9 - Conclusion

Summary

New points of view usually produce new observations.

Oystein Ore, Graphs and Their Uses

In a symposium entitled “Man's Place in the Island Ecosystem,” held at the Tenth Pacific Science Congress in 1961, Vayda and Rappaport advocated research on ecosystems to elucidate the social and political organization of island populations:

An attempt has been made to view human populations as neither more nor less than populations of a generalized and flexible species, for in the most fundamental respects man hardly differs from other animals. His populations participate in ecosystems, as do the populations of other species; they occupy particular positions in food webs as do others; and they are limited by factors little different from those that limit others … In the detail of man's commitment to, and participation in, the biotic communities in which he has his being there is much to illuminate his social and political organization

(Rappaport 1963:168–9).

In spite of a certain enthusiasm for ecological studies at that time, due in large part to Goodenough's (1951) paper on land tenure and cognatic descent in PMP society and Sahlins's (1958) adaptive radiation model of social stratification in Polynesia, H. E. Maude was skeptical that this proposal would produce results even for simple atoll societies:

Vayda and Rappaport hint at the rewarding possibilities of studying the effect of the ecosystem on the social organization of the human population.[…]