Cultural Materialism 2

By now, hopefully, you have figured out that the anthropological theory known as cultural materialism has little to do with the common English term "materialism" as used in the phrase "He (or she) is very materialistic." (Meaning that he or she places value on having lots of stuff.) So what does it mean?

Basic Assumptions

1. The material conditions (mode of production and mode of reproduction) limit and perhaps determine most other aspects of the culture. Hence all traits of culture are adaptive to the material conditions,or infrastructure.
2. Cultures with similar material constraints will be fundamentally similar in terms of their structure and superstructure. Those with different material constraints will have fundamental differences.
3. Cultures change as material constraints change.

For the cultural materialist (or human ecologist) the way to understand a culture, or to understand cultural similarities and differences as well as cultural change, is to understand the mode of production. To date, human cultures have come up with five modes of production, discussed in the next lesson. If the first and second assumptions are true, then if you know a culture's mode of production, you can predict other things about the culture.

Problems with Cultural Materialism

Probably no one theory is "perfect", and there are some legitimate criticisms of cultural materialism.

1. It can be difficult to explain differences in cultures with similar material constraints. (Cultural materialists would note that there are likely some differences in material constraints that are unknown.)
2. Critics of cultural materialism say that certain material constraints, such as food resources, are culturally defined. For example, no culture unitizes all possible food resources available; by refusing to eat dogs, most Americans have created a cultural limit to food resources.
3. People's perception of reality are as important as reality. (Which is pretty much the same objection as the previous one: if you do not perceive a dog as a food source, it doesn't matter to you that dogs are nutritious and digestible for humans.)

Cultural materialists view these criticisms as minor. Move on to the next lesson to find the framework of how we will use cultural materialism in this class.