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. Against the Grain 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.

Contributions by: David J. Bart, Carol J. Pierce Colfer, Michael Dove, Catherine Driscoll, Cristina Eghenter, Gunnar Haaland, Lawrence A. Kuznar, Kenneth J. Long, Keely Maxwell, Thomas R. McGuire, A Endre Nyerges, Christine Padoch, Jonathan Padwe, PadmapaniL Perez, Gerard A. Persoon, Miguel Pinedo-Vasquez, Anne Rademacher, Andrew Roberts, Paul Roscoe, Richard Scaglion, Indah Setyawati, Stephen Stich, Andrew P. Vayda, Patricia Vondal