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 utilizes the term nature to describe "everything that supports life on the planet," specifically when discussing the limits of science to ever fully understand nature's complexity.

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. Feminist scholars question whether the dichotomies between nature and culture, or man and woman, are essential. For example, Donna Haraway's works on cyborg theory, as well as companion species gesture toward a notion of "naturecultures": a new way of understanding non-discrete assemblages relating humans to technology and animals.