Ethnic Diversity and Its Environmental Determinants

Effects of Climate, Pathogens, and Habitat Diversity

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2462979
AutoresE Cashdan (0000-0001-7300-1539, King's College London, autor correspondente)
Ano2001
Volume103
Fascículo4
Páginas968-991
Data de publicação2001-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAmerican Anthropologist (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0002-7294 • E-ISSN: 1548-1433
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1525/aa.2001.103.4.968
OpenAlexW2030798985
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas30
Referências citadas42

This article documents, and seeks to explain, the geographical patterning in ethnic group distributions. Some areas, chiefly equatorial regions and areas of high habitat diversity, are crowded with a large number of named groups. Elsewhere, people over a large area consider themselves members of a single group. Using three new codes for the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (ethnic diversity, habitat diversity, and rainfall variation), I show that regions with relatively few ethnic groups (low ethnic diversity) have unpredictable and highly variable climates and low pathogen loads. In most areas there was no relationship between ethnic diversity and ecosystem productivity, and there was little or none with the chief determinants of productivity, mean annual rainfall and temperature. Habitat diversity was also associated with ethnic diversity, particularly among nonstratified societies. Habitat diversity is correlated with degree of topographic relief, but the effect of habitat diversity on ethnic diversity is larger than, and independent of, the effect of topography. [ethnic diversity, ecological anthropology, spatial organization, cross-cultural research

Alpha diversity · Biodiversity · Biology · Cultural diversity · Diversity (politics · Economic geography · Ecosystem diversity · Ethnic group · Geography · Habitat · Productivity · Sociology · Anthropology · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Ecology · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies