Neomaterialism: Culture and Theory, Part Two

Marvin Harris (1927-2001) was an American anthropologist that worked under the Boasian tradition in his early life but later turned to cultural materialism. Harris was a prolific writer and published more than fifteen anthropological writings, including Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture (1979) and Cannibals and Kings: The Origins of Cultures (1977). He performed ethnographic research in Latin America and Africa. Just as Boas, Harris favored empirical evidence to deductive reasoning. However, unlike Karl Marx, who was a true materialist, Harris analyzed society by means of both etic and emic perspectives. Harris did "not deny the possibility that emic, mental, superstructural, and structural components may achieve a degree of autonomy from the etic behavioral infrastructure" ("Cultural Materialism," p. 56). Harris was extremely interested in ecology and utilized the theories of Thomas Malthus, whom he felt Marx had largely ignored, to further his theories:

"Because populations increase geometrically, virtually any kind of animal or plant, if it could produce unchecked, would cover the entire surface of the world within a surprisingly short time. Instead, populations of species remain fairly constant, year after year, because death limits population numbers" (Raven, 2005).

It must be remembered, of course, that human groups do not increase their food supply geometrically. This increase is an arithmetical process. It is quite possible that the record numbers we see today are the result of such an arrangement. Charles Darwin was most certainly in agreement with Malthus when he published The Origin of Species in 1859, and Marvin Harris is of no exception.(1) Expounding upon the materialism of Marx, Harris argued that both production and reproduction are crucial to understanding the infrastructure of society. Harris' primary concern was of sustainment and how both the structure and superstructure are intertwined with this factor of development.

Neomaterialism is quite unlike historical particularism in that it allows for some degree of consistency in terms of analyzing various cultures. By no means does it essentialize human groups into substantive progressions, as social evolutionists had done. Rather, it situates human groups into an ecological, sociological climate that includes both the etic and emic structural components of society...

(1) "In looking at Nature, it is most necessary to keep the foregoing in mind - never to forget that every single organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase its numbers; that each lives by a struggle at some period of its life. [...] Lighten any check, mitigate the destruction ever so little, and the number of the species will almost instantaneously increase to any amount" (Darwin, 1859).

References

Darwin, C. (1859). The Origin of Species. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics.

McGee, R. & R. Warms. (2007). Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Raven, P. (2005). Biology. New York: McGraw-Hill.