Week 4: Culture, the natural environment, and utilitarian explanations
ANTH 1002: Anthropology for a better world (Semester 2, 2026)
August 25, 2026
Even people who say they respect cultural differences and embrace multiculturalism will still assume that people’s behavior is driven by utilitarian motives, and societies will inevitably change when people encounter new and different technology. Anthropology rejects this.
Main reading: Århem (1989); Holtzman (2009)
Other reading: Palmer (2020)
Notes
For centuries, many societies have hunted whales. In fact, prior to the discovery of petroleum, whale blubber was a valuable fuel source and now many whale species are endangered. Whaling today is tightly regulated by international treaties that restrict how many whales can be killed. Even Indigenous communities in northern North America which hunt whales for food obey these limits.
Makah, an Indigenous community of Washington State in the United States, won the right to carry out ceremonial whale hunts in 1999 and people of the community have occasionally hunted whales since then, subject to approval by the US federal government which regulates whaling as part of its treaty obligations.
Whenever Makah people hunt a whale, some activists denounce them. In 2025, the Makah tribal government applied for permission to exercise their right to hunt a whale, and Sea Shepherd, an offshoot of Greenpeace, known for direct action to stop whaling campaigned to stop it. In a web site calling for support, they said,
This hunt is not necessary, not humane, and not supported by current science.
and
[Makah people] survived and evolved—like all cultures do—without taking another whale [since the 1920s].
They note that in a previous ceremonial hunt, only some Makah families received any meat or blubber.
In other words, Makah shouldn’t hunt whales because they don’t need the whales for food. They don’t need the whales, because their culture has new technology now, and people’s lives have changed.
Members of the public who submitted comments1 went even further:
“[A]s far as I’m concerned, the Makahs can go to Costco, buy some wild caught sockeye and call it a day.”
“[Makah people should] Evolve and make a new tradition instead of honoring these incredible Mammals on the planet not killing them[.] in the sake of the ‘Old Ways’ make ‘New Ways.’” (This writer also complained that Makah restaurants served “whale burgers” in 1999, after that year’s sole hunt.)
“The cultural use, as a food source, has passed. […] We have moved on from killing these magnificent beings, we get meat for survival from the supermarkets or other retail entities”
One person said he approved, but with a condition:
- “[T]he tribe needs to use the weapons and boats available at the time of the treaty signing. Allowing the tribe to use modern boats with motors and high power harpoons is not within the spirit of the treaty!”
(Hmmm, I don’t think he’s being very serious.)
One person summed up what all the opponents were thinking:
- “The Makah do not need whale meat to survive.”
Many commentators recognized that Makah society had a right to exist as a distinct way of life. One opponent even acknowledged that she was living on the unceded land of another Indigenous Washington community.
But many people also think that everyone’s way of life ultimately serves the same practical purposes, to meet individuals’ practical needs to eat. And they conclude that if another way of life meets people’s needs better then they will naturally switch to that. Some people even implied that everyone should be shopping at Costco to meet basic needs, because Costco is better than any other way to obtain food—hunting, raising animals, or planting vegetables.
This way of thinking goes back a long way. It is another one of the implicit ethnocentric assumptions about human diversity that cultural anthropology has always sought to challenge.
In this week, we discuss the ways that anthropology challenges the utilitarian perspective. This perspective leads people to conclude that societies evolve from simple to complex and from primitive to civilized and anthropology opposes this evolutionary thinking.
Possible discussion activities for tutorial
In your weekly writing assignment, you identified several facts from Holtzman’s ethnography (2009) that illustrate the distinction between edible and inedible things. In small groups, discuss what you wrote. What is edible for you but not edible for someone else?
One of the members of the public who commented on the Makah application for permission wrote at length to express his opposition and raised several points. See https://www.regulations.gov/comment/NOAA-NMFS-2025-0025-0379.
He says, among other things, “[T]radition alone cannot justify actions that are no longer aligned with current environmental realities or survival needs” (para. 4)
Read this comment in full and write a response in the voice of a cultural anthropologist. Exchange papers in small groups or pairs. Discuss your reactions to the comment.
Keywords
utilitarianism, evolutionism, environmental determinism, modes of subsistence: foraging, pastoralism, horticulture, agriculture
Learning outcomes
- Be able to explain the ethnocentric assumptions that inform beliefs about technology and technological progress
- Understand why anthropologists’ ideas undermine utilitarian interpretations of behavior