Against the Grain

To rise to the increasingly urgent challenge of understanding the relationship between human beings and the environment scholars need to step back and re-evaluate their basic premises about how current explanations should shape the form and content of their research. <I>Against the Grain</I> addresses a variety of topics in the field of human ecology including ecological anthropology evolutionary psychology environmental history and geography and challenges scholars to re-think the adequacy of their methods and assumptions. Andrew P. Vayda concludes the volume with a critical commentary on these issues and more widely on the subject of explanation. The result is an extremely useful and provocative précis for thinking about re-evaluating and rectifying scholarly research.