Cultural Materialism (1)

[Cultural materialism is]..based on the simple premise that human social life is a response to the practical problems of earthly existence... from Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture, by Marvin Harris.

The third theoretical approach necessary for this class, and the most important, is cultural materialism. Identified with the late Marvin Harris, cultural materialism has also been referred to as cultural ecology and the evolutionary-ecological model.

Marvin Harris (1927-2001)

Cultural materialism owes much to functionalism, and shares one of functionalism's major assumptions: that all parts of a culture are interrelated, and that changing one part will change the whole. (For example, in analyzing 20th century social changes in the United States, Harris links the increase of women in the workplace, decreasing birth rate, increasing acceptance of divorce, homosexuality, and unmarried adults all to economic causes, particularly the application of industrial techniques to the production of services and information.)

The second major assumption is that is that the basic foundation (or infrastructure, in Harris' terms) of any culture is its environment and the energy-producing technology used by the culture to exploit the environment. It is for this reason that cultural materialism is often called cultural or human ecology.

Ecology, in many definitions, consists primarily of how organisms interact to obtain, consume, and exchange energy. How humans do this, and how as a result they influence all other organisms and ecosystems, is often referred to as cultural, or human ecology. Cultural materialism emphasized that the material conditions of a culture, that is the specific technology of energy production operating within a specific environment, (what is called the mode of production) "probabilistically determined" all other aspects of a culture.

Cultures, according to Harris, all have "recurrent aspects or parts" called the universal pattern. This universal pattern can be divided in three parts: the infrastructure, structure, and superstructure.

Infrastructure

The infrastructure of a culture determines traits of the structure and superstructure, according to Harris. He does not see much of culture as arbitrary or random, but as entirely adaptive. (See lesson on culture for these two views of cultural traits.)

The infrastructure consists of two parts, the mode of production and the mode of reproduction.

Mode of Production: "The technology and practices employed for expanding or limiting basic subsistence production, especially the production of food and other forms of energy, given the restrictions and opportunities provided by a specific technology interacting with a specific habitat." The mode of production includes:

1. Technology of subsistence
2. Techno-environmental relationships
3. Ecosystems
4. Work patterns

Mode of Reproduction: The technology and the practices employed for expanding, limiting, and maintaining population size.

1. Demography
2. Mating patterns
3. Fertility, natality, mortality
4. Nurturance of infants
5. Medical control of demographic patterns
6. Contraception, abortion, infanticide

 

Women Demonstrate in Seattle

(To increase the mere 11% of American women who follow pediatricians recommendation to breast feed for 6 months. The time spent breast-feeding is part of the infrastructure/mode of reproduction, and the demonstration itself part of the stucture/gender roles/political economy.

 

Structure

The structure of a culture also can be divided into two parts, which each include many traits.

Domestic Economy: The organization of reproduction and basic production, exchange, and consumption within camps, houses, apartments, or other domestic settings.

1. Family structure
2. Domestic division of labor
3. Domestic socialization, enculturation, education
4. Age and sex or gender roles
5. Domestic discipline hierarchies, sanctions

 

Political Economy: The organization of reproduction, production, exchange, and consumption within and between bands, villages, chiefdoms, states, and empires.

1. Political organizations, factions, clubs, associations, corporations
2. Division of labor, taxation, tribute
3. Political socialization, enculturation, education
4. Class, caste, urban, rural hierarchies
5. Discipline, police/military control
6. War

Superstructure

Consists of behavior and though devoted to artistic, playful, religious, and intellectual endeavors plus all the mental and emic aspects of a culture's infrastructure and structure.

1. Art, music, dance, literature, advertising
2. Religious rituals
3. Sports, games, hobbies
4. Science

Man Participating in Religous Parade in modern Japan, part of the Supersturcture

[Information from Marvin Harris' Cultural Anthropology, 3rd Edition(1991). HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. New York.]