This materialist theory of sociocultural phenomena by Marvin Harris1 is an attempt to understand the causes of differences and similarities among societies and cultures through science. It follows of course, that we should acknowledge the superiority of science over other means of obtaining information. The scientific basis of this theory is attributed to Marx, and his most valuable contribution to the field of anthropology: The primacy of the infrastructure. Marx says it explicitly in “A Contribution to The Critique of Political Economy”
The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political, and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness.
This is precisely what is meant by “The Primacy of Infrastructure”. This primacy made it possible to develop a scientific theory about sociocultural changes and phenomena.
The epistemology of cultural materialism relies on empirical science, and hence on Hume’s approach to obtaining knowledge. Hume’s critique of induction wasn’t an endorsement of the rationalist approach of achieving certainty on the basis of deductions from a priori principles, but rather insisted that empirical verification of constant conjunctions was the best way to acquire knowledge about the world even if the future of such regularities had to be taken on faith and could never yield certain knowledge. Now of course, this issue became a dead horse as far as practice goes in science, when the notion of certainty was replaced by statistical measures of probability. After Hume, science could no longer be considered a distinctive method of knowing because of its ability to achieve certainty, but rather a distinctive method of knowing because it claims to be able to distinguish between different degrees of uncertainty. In scientific theories, we care about the theory that leads to accurate predictions in more instances, not all instances. It is important to justify why scientific knowledge is superior to other ways of obtaining knowledge, and that lies in the goal science is trying to achieve. As Nicholas Maxwell says, if we can make a crucial assumption on what is the point of science then we can rule out theories based on which one satisfies that goal better. Maxwell proposes that the overall aim of science is to discover the maximum amount of order inherent in the universe or in any field of inquiry. With that discovery of order comes the ability of prediction, which is the other reason why science is superior. It follows then, that when possible we should always opt for a scientific knowledge of things. The importance of this clarification will become clear later on when we discuss theoretical principles of cultural materialism.
Of course scientific inquiry in the field of social sciences needs more complexity than simply relying on the scientific method that is applied to natural sciences. Hence Harris introduces important distinctions: Mental and Behavioral Fields, Emic and Etic operations. The distinction between mental and behavioral fields is simple, it is just to say that to describe body motions and external effects produced by the body motions, one does not have to find out what is going on in people’s heads.
Emic operations have as their hallmark the elevation of the native informant of the status of ultimate judge of the adequacy of the observer’s descriptions and analysis. The test of adequacy of emic analyses is their ability to generate statements the native accepts as real, meaningful, or appropriate. In carrying out research in the emic mode, the observer attempts to acquire a knowledge of the categories and rules one must know in order to think and act as a native.
Etic operations have as their hallmark the elevation of observers to the status of ultimate judges of the categories and concepts used in description and analyses. The test of adequacy for etic accounts is simply their ability to generate scientifically productive theories about the causes of sociocultural differences and similarities. Rather than employ concepts that are necessarily real, meaningful, and appropriate from the native point of view, the observer is free to use alien categories and rules derived from the data language of science.
Harris uses his study in Kerala, southern India, where he interviewed farmers about the cause of death of their domestic cattle. Every farmer insisted that he would never deliberately shorten the life of one of his animals, and affirmed the legitimacy of the standard Hindu prohibition against the slaughter of domestic bovines. But Harris collected data that showed that the mortality rate of male calves tended to be almost twice as high as the morality rate of female calves. The farmers are aware of that fact, and when asked they said that the male calves are weaker or eat less than female calves. No farmer suggested that since there is little demand for traction animals in Kerala, males are culled and females reared. The Emics of this situation are that no one knowingly or willingly would shorten the life of a calf. But the Etics of that situation are that cattle sex ratios are systematically adjusted to the needs of local ecology and economy through preferential male “bovicide”. Emically this relation between economy and Kerala’s cattle sex ratios does not exist, yet the consummate importance of this systematic relationship can be seen from the fact that in other parts of India, where different ecological and economical conditions prevail, preferential etic bovicide is practiced against female rather than male cattle, resulting in adult cattle sex ratio of over 200 oxen for every 100 cows in the state of Uttar Pradesh.
All anthropological theories set a universal character that they use to analyze cultures, you can check the different ones Harris references and then dismisses on page 50 of the book. The universal structure of sociocultural systems posited by cultural materialism rests on the fact that each society must cope with the problems of production— behaviorally satisfying minimal requirements for subsistence hence there must be an etic behavioral mode of production. This is consistent with the general Marxist theory of the “base” containing the modes of production and relations of production. The break from classical Marxist theory by Harris is when he introduces an etic behavioral mode of reproduction to the “base” which cultural materialists call Infrastructure. The cultural materialist model is made up of three parts: Infrastructure, structure, and superstructure. Infrastructure as I’ve said before is made up of the mode of production and reproduction (Demography, mating patterns, fertility, mortality, medical control of demographic patterns, contraception). Structure is made of domestic economy (division of labor, age and sex roles, education) and political economy (political organization, class, castes, war, military control). Superstructure is made of general culture, art, music, literature, rituals, etc. Those are the etic behavioral components of the system. Mental and emic components of infrastructure are ethnobotany, ethnozoology, subsistence lore, magic, religion, taboos. Of structure: kinship, political ideologies, ethnic and national ideologies.
Of superstructure: Symbols, myths, aesthetic, philosophies, epistemologies, taboos.
Now that I’ve introduced the fundamentals of cultural materialism, I can now restate Marx’s great principle that I referenced in the beginning in cultural materialist vocabulary:
The etic behavioral modes of production and reproduction probabilistically determine the etic behavioral domestic and political economy, which in turn probabilistically determine the behavioral and mental emic superstructures.
This principle can be referred to as the principle of Infrastructural determinism.
What is then the role of structure and superstructure? The priority given to infrastructure is a matter of the relative probability that systematic stasis or change will follow upon innovations in the infrastructural, structural or superstructural sectors. Cultural materialists, unlike structural-functionalism, hold that changes initiated in the etic and behavioral modes of production and reproduction are more likely to produce deviation amplifications throughout the domestic, political and ideological sectors than vice versa. The crucial question to ask is the following: To what extent can fundamental changes be propagated and amplified by ideologies and political movements when the modes of production and reproduction stand opposed to them? Cultural materialism holds that innovations are unlikely to be propagated and amplified if they are functionally incompatible with the existing modes of production and reproduction—more unlikely than in the reverse situation. This is what cultural materialists (and to an extent Marxists too) mean when they say that in the long run and in the largest number of cases, etic behavioral infrastructure determines the nature of structure and superstructure, hence its primacy. As an example let’s consider the relationship between procreative ideologies, domestic organization, and the mode of production in the United States. During agrarian homesteading the role of women as mothers and unpaid domestic laborers was emphasized. But with urbanization and the increasing cost of reproduction, women began to fight for notions such as equality among the sexes in the workplace. This shift in infrastructure is responsible for the propagation of the political ideology of feminism. Sure, it may have existed in the minds of women before the urbanization, but within that infrastructural change it was now possible to have equality of the sexes in job sectors because infrastructure no longer relied on the necessity of agrarian sex roles. This is one example which shows the primacy of infrastructure that can be traced through sociocultural phenomena and political ideologies. We also shouldn’t mistake this as an attempt to diminish any hope of revolution as futile since it starts in the structural sector. But rather to analyze whether revolution is now possible, through an analysis of its compatibility with Infrastructure. Some people would object to the primacy of infrastructure as “dehumanizing”, which Harris would reply beautifully with:
To this I would reply that failure to attempt an objective analysis of the relationship between infrastructure and a particular set of political-ideological goals serves only those who benefit from the wanton waste of other people’s lives and possessions. Self-deception and subjectivity are not the measures of being human. I do not accept the moral authority of mystics and obscurantists. They cannot take away the humanity of people who want to understand the world as well as to change it.
An analysis of hunter-gatherer societies by the method of cultural materialism is as follows: Political-economic egalitarianism is another theoretically predictable structural consequence of the hunter-gatherer infrastructure. Since settlements are small, membership is labile, and production goes from hand to mouth, therefore daily reciprocal exchanges among campmates cut labor costs. Hunters and collectors can afford coming back empty-handed on the expectation that some camp-mates will be luckier. The balance between giver and taker shifts from day to day, thereby ensuring everyone that individual misfortunes will routinely be buffered by the group’s collective product. This leads to a theory of economic exchange where reciprocity is the dominant from of hunter-gatherer exchanges. This exists in contrast to what anthropologists call “Big Manship” where redistributive types of exchange systems are rare. The infrastructural reason for this is because big-manship is a political-economic instrument used to intensify production, which would be detrimental to hunter-gatherer ecosystems. Hunters are active one or two days a week, a more intensified version of that would deplete the animal biomass.
So far I’ve talked about the first part of this book, which lays out the fundamentals of cultural materialism and its theoretical principles. The last section is from chapter four of the book which concerns itself with the scope of cultural materialism and its application to different ecosystems. I only included the example of hunter-gatherer societies, but Harris talks about a lot more in the fourth chapter. The second part of the book compares cultural materialism with other anthropological theories, which is beyond the scope of this blog. If you are interested in reading further into this theory, then check out the book.
The cultural materialism of Marvin Harris is different than that of Raymond Williams.