Nature–culture divide

The nature–culture divide is the notion of a dichotomy between humans and the environment. It is a theoretical foundation of contemporary anthropology that considers whether nature and culture function separately from one another, or if they are in a continuous biotic relationship with each other.

In East Asian society nature and culture are conceptualized as dichotomous (separate and distinct domains of reference). Some researchers consider culture to be "man's secret adaptive weapon"^: 393 in the sense that it is the core means of survival. It has been observed that the terms "nature" and "culture" can not necessarily be translated into non-western languages, for example, the Native American scholar John Mohawk described "nature" as "anything that supports life".

There is an idea that small-scale societies can have a more symbiotic relationship with nature. Less symbiotic relations with nature are limiting small-scale communities' access to water and food resources. It was also argued that the contemporary man-nature divide manifests itself in different aspects of alienation and conflicts. Greenwood and Stini argue that agriculture is only monetarily cost-efficient because it takes much more to produce than one can get out of eating their own crops,^: 397 e.g. "high culture cannot come at low energy costs".

During the 1960s and 1970s, Sherry Ortner showed the parallel between the divide and gender roles with women as nature and men as culture.

Understanding the history of how the nature-culture dichotomy came to be will help environmentalists and policymakers alike determine a new future in human and nature relations. Some elements to understanding this history are cultural (society) differences in views of land, theories behind the perpetuation of the dichotomy, and real-world examples of its existence even today.