Marvin Harris (cultural anthropologist, founder of cultural materialism) 

                         (credit: Jennifer Tanabe, via newworldencyclopedia.org) 

Chapter 1.  (continued) 

Unfortunately, many anthropologists in the world right now adamantly assert that nomothetic statements about societies can’t be made; a few go so far as to claim that even trying to make such statements is morally wrong. All humans, they say, come from traditions of thinking, every tradition just as inherently biased as any of the others. Since no one can get outside of the model of thinking their society instilled in them, no thinker can presume to view the customs of any society – their own or any other – objectively. We’re all locked irretrievably inside our prejudices. Therefore, any attempt by European-style thinkers to analyze the cultures of other societies via the thinking mode we call “science” is just Euro-styled bullying. It is immoral. This view is called moral relativism and is often seen as a component of the philosophical view called postmodernism.

For the purposes of this essay, I am going to ignore postmodernist claims. It seems to me that the scientific method is the way out of their blind alley. Some models of reality can be tested in reality. Then, sometimes the data confirm the model, thus pointing us toward subtler research and more effective cultures and technologies. So science advances. On the other hand, it seems to me that under their own terms, postmodernists aren’t qualified to say anything about anything. If every viewpoint is inescapably, hopelessly biased, then so is theirs.

The main alternative to moral relativism/postmodernism in Anthropology, looks for laws under which all human societies operate. Most of its adherents today call this theory cultural materialism.

This theory was first developed by Marvin Harris. In his view, anthropologists should formulate and test hypotheses about how cultures arise, function, and change as they struggle to survive in their environments.

In other words, what cultural materialists study is how morés and customs connect a tribe to its environment. Under this model, we can study why modern humans think and act using the concepts, models, and morés that they do. Why is my life, or your life, the way that it is?

This line of reasoning brings us to re-state the first morally relevant principle we can draw from social science: the morés of a tribe all influence how members of that tribe act toward other entities in their environment – inorganic objects, other life forms, other tribes, and fellow tribe members. These patterns of action either enhance or reduce a tribe’s odds of surviving. Then, the overall most vigorous tribe in each region gains control over the area.  

For example, what survival edge is gained by a people who come to believe that every tribe member should bury their feces? Tribe members’ beliefs may tell them that they must keep their feces from being found by their enemies as those enemies might use it to cast an evil spell on them. But what is really going on here? Knowing germ theory enables cultural materialists to show that burying excrement lowers the tribe’s odds of getting typhus and other diseases spread by feces. A tribe that teaches all members to bury their feces outbreeds and soon outnumbers rival tribes. With numbers, it wins control of the area.

This is an example of how cultural materialist thinking works. It studies data observed in the community life of real tribes just living their lives. It seeks to identify cause-effect relationships in the lives of real societies interfacing with reality. It's also worth noting here that the tribe in question may know nothing of germ theory. But they avoid typhus and cholera epidemics just the same. Cultural materialism records the explanations that a tribe gives for its actions, but it focuses its attention most closely on morés and customs associated with them: the physical world mechanisms by which those morés/customs work.

Some customs in some societies might seem at first contact to have little or no impact on that society’s survival odds, but cultural materialists believe that this is hardly ever the case. Customs come from forebears, and those forebears adhered to their customs for what turn out to be sensible, material reasons.

Thus, we can reiterate this first large principle from social science: the morés and customs of a tribe connect to its survival. They are not random; they arise out of the tribe’s past experiences and experiments, and they heavily affect the tribe’s long-term survival odds. They also can be subjects of a scientific study of culture because they are testable.  

                  transmitting culture: Idris Shah telling a story to his children

                          (credit: Secretum Mundi, via Wikimedia Commons)