A Simple Guide To Environmental Determinism

Environmental determinism has its roots in the doctrine that individual beings are bound to their environment. It is a concept that researchers trace back to the ancient Greek and Roman civilisations. 

Environmental Determinism Definition

Environmental determinism believes that the physical environment has a dominant influence over human growth, development and behaviour. This view garnered a lot of support from the Enlightenment philosophers who thought that the innate differences between human beings were due to the differences in climate, landform, and other environmental factors.

What Is Environmental Determinism?

For many years, in the study of geography, people carried out studies to determine the reason behind the disparities in the development of the world's societies. One of these studies led to the birth of the concept of environmental determinism.

Thorough research in the relation between human societies and the surrounding environment made many thinkers conclude that the physical characteristics of the surroundings, such as climate, landforms, and other factors, can substantially impact the outlook of living beings.

This outlook has its origins in the late 19th century, where it enjoyed quite a bit of popularity to explain off ideological motived for colonialism. However, by the early 20th century, influential anthropologists such as Carl Sauer attacked this doctrine. According to him, this view of environmental determinism would lead to a premature generalisation about the people of an area and did not allow for results that were based on direct observation.

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Examples Of Environmental Determinism

The term environmental determinism implies that individuals and societies owe their uniqueness to the physical environment in which they live. The climate is responsible for determining the psychological mindset of individuals of a particular place, which in turn gives rise to a like-minded society. Some examples of this doctrine are-

1. The stereotyping of Jamaicans for their laid-back and relaxed attitudes. Researchers who advocate environmental determinism would attribute this to the tropical climate of Jamaica.

2. Environmental determinists believed that tropical areas were less developed than higher altitude areas because surviving in the tropical environment was easier. Therefore, people didn't have to work hard too much.

3. Another example is the belief that people living in islands had unique cultural traits due to their isolation from the continents.

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Environmental Determinism And Early Human Geography

Environmental determinism is also known as climatic or geographical determinism due to implications that physical geographical aspects determine human behaviour and psychological factors.

Although this belief gained prominence in the late 19th century, you can find traces of it in the ancient Greek and Roman civilisations. Some scholars also attributed differences in physical characteristics of various races to these climatic factors during this time.

Environmental Determinism Examples Of Early Human Geography

There are plenty of pieces of evidence that suggest that environmental determinism existed hundreds of years before its popularity rose in the late 19th century. Some examples of this are-

• Ancient philosophers like Strabo, Plato and Aristotle believed that the Greeks were more developed than societies in hotter and colder regions due to their unique climatic factors.
• The East African writer Al-Jahiz believed that environmental factors were the reason behind the different skin colours. According to him, many black basalt rocks on the Arabian Peninsula caused the Africans to have such dark skin.
• An Arab sociologist Ibn Khaldun attributed the dark skin of Africans to the hot climate of Sub-Saharan Africa.

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Biological Determinism Argues That Population Differences Are Environmental In Origin

Unlike environmental determinism, biological determinism believes that human characteristics, both physical and mental, are not caused by the environment in which they live but due to genetic factors.

This theory argues that population differences in inherently linked to the surrounding environment. In the past few years, continued high fertility rates in many developing countries and low fertility in more developed regions gave rise to an increased population in the less-developing countries.

Moreover, environmental accessibility to the sea, distance from the coast, navigable rivers, rocky terrains, adverse physical conditions and lack of greenery provided enough reason for population differences.

The roots of biological determinism date back to ancient times when kings used it to justify that their blood was different from ordinary people's. This concept was further twisted and, in the eighteenth century, became more prominent among those who wished to justify the unequal treatment of different racial groups as they believed that the environment the Caucasians grew up in naturally made them superior.

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Environmental Determinism And Modern Human Geography

After showing some traces in the ancient period, environmental determinism rose to prominence with the help of German geographer Friedrich Rätzel in the late 19th century. His theory followed Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) and was also influenced by evolutionary biology.

Rätzel's students, Ellen Churchill Semple and Ellsworth Huntington worked hard to spread this theory. Like Rätzel, Semple too, was influenced by evolutionary biology. However, Huntington's work led to developing the subset of environmental determinism, known as climatic determinism.

In the early 20th century, environmental determinism faced a lot of criticism due to it being used to form premature generalisations. The theory was also used to justify racism. As a result, by the 1950s, it was almost entirely replaced by environmental possibilism, led by the French geographer Paul Vidal de la Blanche.

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