques Revel,11-22. Cambridge London-Paris: Cambridge University Press-Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1986.
Erickson, Clark.“Prehistoric Landscapes Management in the Andean Highlands:
Raised Field Agriculture and its Environmental Impact, Population and Environment” Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 13(4)(1992):285-300.
Flannery, Kent y Joyce Marcus. Guila Naquitz: Archaic Foraging and Early Agriculture in Oaxaca,New York: Academic Press, 1985.
González Jácome, Alba. “Mesoamérica: un desarrollo teórico”, Dimensión Antropológica, 7(19)(2000): 121-151.
Gorman, Hugh and Betsy Mendelsohn. “Where Does Nature End and Culture Begin? Converging Themes in the History of Technology and Environmental History” EnThe Illusory Boundary Environment and Technology in History, editado por Martin Reuss, Stephen Cutcliffe, 265-290. London: University of Virginia Press, 2010.
Heckenberger, Michael. The Ecology of Power: Culture, Place and Personhood in the Southern Amazon, A.D 1000-2000. New York: Routledge, 2005.
Hornborg, Alf. “Ethnogenesis, Regional Integration, and Ecology in Prehistoric
Amazonia. Toward a System Perspective”, Current Anthropology,.46(4)(2005):589-620.
Ingold, Tim. “On the Distinction Between Evolution and History”, Social Evolution and History, 1 (1)(2002): 5–24
Ingold, Tim. “The trouble with evolutionary biology”, Anthropology Today, 23(2)(2007b): 13-17.
Jáuregui, Jesús. “¿Quo Vadis Mesoamerica? Primera parte”, Antropología 82(2008):3-31.
Kirchhoff, Paul. Mesoamérica. Sus límites geográficos, su composición étnica y caracteres culturales, México: Ediciones Al fin Liebre, 2009.
Laland, Kevin y Gillian Brown. Sense and Nonsense. Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Laland, Kevin y Neeltje Boogert. “Niche construction, co evolution and biodiversity”, Ecological Economics 69,(2008): 731-736
Laland, Kevin y Michael O´Brien. “Niche Construction Theory and Archaeology”, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 17(2010):303-322
Laland, Kevin , Neeltje Boogert y Cara Evans. “Niche construction, innovation and complexity”, Environ. Innovation Soc. Transitions 11(2013):71-87
Lansing, Stephen y Karyn Fox. “Niche construction on Bali: the gods of the countryside”, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 366(2011):927-934
Lorandi, Ana María. “Horizons” in Andean Archaeology”, en Anthropological History of Andean Polities, editado por John Murra , Nathan Wachtel y Jacques Revel ,35-46. Cambridge London-Paris: Cambridge University Press-Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1986.
Lynch, Thomas.“The earliest south american lifeways”. En The Cambridge History of Native Peoples of the Americas. Volume III South America Part.1 editado por Frank Salomon y StuartSchwartz,188-263. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Martínez, Sergio. “Sobre los conceptos de progreso y evolución en el siglo XIX”, en Historia y explicación en biología, compilado por Sergio Martínez y Ana Barahona, 155-167. México: FCE, 1998.
MacNeish, Richard.“Preliminary Archaeological Investigations in the Sierra de Tamaulipas, Mexico”. Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 6(48)(1958):210
Martínez, Sergio. “El mecanismo de la selección natural, su origen y su papel en discusiones metodológicas en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX”. En Filosofía e Historia de la Biología, compilado por Ana Barahona, Edna Suárez y Sergio Martínez, 255-277. México:UNAM, 2001.
Moreno Yánez, Segundo y Christiana Borchart de Moreno. Crónica Indiana del Ecuador Antiguo, Ecuador: Abya-Yala, 1997
Murra, John. “Andean Societies”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 13 (1984): 119-141.
Murra, John y Nathan Wachtel.“Introduction”, en Anthropological History of Andean Polities, editado por John Murra, NathanWachtel y Jacques Revel, 1-8. Cambridge London-Paris: Cambridge University Press-Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1986.
Neves, Eduardo. “Ecology, Ceramic Chronology and Distribution, Long-Term History, and Political Change in the Amazonian Floodplain”. En Handbook of South American Archaeology, editado por H. Silverman y H. Isbell,359-379. New York: Springer, 2008.
Oyama, Susan, Paul Griffiths y Russell Gray. Cycles of Contingency. Developmental Systems and Evolution, USA:MIT Press, 2001.
Palerm, Ángel. Teorías sobre la evolución de Mesoamérica, Primera sesión plenaria de la Mesa Redonda de la Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología, Guadalajara, 1977.
Palerm, Ángel. “Sobre el modo asiático de producción y la teoría de la sociedad oriental: Marx y Wittfogel: una aplicación a Mesoamérica” en Society and History: Essays in the Honor of Karl August Wittfogel, editado por G.L. Ulmen, 15-83. La Haya: Mounton Publishers, 1978.
Paley, William. Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1802.
Parra, Fabiola y Alejandro Casas. “Origen y difusión de la domesticación y la agricultura en el Nuevo Mundo, en Domesticación en el continente americano. Vol. 1. Manejo de biodiversidad y evolución dirigidas por las culturas del Nuevo Mundo, editado por Alejandro Casas , Juan Torres-Guevara y Fabiola Parra, 159-187, México, 2016.
Ramón, Galo. La Resistencia Andina: Cayambe 1500-1800, Centro Andino de Acción Popular, 1987.
Radkau, Joachim."¿Qué es la historia del medio ambiente?", Ayer, 11, (1993):119-146.
Reuss, Martin and Stephen Cutcliffe. “Introduction”. En The Illusory Boundary Environment and Technology in History, editado por Martin Reuss yStephen Cutcliffe, 1-8. London: University of Virginia Press, 2010.
Rowlands, Michael.“A question of complexity”, en Domination and Resistance, editado por Daniel Miller, Michael Rowlands y Charles Tilley,pp.28-39, One World Archaeology, Routledge, 1989.
Ruuskanen, Esa and Kary Väyrynen. “Theory and prospects in environmental history”. Rethinking History The Journal of Theory and Practice 21(4)(20017):1-18.
Salomon, Frank.Vertical Politics on the Inka Frontier”, en Anthropological History of Andean Polities, editado por John Murra, Nathan Wachtel y Jacques Revel, 89-118. Cambridge London-Paris: Cambridge University Press-Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1986.
Sanders, Williams y Barbara Price. Mesoamerica. The Evolution of a Civilization.EU: Random House, 1968.
Schaan, Denise. Sacred Geographies of Ancient Amazonia. Historical Ecology of Social Complexity, Left Coast Press, 2013.
Schultz, Emily. “La construcción de nichos y el estudio de los cambios de cultura en antropología: desafíos y perspectivas”, Interdisciplina 3( 5)(2015): 131-159
Sober, Elliot.1“Models of Cultural Evolution”, in Trees of Life. Essays in Philosophy of Biology, editado por Paul Griffiths,17-39. Kluwer, 1991.
Soluri, John, Claudia Leal y José Padua. “Finding the Latin American in Latin American Environmental History”, en A Living Past. Environmental Histories of Modern Latin America, editado por John Soluri,Claudia Leal y José Padua,pp:1–24. New York: Berghan Books, 2018.
Sterelny, Kim y Paul Griffiths.Sex and Death. An introduction to philosophy of biology, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Schwarz, Stuart and Frank Salomon. “New Peoples and New Kinds of People: Adaptation, Readjustments and Ethnogenesis in South American Indigenous Societies (Colonial Eras)”. En The Cambridge History of Native Peoples of the Americas. Volume III South America Part. 2 editado por Frank
Salomon y Stuart Schwartz S, 443-501.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Tarragó, Myriam.“La historia de los pueblos circunpuneños en relación con el Altiplano y los Andes Meridionales”, Estudios Atacameños 7 (1984):93-104.
Tortolero, Alejandro. De la coa a la máquina de vapor. Actividad agrícola e innovación tecnológica en las haciendas mexicanas:1850-1914. México: S.XXI, 1995..
Torres, María Clara. “El alcantarillado subterráneo como respuesta alproblemasanitariodeBogotá,1886-1938”. En Semillas de Historia Ambiental, editado por Stefania Gallini,269-292. Bogotá: Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Jardín Botánico de Bogotá José Celestino Mutis, 2015..
van den Bergh, Jeroen, Bernhard Truffer, y Giorgios Kallis.“Environmental innovation and societal transitions: Introduction and overview” Environmental innovation and societal transitions, 1 (2011): 1-23.
Weigand, Phil. “La Antigua Ecumene Mesoamericana: ¿un ejemplo de sobre-especialización?”, Relaciones 82(21)(2000):41-58.
Williams, James. 2010. “Understanding the Place of Humans in Nature”. In The Illusory Boundary Environment and Technology in History, editado porMartin Reuss yStephen Cutcliffe,9-25. London: University of Virginia Press, 2010.
Wolf, Eric. Pueblos y Culturas de Mesoamérica, México:ERA, 1968.
Wolfe, Mikael. Watering the Revolution. An Environmental and Technological History of Agrarian Reform in Mexico. Duke University Press, 2017.
Worster, Donald. “Doing Environmental History.” In The Ends of the Earth.
Perspectives on Modern Environmental History, editado porDonald Worster, 289–308.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Radamés Villagómez-Reséndiz
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
This journal offers immediate free access to its content, following the principle that providing free scientific knowledge to the public provides greater global democratization of knowledge.
As of the publication in the magazine the authors have copyright and publication rights of their articles without restrictions.
The HALAC Magazine follows the legal precepts of the Creative Commons - Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International license. 
