Marvin Harris was an American anthropologist who founded cultural materialism, a theoretical approach holding that the material conditions of a society, its technology, environment, and modes of production and reproduction, exert primary causal influence over its social structure and ideology, which he treated as adaptive responses rather than independent forces. He applied this framework to explain seemingly irrational cultural practices in materialist terms, most famously arguing in works such as Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches (1974) that India's Hindu prohibition on killing cattle and the Middle Eastern taboo on eating pork were rational ecological adaptations rather than arbitrary religious beliefs. Harris's insistence on grounding cultural explanation in measurable material and ecological factors made him one of the most systematic and widely read materialist theorists in anthropology, as well as one of its most contested.
Facts
Birth DateSourced to the subject's own account Birth YearSourced to the subject's own account Death DateSourced to the subject's own account Death YearSourced to the subject's own account BirthplaceSourced to the subject's own accountBrooklyn, New York City, U.S. 1 Death PlaceSourced to the subject's own accountGainesville, Florida, U.S. 1 Nationality / CultureSourced to the subject's own account Defining ContributionSourced to the subject's own accountFounded cultural materialism, combining Marx's emphasis on the forces of production with Malthus's demographic insights to treat a society's infrastructure of technology and population as the key determinant of its social structure and culture. 1 Notable WorkSourced to the subject's own accountThe Rise of Anthropological Theory (1968); Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture (1974); Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture (1979) 1 Connections
Associated With
Source Wikipedia: Marvin Harris
Theories Developed
Marvin Harris, building on Kenneth Pike original linguistic distinction, developed and popularized the emic/etic contrast as a methodological framework within cultural materialism and anthropology broadly.
In the Other Atlases
Nationality
Also in Geography Atlas: the nationality of this subject.
Source Wikipedia: Marvin HarrisLead paragraph of the cited Wikipedia articletier 3Quote, Lead paragraph of the cited Wikipedia article
Marvin Harris (August 18, 1927 – October 25, 2001) was an American anthropologist.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Marvin Harris
WikipediaLead sentence, parenthetical dates
August 18, 1927, October 25, 2001
Lead section, second sentence
He was born in Brooklyn, New York City.
Infobox death_place field (raw wikitext)
Gainesville, Florida, U.S.
Lead sentence
was an American anthropologist.
Lead section, third sentence
he combined Karl Marx's emphasis on the forces of production with Thomas Malthus's insights on the impact of demographic factors on other parts of the sociocultural system.
Lead section, fourth sentence
After the publication of The Rise of Anthropological Theory in 1968, Harris helped focus the interest of anthropologists in cultural-ecological relationships for the rest of his career.
Associated With: Columbia University, Article text
After graduation with a Ph.D. in anthropology in 1953, Harris was hired as an assistant professor at Columbia and, while undertaking fieldwork in Mozambique in 1957, Harris underwent a series of profound transformations that altered his theoretical and political orientations. == Academic career == Harris received both his MA and PhD degrees from Columbia University, the former in 1949 and the latter in 1953.
View the Source Wikidata: Marvin Harris
Wikidata Q334842, class allow-list match, case-insensitive label variant (w-bbfill-smallsix2-0926/resolve_ci.ps1)View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.