The Professional Geographer

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ADAPTATION, VARIATION, AND CULTURAL

GEOGRAPHY

William M. Denevan

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CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY , The Professional Geographer, 35:4, 399-407, DOI: 10.1111/
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THE PROFESSIONAL GEOGRAPHER
VOLUME
35 NOVEMBER
1983 NUMBER
4

Professma/ Geographer, 35(4). 1983. 399-406

D Copyright 1983 by Association of American Geographers

ADAPTATION, VARIATION, AND CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY*

William M. Denevan
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Explanation in much of cultural geography has been historical, change being attributed to the availability of new
ideas through innovation and diffusion. This approach, however, does not tell us why an idea is adopted. A potentially
useful concept for cultural geography is that of adaptation, or strategy for survival, with attention to variation and
its origins, the process of selection from variation, and either change or resilience in the face of environmental
change. Key Words: cultural geography, cultural adaptation, adaptive variability.

The point of view, ”paradigm” if you will, of traditional cultural geography in the
U.S. seems t o be one i n which human behavior vis a vis the physical world is
explained in terms of learned group experience; i.e., culture. Wagner and Mikesell
[40, p. I ] explicitly said that “cultural geography i s the application of the idea of
culture t o geographic problems.” A given culture utilizes and modifies natural re-
sources and landscape i n an area (geographical cultural ecology) in a particular way
with a particular technology for particular purposes because of a particular cultural
heritage. We do something in such and such a way because this i s the way our
people do it. I n turn the various ways of doing things are borrowed, or invented,
or modified, and are passed on. Culturai geography looks ”into culture history for
origins” [40, p. I]. It has taken me quite a few years as a practicing cultural geog-
rapher to come t o the simple realization that this i s the essence of explanation i n
cu Itu ral geography.
Fine, but clearly we need more than this if we are really seeking causal explana-
tion. I am not saying that a concern with origins and diffusion is unimportant, but
rather that this is nor enough. The genetic approach i n cultural geography (as distinct
from a functional approach) really only tells why a tool, idea, or behavioral pattern
i s available, not why it i s applied i n a particular ecological situation, place, or point
in time. One of the problems with cultural geography i s that, while it is often
historically oriented and very much recognizes long term change, it at times looks
at cultures as uniform and relatively stable, a result i n part of a superorganic bias

* Numerous people have contributed useful suggestions to this paper, including the anonymous reviewers. David McCrath
and Gregory Knapp were particularly helpful, and I especially thank them.

399
400 THEPROFESSIONAL
GEOGRAPHER

[76] as well as a macroscale and systemic approach. I n actuality, a group always has
a range of options to choose from, and new options can be acquired in adapting t o
i t s environment or multiple environments, or a changing environment, or a new
environment. I n fact, a reservoir of alternatives may be essential to survival. Decision
making is involved. Much of human geography is now concerned with decision
making, a micro-level process, and cultural geography undoubtedly will increasingly
do likewise; there will be a greater concern with the study of the selective processes
involved i n adaptive change. If cultural geography seeks t o explain decision making
involving adaptation, or man-land relations in a broader sense, or spatial patterns,
then it really differs little from the rest of human geography. The main distinction
becomes one of a preference for problems associated with traditional, pre-indus-
trial, or ethnic societies.
Three major critiques of cultural geography are relevant here. The first was by
Brookfield [5], who took cultural geographers to task for not seeking explanation
through the examination of the ”inner workings of society”; he argued for more
comparative study and more micro-regional or even village-level study in order to
analyze process. Second, Duncan [76] criticizes the whole “superorganic” under-
pinning of cultural geography, pointing out that it is an inadequate mode of expla-
nation, that it has for the most part been abandoned by anthropologists; he calls
for a focus on individuals and groups of individuals. A third influential position is
that of Wagner [38], who “renounces” his earlier conception of cultural geography
and argues that social institutions should be the focus of cultural geography, rather
than either whole cultures or the individual. The statements by Brookfield and
Duncan are not entirely fair as generalizations about cultural geographers, but this
need not be discussed here. I n any event, since Brookfield’s article appeared a
somewhat new and certainly vigorous cultural geography has developed, with sig-
nificant contributions that are respected outside geography. These new directions
are more in terms of emphases than of innovation. They include micro-regional
study, careful measurement (inputs, outputs, time, energy, production, distance,
environment), and such theoretical concepts as subsistence risk, carrying capacity,
agricultural intensification, ecological zonation, and efficiency (e.g. Nietschmann
[29], Bergman [ 4 ] , Waddell [37J,Kirkby [23]). Much of the work i n cultural ecology
in both geography and anthropology, however, has not handled change very well.
There clearly are two levels of cultural-ecological behavior, a cultural (or institu-
tional) level, which i s shared, and a level of individual strategies, which may or may
not be widely shared. Variability is largely at the individual level, and change occurs
first at this level, drawing upon innovation or diffusion. Broader cultural adoption
may never occur or may occur after a considerable time lag. I suggest that geog-
raphers become more sensitive t o small-scale variation as a key to understanding
changing cultural adaptation in response t o a changing human or physical environ-
ment.
Adaptation
This brings us t o the concept of “cultural adaptation” as a potentially useful focus
for cultural geography. It i s now well established i n ecological anthropology, in-
cluding archaeology, with controversial ties to cultural materialism [201, and has
produced a considerable “adaptational rhetoric” [22, p. 1011; see recent statements
by Moran [28], Jochim [27], Winterhalder [47], Kirch [22], Orlove [30], and Ellen [74,
as well as earlier discussions by Alland [7, 21, Cohen [72], Bennett [31, and Hardesty
[79i. One of the few geographers to make explicit use of an adaptational method-
ology i s Butzer [8, 9, 701; others, t o a lesser extent, include Brookfield [7l, Trimbur
and Watts [35], Denevan and Schwerin [75] and Porter [37]. Cultural adaptation is
VOL. 35, NUMBER
4, NOVEMBER,
1983 401

not mentioned in Mikesell’s [27l recent presidential address on cultural geography

(although Bennett‘s 1976 book i s cited), but i s considered briefly in a recent state-
ment on cultural evolution by Wagner [391. Porter 131, p. 221 indicates that a major
question in human ecology for geographers is “How do cultures and individuals
within a culture adapt and adjust to change?” Grossman [18, p. 1391 considers the
adaptive strategies approach to be ”one of the most fruitful prospects in man-
environment studies.” He suggests that heretofore the main difference between the
anthropological and geographical approaches to cultural ecology and to adaptation
is that the former i s concerned with “adaptation to the environment” and the latter
with “adaptation of the environment 118, p. 1321.’’ This differentiation seems less
distinct to me now than it once did “13, p. 3491.
There is confusion as to the meaning of the term ”adaptation” and over what the
adaptive unit is-the individual, the community, the culture, or a system. Kirch [22,
pp. 108-1101 says it should be the ecological population; I would agree. He defines
“adaptation” as ”the process of becoming adapted, that is, of being viable and able
to reproduce in a specific environment.” “Cultural adaptation,” then, is the process
of change in response to a change in the physical environment or a change in
internal stimuli, such as demography, economics, and organization. “Adaptability”
is the capacity to adapt. Complete “adaptedness” i s probably rare and not of long
duration. Cultural adaptations may not be the best solutions or entirely rational
solutions as they reflect not only present conditions but those in the past as well as
future contingencies; preadaptation involves prediction and even chance.
We ask, how does a given culture or a population, at a given time, utilize available,
perceived natural resources in order to provide food and other necessities and why?
Clearly much of cultural geography has been concerned with this, although the
term ”adaptation” is seldom used. Butzer 191 has suggested that adaptation be made
a dominant or the dominant research focus of cultural geography and cultural
ecology in general.
Variation, Selection, and Resilience
The mechanisms of adaptation are variation and selection in specific environ-
ments. We need to both account for the sources of variation and the processes of
selection. Variation provides the options for changes in adaptation. A basic problem
with applying the concept of cultural adaptation is that while both temporal and
spatial variability are recognized at the macro-scale, they tend to be overlooked at
the micro-scale. Variation in adaptation may seem obvious, but it i s not reflected in
many of the studies of traditional food production by cultural geographers, eth-
nographers, and ecologists. Environments are over-generalized, temporal variability
is reduced to ranges or averages, and technology as described is uniform. The
adaptive system, as a result, i s often presented in publication as homogeneous,
stable, or conservative. Reality, I would suggest, is invariably more dynamic, in-
volving diversity in land-use practices and diversity in the land itself as the environ-
ment changes spatially and from year to year as a result of both the forces of nature
and man’s own impact. Examples of geographic studies of variable adaptation to
micro-environmental gradients include Porter [31] on East Africa, Nietschmann I291
on coastal Nicaragua and Bergman [ 4 ] on the upper Amazon floodplain.
Cultures are not uniform but consist of subgroups and individuals, both of which
are aware of a variety of technological options for dealing with the environment.
Many of these options may be used seldom or not at all until there is a change in
the ecological situation; they are dormant. There is a tendency, moreover, to at-
tribute a new mode of adaptation to an external origin (diffusion) or to a techno-
logical innovation (invention) with adoption being rapid and more or less automatic.
402 GEOGRAPHER
THEPROFESSIONAL

I disagree. I suspect that most techniques of environmental manipulation are long

present within a culture before wholesale adoption occurs. They are known to and
used by individuals or subgroups as secondary techniques or for unique situations.
When conditions and needs change sufficiently such latent techniques, as well as
new ones, may become dominant. The knowledge of or availability of a potentially
useful technique does not necessarily lead t o adoption. Rather, perceived need
leads t o wide use of techniques (or concepts) already available.
One of the best examples of this situation is the adoption of full-time agriculture
as the major means of food production in Central Mexico. In the Tehuacan Valley,
the first domesticated crops appear about 7000 B.C.; by 3400 B.C. only 25 percent
of the valley’s food came from agriculture and not until after 850 B.C., over 6000
years after initial domestication, was more than 50 percent of the diet provided for
by crops [25].The origin of and knowledge of agriculture did not cause a rapid shift
from hunting and gathering t o cultivation, nor to the development of pottery, nor
to sedentary villages, nor to the development of cities and civilization. Clearly some-
thing else was involved, a perceived need, one probably associated with population
growth and inadequate other options. But the availability of agriculture did make
population growth and urbanization possible.
Traditional farmers, or herders, i n contrast to the visiting observer, tend t o be
sensitive t o the dynamic character of both nature and society. From their heritage,
they are aware of short-term fluctuations and longer-term extremes as well as their
own diversity of options for coping or adapting. The traditional farmer is concerned
with minimization of risk given an uncertain environment. The physical world i s one
of constant potential hazard, great or small, and failure to adequately adapt (mal-
adaptation) may mean death.
That the environment is uncertain and that i t s perturbations are of great impor-
tance in understanding human behavior and cultural history is now broadly recog-
nized; the literature on the relationship of hazards and environmental change t o
human society is proliferating. University courses are given on natural hazard per-
ception and books are written on peasant decision-making. Accordingly, the uni-
dimensional depictions of traditional man-land systems by cultural geographers and
anthropologists should be replaced by more flexible descriptions reflecting diversity
and change. This will be difficult but will at least attempt to better represent reality.
The next step i s to attempt to explain the selection from variation that results in
significant change. This will require rigorous description, measurement, and analysis
of environment, perception, demography, economy, and the social realm, and may
seldom be completely satisfactory.
In biological thinking, the concept of resilience is more and more replacing that
of equilibrium or stability, and the same can be anticipated for cultural ecology [36].
Most adaptation involves resiliency in that adjustments are made t o either gradual
change in the environment or to sudden, but short-lived change, with these ad-
justments minimally disrupting either the ecological or social systems. Sudden cat-
astrophic environmental change may lead to destruction or great modification of
the cultural system; such change is beginning to receive more attention.
In traditional subsistence systems not dependent on external resources, the key
to resiliency seems to be diversification, or multiple strategies, both actual (at a
moment in time) and potential (knowledge of options). Successful adaptation, I
think, requires both, and the second may not be apparent to the field observer. For
instance, from studying shifting cultivation I am aware that, while one cultivated
species may dominate a field, most swidden farmers have access t o 50 or more
different species and are capable of making greater or less use of them as conditions
warrant. The same applies to the techniques of cultivation and resource manage-
VOL. 35, NUMBER
4, NOVEMBER,
1983 403

ment. In addition, resiliency based on cultural adaptability may be related to diver-

sity in environment.
It should be emphasized that for a situation where the environment and popu-
lation have been very stable for a long time (which may be unlikely), knowledge of
adaptive options may significantly decrease making a society more vulnerable (less
resilient) when environmental change does occur.
Examples
From my own field work with Indians in South America I can provide two examples
of some of the points made here regarding variation, selection, and resilience. They
illustrate adaptation at the individual and subgroup level in contrast to a generalized
cultural level of adaptation. One group i s the Campa, located in the eastern foothills
of the Peruvian Andes [741, and the other is the Karinya, located in the Orinoco
Llanos of Venezuela [751. The literature describes each as typical Amazonian swidden
or shifting cultivators, an oversimplification.
For the Campa, different swidden methods were being practiced not only by
different villages and by different farmers in the same village, but also by individual
farmers simultaneously in different but ecologically similar fields. The ideal seasonal
pattern of swidden activities seldom existed. The optimum sequence is one in which
vegetation i s cleared early in the dry season, dried during the dry season, and
burned at the end of the dry season; crops are planted immediately after burning,
grown during the wet season, and harvested when mature; the field is then fallowed
when yields decline or weed invasion becomes too severe. Campa farmers, how-
ever, were encountered who had several fields in which all these activities could
be observed at the same time. Some swidden phases were clearly out of sequence
or not in the optimum season; for example, burning during the wet season and
planting at the start of the dry season.
The Campa are not poor farmers but unpredictable social and environmental
events occur resulting in deviation from the ideal strategy. The overall system is
sufficiently resilient so that farmers are able to adapt to these changes without
disaster. Yields may be lower but are compensated for by planting larger or more
fields. There may be a period without production, but this is compensated for by
relying on wild products or on neighbors. The Campa are constantly trying out new
techniques, crops, and varieties. Some of these are discarded, some are used to a
minor degree, but many are added to the cultural inventory of options that might
become important under particular conditions.
The Karinya Indians provide another example of the variability of cultural adap-
tation over time and space that is in contrast to the static view we are given of most
food production systems. Research in two villages showed that shifting cultivation
was only one of numerous forms of agriculture. The Karinya have adapted to at least
nine distinct biotopes, including savanna, swamp, gallery forest, natural levees, and
seasonally flooded playas and islands. The main types of farming are extensive long-
fallow and short-fallow shifting cultivation, and intensive manual swamp drainage,
mechanized savanna cultivation, seasonal playa cultivation, and house gardening.
Individual farmers may or may not practice more than one method, but a l l
methods were present for the two villages combined. The presence and relative
importance of these have changed over time and continue to change, depending
on village location, population pressure, changing technology, transportation, and
market opportunity; the growth of large nearby industrial cities such as Ciudad
Guiana, Ciudad Bolivar, and El Tigre; availability of wage labor; and oil, gas, and
mineral development. Once the backwater of Venezuela, Karinya lands are now
criss-crossed by oil and gas exploration activities. Field studies between 1961 and
404 THE PROFESSIONALGEOGRAPHER

1980 and historical evidence since the sixteenth century indicate that agricultural
systems have reflected the needs, capabilities, and opportunities of the moment in
relation to the local environment. The Karinya have not so much changed their
agricultural systems by gradually improving them as they have adopted completely
new systems when it has been advantageous to do so. They have accomplished this
without abandoning previous systems that still proved useful, although the propor-
tional importance of the different systems has changed.
The Karinya demonstrate that adaptation need not proceed in a straight line from
simpler (or less intensive, or less efficient, or less productive) to more complex.
Instead adaptation may take any one of a number of directions over time and space,
what might be termed adaptive radiation. Adaptation may sometimes involve the
return tor or change of emphasis to, a simpler or less intensive system [ 6 ] .This may
seem obvious, but it i s a point missed in much of the literature that gives inadequate
attention to process.
Many other examples illustrate the variability for and the flexibility of cultural
adaptation. Both are obviously essential for survival if we grant that environmental
and social conditions are not stable, but undergo change which may be gradual or
rapid, oscillating or irregular, cumulative or not, of low intensity or catastrophic.
Part of the problem in the failure to recognize the presence of internal adaptive
flexibility through variation, including innovation, lies in the ways in which field
research i s conducted. At one extreme at the macro-level (more likely involving the
geographer), general patterns are sought and the details of variation are overlooked;
at the other extreme at the village or farmer level (more likely involving the anthro-
pologist), observed patterns may be assumed to be general patterns. In one situation
the field worker virtually does not get out of the car but in the other he or she
virtually does not get out of the village.
Conclusion
The adaptive behavior or strategies approach (Bennett‘s “adaptive dynamics”)
corresponds to what Orlove [30]calls “processual ecological anthropology.” This i s
a theoretical shift from “cultural ecosystemicism” with an emphasis on energy flow,
homeostatic equilibrium, a short time scale, and no need to assign causes [3, p.
164; 241. A processual approach instead is diachronic and examines mechanisms of
change, including the relation of production systems to demographic variables and
to environmental stress. As in biology, the move i s towards the recognition and
analysis of instability and resilience, including the role of individual events or ac-
tions. Criteria influencing adaptive strategy include efficiency, security, and satis-
faction of needs and wants. In cultural geography this can mean a return to the
particularistic, i.e., the description and analysis of specific madland processes in-
volving crops, tools, and techniques of resource management or exploitation. Sauer
[34, p. 71, that there i s no ”necessary adaptation“ [33, p. 511, and that environment
origins but of process; Wagner and Mikesell [40,p. I ] defined geographical cultural
ecology as the study of “specific processes.” Also, the adaptation concept can in-
corporate current geographic themes of resource perception, risk avoidance, and
response to environmental hazards, at both individual and collective levels. Expla-
nation of past adaptive behavior will never be complete as cognitive processes can
only be inferred, but a degree of understanding is possible with good environmental
data and reasonable assumptions about society, as recently demonstrated by
Knapp 1241.
I would suggest that if cultural adaptation is examined diachronically and spatially,
adaptation frequently will be found to be highly variable and flexible over short
periods of time, reflecting both environmental and socio-economic changes. Tra-
VOL. 35, NUMBER
4, NOVEMBER,
1983 405

ditional cultures are seldom homogeneous masses of non-innovating, custom-

bound conservatives. They are open to change and they are usually acquainted with
options because those options have already been tried, if only by individuals. One
might say that these options are within the cultural "gene pool" or, to make another
biological analogy, they are like mutations which have survived, if only in memory,
and which can become dominant when conditions become appropriate and are so
recognized by groups or institutions. Retention and change then both occur at the
individual level and may or may not apply to the cultural norm.
When adaptive change does occur, we need to consider not just where the in-
novation came from (genetic explanation), but why one of several options was
chosen (causal explanation). Failure to thoroughly focus on causes, I believe, has
led some cultural ecologists into neo-environmental-deterministic explanations for
adaptive change (e.g. Chappell [I71 in geography and Meggers [26]in anthropology).
A simplistic example of such reasoning is as follows: the climate became drier;
migration occurred to a wetter climate; ergo, the drought caused the migration.
The reasoning instead should be: the climate became drier; a new adaptation be-
came necessary; the option chosen was migration to a wetter climate. The question
that needs to be asked then i s why this particular mode of adaptation was chosen,
instead of changing crops, reverting to a non-agricultural subsistence, switching to
irrigation, or controlling population, etc. Furthermore, these options may all have
been known and did not require a great inventor or a lecture by an AID agronomist.
The answer may not be fully determinable, but hypotheses can be formulated if the
available options for adaptation are known.
Finally, let us ask what i s happening to man's capacity for adaptive resilience
today. It is easy to assume that modern science gives us tremendous variability for
dealing with the environment. But I wonder. I s what we are given really a capacity
for greater production and labor efficiency with the problems arising from environ-
mental perturbations and uncertainty mainly being handled via socio-economic safe-
guards?Or can we also count on a reservoir of ecologically viable options for either
long range or temporary adaptation?
I think that most traditional farmers have more available variability for adaptation
than does either an Iowa farmer or corn conglomerate. I know of agricultural strat-
egies in Latin America that once supported millions of people but which professors
in the University of Wisconsin School of Agriculture never heard of. Returning to
our earlier dual levels of adaptation, given recurrent ecological stress does adaptive
variability at the individual level make possible greater resilience and hence survival
at the cultural (or institutional) level?
Paradigms of (a) culture as an adaptive system, and (b) cultural adaptation as an
explanatory model for the mutual relations of people and environment can present
problems. With our current interest in environmental change and natural hazards,
we may need to be reminded by Sauer that "culture is the agent" [33, p. 461 and i s
not passive, "that the habitat i s revalued or reinterpreted with every change in habit"
[34, p. 71, that there is no "necessary adaptation" [33, p. 511, and that environment
itself i s often a cultural artifact.
I have tried to make a few basic points about adaptation, briefly and simply,
without developing a full methodological statement. The concept of adaptation i s
being used as a major theoretical framework by anthropologists; much of the con-
tent i s geographical and geographers should be involved in the dialogue.

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Ecology, 8 (1980), 135-169.

WILLIAM M. DENEVAN (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is Professor of Geography at the University
of Wisconsin, Madison, W I 53706. His research interests are in historical geography, traditional land use,
and cultural ecology i n Latin America.

Professional Geographer, 35(4), 1983, 407-415

0 Copyright 1983 by Association of American Geographers

INDUSTRY-GOVERNMENT-ACADEMIC COOPERATION:
POSSIBLE BENEFITS FOR GEOGRAPHY
Glen A. Marotz
University of Kansas
Some current developments outside of academe and their relationship to geography are presented; comments
are based on experience from a three year National Science Foundation Faculty Fellowship. Suggestions for improving
our educational efforts are discussed, including new roles for the AAG, changes in teaching methods, establishment
of advisory boards, and closer ties with industry and government. Key Words: geography, government, industry,
new programs.

I have just completed some fifteen months in close, perhaps too close, obser-
vation of, and participation in, research and everyday activities among three very
different entities. The institutions I cooperated with were the research sections of
a large private engineering consulting firm, a state highway department, and a na-
tional laboratory. I also interviewed and observed the operations of twelve other
concerns with mixed but like responsibilities to those of the three main entities.
I undertook this task in partial fulfillment of a National Science Foundation Faculty
Development Fellowship received in 1978 and carried out during the summers of
1980, 1981, and the summer and fall of 1982. My goal was to take part in new and
established research activities, to add expertise where I could and gain it where
deficient, to question colleagues in my assigned institutions and others as well, and
to use the results to better carry out my function as a research scholar and teacher.
The experience was an exceptionally good one, filled with activity and the gaining
of new knowledge. At the close of the period it seems only appropriate to set down
some of my observations in a public forum. I shall follow them with a highly opin-
ionated, somewhat rambling, but mercifully short discourse on contemporary de-
velopments in education and their relationship to geography.
Before doing so, some background seems appropriate. I have been in academe
for about fourteen years, and, during that time, have served as a research admin-
istration dean and departmental chairperson. I also do some consulting to private
and public concerns. These positions and experience exposed me, I thought, to a
wide variety of outside interests and would allow me to hone my impressions of
the outside world. These impressions could then be presented in various forms to
students for their benefit as they embarked on post-university life. I discovered

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