Marvin Harris facts for kids

Marvin Harris (born August 18, 1927 – died October 25, 2001) was an important American anthropologist. He was born in Brooklyn, New York City. He wrote many books and articles. Harris was very important in creating a way of thinking called cultural materialism. He also helped develop the idea of environmental determinism.

In his work, he looked at how things like how people make a living and how many people there are (population) affect a society. He called these things the infrastructure. Harris believed these basic parts of life were key to shaping a society's social rules and culture. After his book The Rise of Anthropological Theory came out in 1968, he helped other anthropologists focus on how culture and the environment are connected. Many of his books were popular with regular readers, not just scientists.

Marvin Harris had many followers, but he also faced a lot of criticism. He was known for asking tough questions at meetings of the American Anthropological Association. He was seen as a generalist, meaning he was interested in big-picture ideas. He wanted to understand how humans first appeared and how cultures around the world have changed over time.

In his last book, Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times, Harris argued that some modern ideas were actually harmful.

Early Life and Studies

Marvin Harris grew up poor in Brooklyn because he was born just before the Great Depression. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, he used money from the G.I. Bill to go to Columbia University. This program helped many soldiers go to college after the war. Harris loved to read and spent a lot of time at the horse races. He even created a special betting system that helped him and his wife, Madelyn, pay for his graduate school.

Harris first worked with his teacher, Charles Wagley. His early research in Brazil was a simple study of a village. This followed an older style of anthropology that he later disagreed with. After finishing his studies, Harris became a professor at Columbia. In 1957, while doing fieldwork in Mozambique, his ideas about anthropology and politics changed a lot.

Understanding Cultural Materialism

Marvin Harris started his work by simply describing cultures, but his time in Mozambique made him change. He began to focus on how people behave, rather than just their ideas. In his 1969 book, The Rise of Anthropological Theory, he looked at hundreds of years of social ideas. He wanted to build a strong way to understand human culture, which he called Cultural Materialism. This book was a big mix of old and new ideas about how societies work.

Cultural materialism took ideas from Karl Marx, like the "superstructure" and "base" of society. Harris changed and added to Marx's ideas about how things are made and how people are used for labor. However, Harris did not agree with two main parts of Marx's thinking. He didn't like the idea of the "dialectic," which he thought was just a popular trend at the time. He also didn't think scientists should mix their theories with political action. Harris also added Malthus's ideas about population into his research. He believed population size was a major factor in how cultures change over time. This was different from Marx, who didn't think population was a main cause.

Harris believed that the main ways a society uses its environment are found in its infrastructure. This includes the mode of production (like technology and work habits) and the population (like how many people there are, and birth and death rates). Since these things are needed for life itself, Harris argued that a society's social rules and cultural beliefs must fit with these basic practices.

Harris also made an important difference between emic and etic perspectives.

• An emic view is how people within a culture understand and explain their own lives. It's the participant's point of view.
• An etic view is how scientists describe and explain a culture from an outside perspective. It's the observer's point of view.

Harris said that both views are needed to truly understand human thoughts and actions.

Harris's work also looked at interesting cultural puzzles. He gave a materialist explanation for why cows are sacred in Indian culture. He also suggested that Aztec cannibalism might have happened because people needed more protein in their diet. He wrote about this in his book Cannibals and Kings. Harris also explained Yanomamo warfare by saying it was about getting animal protein. This was different from another anthropologist, Napoleon Chagnon, who thought it was about natural male aggression.

Some of Harris's other books looked at why different cultures eat what they do. These include Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches: The Riddles of Culture (1975) and Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture (1998).

His book Why Nothing Works: The Anthropology of Daily Life (1981) used his ideas to explain changes in the United States. He looked at things like inflation, why more women started working, and why products sometimes seemed poorly made.

In Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We're From, Where We Are (1990), Harris explored the long history of human physical and cultural changes. He offered interesting explanations for things like the origins of inequality. Finally, his 1979 book, Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture, explains his main theory in great detail. You can find a list of his many publications in another article.

Academic Career and Impact

Marvin Harris earned his master's degree in 1949 and his PhD in 1953, both from Columbia University. Before joining the faculty at Columbia, he did fieldwork in Brazil and parts of Africa where Portuguese is spoken. He eventually became the head of the anthropology department at Columbia. During the student protests at Columbia in 1968, Harris was one of the few professors who supported the students.

In 1981, Harris joined the University of Florida anthropology department. He retired in 2000 and became a professor emeritus. He also served as the Chair of the General Anthropology Division of the American Anthropological Association.

Marvin Harris wrote seventeen books. Two of his college textbooks, Culture, People, Nature: An Introduction to General Anthropology and Cultural Anthropology, were published in seven different versions. His research covered topics like race, human evolution, and culture. He often focused on Latin America and Brazil, but also studied places like the Islas de la Bahia, Ecuador, Mozambique, and India.

See also

In Spanish: Marvin Harris para niños