Bridges culture, nature, and sustainability through an anthropological lens on global environmental challenges

Environmental anthropology offers powerful tools for making sense of today’s pressing sustainability challenges, from climate change and biodiversity loss to environmental injustice and resource conflicts. Culture, Nature, and Environmental Sustainability: An Anthropological Introduction is a comprehensive, inclusive, and problem-centered guide to understanding the cultural, political, and ecological dimensions of these issues. Grounded in over a century of ethnographic inquiry, this volume examines how human communities engage with their environments—revealing that concepts such as “sustainability,” “Anthropocene,” and “environmental justice” are not only complex but also shaped by histories, power relations, and cultural perspectives.

Luis A. Vivanco and Keri Vacanti Brondo integrate diverse voices into a field often dominated by Euro-American perspectives, including Indigenous, Global South, and feminist scholarship. Each chapter begins with a pressing environmental problem and develops the analytical questions, theoretical insights, and case studies necessary to explore it. The authors address a wide range of contemporary themes, such climate, water, food systems, conservation, and multispecies relations, to equip readers to think critically, work across disciplines, and engage constructively with the complex realities of sustaining human and ecological wellbeing

Exploring both the challenges and the possibilities of sustainable futures, Culture, Nature, and Environmental Sustainability: An Anthropological Introduction:

• Offers a future-oriented perspective on developing new ways of thinking and acting in response to environmental challenges
• Links theory, ethnography, and practice in environmental anthropology
• Engages with urgent global sustainability issues through real-world case studies
• Includes active learning features such as “Environmental Anthropology in Action” profiles and “Doing Anthropology of Sustainability” exercises
• Provides summaries, glossaries, and curated resources to support continued study

Written by award-winning educators with decades of teaching experience, Culture, Nature, and Environmental Sustainability: An Anthropological Introduction is ideal for intermediate and advanced undergraduates in Environmental Anthropology, Political Ecology, and Culture and Sustainability courses, particularly within anthropology, geography, sociology, and environmental studies programs.

LUIS A. VIVANCO is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Vermont. A Fulbright Scholar in Costa Rica and Colombia, he has authored acclaimed anthropology textbooks with Oxford University Press and conducted research on ecotourism, conservation, and urban sustainability.

KERI VACANTI BRONDO is Professor and Lambros Comitas Chair of Applied Anthropology at Teachers College, Columbia University. A Fulbright Scholar and National Geographic Explorer, she researches environmental policy, Indigenous rights, and feminist political ecology, with ethnographic work in Honduras.