Marvin Harris, "Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Cult...

Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture is a book that argues that most anthropological and sociological colleagues are confused, incompetent, and bedimmed because they pay insufficient attention to his brand of cultural materialism. Harris believes that cultural materialism leads to better scientific theories and that philosophical and historical writings receive little serious consideration. He accuses many with whom he disagrees of moral callousness or political irresponsibility and proclaims his own liberalism. However, the derivation of his own values is unclear, especially since he seems to view "true" science as "value free."

Harris's distinctions between the emic (ideas and values) and the etic (observed behavior) appear naive, as he fails to provide a proper epistemological apparatus by which one's own emic thought is related to interpretation of the etic of others. Weber's account, with his dismay over the possibility of forging a study of society out of such complex interrelations, is a more useful starting point for appreciating the magnitude of the problem. The epistemological and ontological issues raised by the relation between ideas, values, and behavior pose the real problem of social explanation. Writers as diverse as Max Weber, R. G. Collingwood, M. Merleau-Ponty, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Peter Winch, Malcolm Crick, Roy Bhaskar, and E. E. Evans-Pritchard (none of them considered by Harris) have agonized over this problem.

Harris argues that most researchers fail to appreciate that the infrastructure (determined by material culture, modes of production, population, and resources) lies at the heart of social understanding. It is doubtful that many would reject this broad assertion, but would they follow Harris in subsequently selling short ideational, cultural-historical factors? Harris seems to have resurrected Robert Merton's latent functionalism in evolutionary, positivistic form. While Harris gives lip service to anthropological studies of the beliefs and values of people, these studies are credited with little value; real explanation resides in his own views. Such intellectual hegemony is associated with the natural sciences but not with the valueladen nature of social thought, a field where comparison is far trickier.

Harris maintains that to deny the validity of etic description is in effect to deny the possibility of a social science capable of explaining sociocultural similarities and differences. He goes on to assert that because people in a society may disagree about what is proper behavior, the powerful may enforce conformity to their ideas and values, and because different persons within groups perceive their situations and interests differently, we should discard the idea of a society as a group with shared beliefs and values. This view has merit, but it hardly follows that we should pursue the etic and abandon investigating beliefs and thoughts held by various groups and individuals.

The second half of Cultural Materialism characterizes the supposed competitors of Harris's position, dismissing them one by one as though this would inevitably lead to his position as the only alternative. He avoids reporting or analyzing any social institution with the thoroughness or rigor required of scholarly work, repeatedly treating data uncritically or omitting crucial material unfavorable to his argument. Technology, resources, and modes of production do exert important influences on society, but they do not in themselves explain many of the societal and cultural differences that currently absorb researchers attempting to understand everything from social organization and religion to bureaucracy, organization of complex institutions, the development of law, or the pervasive strength of rules about etiquette and alimentation. Harris's work relies on a muddled, shallow, antisociological view of understanding that cannot provide a useful method even for the valid points he makes.