Harris (1974), "India's Sacred Cows"

In "India's Sacred Cows", Harris investigates into the phenomenon that people in India refuse to eat beef from the sacred cows which can be found almost everywhere, even though they are starving to death. He points out that the culture of not eating cows is highly related to the importance of the role of cows in the low-energy, small-scale and animal-based agricultural system in India, as killing cows for consumption would give a higher economic loss in the long-run. Inexplicable cultural patterns are indeed created to be everyday strategies for human survival, no matter consciously or unconsciously.

I find Harris's illustration of cultural ecology using the example of the sacred cows in India very plausible. It is interesting to see how culture is affected by its adaptation to the environment. The culture that we have accepted as a norm and have been living with is actually a product of the everyday strategies for our own survival being pressed by our ecosystem. Adopting this perspective, a lot of seemingly unexplainable cultural norms can be interpreted in a way which is highly applicable and closely related to our daily lives. For example, Muslims and Jews do not eat pork due to the uncleanliness associated with pigs and most of the religions impose sexual restrictions by different codes of sexual morality.

Back in the old days, there were serious health concerns about pork-eating. As we all know now, eating pork which is raw or not fully-cooked might cause trichinosis. In the past where the quality of cooking fuel was poor and the design of cooking stove was not that advanced as well as with the setting of poorer hygiene conditions, pork could not be cooked thoroughly, usually with the problem of poor and uneven heating. So it led people to derive a divine meaning behind the relationship between pork eating and trichinosis. Moreover, pig-rearing is not considered to be economical. Pigs require water and shady woods, and they do not graze on grass. In places like Middle East where these two religions originated, the climiate is dry and arable land is scarce, let alone the area of shady woods and meadow present. Therefore, the pigs compete with humans land and food. Thus, pork-eating is restricted as a dietary law in the two religions to help ensure survival of people living there.

Another prominent example of cultural ecology is the sexual restrictions imposed by almost all of the religions. Most of them, such as Christianity, Islam and Buddhism, consider sexual intercourse as a pursuit of sensual pleasure as sinful and undesirable. Sexual intercourse should have the ends of the production of offspring and it should only be carried out after marriage. Indeed, it has a huge implification ecologically. In the old days, the technology of contraception and abortion was not advanced. There was still a high chance of pregnancy even when the primitive form of contraception was used. Yet, sexual urge exists and it is a part of the biological responses of human beings. Therefore, some codes of conduct had to be created to regulate people's sexual activities so that they feel compelled to follow due to the pressure of morality and the associated punishments. Or else, there would be a rapid increase in human population that the environment cannot sustain due to limited food and space for inter-competition. Therefore, this cultural restriction by religions can be viewed as a survival strategy in natural environment too.

It is also interesting that how Christianity condemns the use of birth prevention and this fact further exemplifies that these religious codes were designed for population control. As it is already established in christianity that sexual intercourse should only be carried out after marriage and to produce offpsring, the prohibition of the use of birth prevention further ensures the balance of population by preventing low birth dates.

I find that a lot of examples illustrating cultural ecology can be found in the context of religions. After all, as many of these cultural patterns are inexplicable yet require a big population to follow in order to elicit the desired effect, religion serves as the best instrument as an influential authority.