Marvin Harris Sacred Cow Infrastructure

1. Cultural
Materialism

2. Marvin Harris
 A cultural
anthropologist, is
responsible for the
most systematic
statement of cultural
materialist principles.
 Proponent of
Cultural
Materialism.

3. Cultural Materialism
 Explains cultural similarities and
differences as well as models for
cultural change within a societal
framework.
 A scientific research strategy that
prioritizes material, behavioral and etic
processes in the explanation of the
evolution of human socio-cultural
systems.
 Consist of three distinct levels:
Infrastructure, structure and
superstructure.

4. Assumptions
 Cultural Materialism is based on two
key assumptions about societies. First,
the various parts of society are
interrelated. When one part of society
changes, other parts must also change.
 The second assumption of CM is that
the foundation of the socio-cultural
system is the environment.

5. Three distinct
levels

6. Infrastructure
 Promotes the idea that
infrastructure, consisting of
“material realities” such as
technological, economic and
reproductive (demographic)
factors mold and influence the
other two aspects of culture.

7.  The material infrastructure
consists of the technology and
social practices by which a
society fits in to its environment.
 It is through the infrastructure that
society manipulates its
environment by modifying the
amount and type of resources
needed.

9. Infrastructural
Component
Technology (mode of
production)
Population (mode of
reproduction)

10. The modes of
production and
reproduction are attempts
to strike a balance
between population level
and the consumption of
energy from a finite
environment.

11. Mode of Production
- Consists of behaviors aimed at satisfying
requirements for subsistence.
- Technology and the practices employed for
expanding or limiting basic subsistence
production, especially the production of food
and other forms of energy.
 Technology of subsistence
 Technological-environmental relationships

12. Examples:
 Hunting and Gathering
 Horticulture
 Pastoral
 Agrarian
 Industrial
 Hyper-industrial

14. Mode of reproduction
- Consisting of behaviors aimed at
controlling destructive increases or
decreases in population size.
- Technology and the practices
employed for expanding,
limiting and maintaining
population size.

15. examples
 Demography
 Mating patterns
 Fertility, natality, mortality
 Nurturance of infant
 Medicine
 Contraception, abortion, infanticide

17. Structural
- This component of socio-cultural systems
consists of the organized patterns of social
life carried out among the members of a
society.
- Each society must maintain secure and
orderly relationships among its people, its
constituent groups, and with neighboring
societies.
 Political Economy
 Domestic Economy

18. Political Economy
- These groups and organizations perform
the functions of regulating production,
reproduction, exchange, and consumption
within and between groups and socio-
cultural systems.
- These groups may be large or small, but
their members tend to interact without
any emotional commitment to one
another.

19. Examples
 Political organizations, factions,
military,
Corporations, Division of labor,
police,
Education, media, taxation, urban,
rural hierarchies, war, class, caste,
Service and welfare organizations,
Professional and labor organizations.

21. Cultural economy
Consists of a small number of
people who interact on an
intimate basis. They perform many
functions, such as regulating
reproduction, basic production,
socialization, education, and
enforcing domestic discipline.

22. Examples
Family structure, domestic division
of labor, education, age and sex roles,
Community, domestic discipline,
hierarchies, sanctions,
Voluntary organizations,
Friendship Networks,
Some religious groups.

24. Superstructure
- “Superstructure” sector consists of
ideological and symbolic aspects of
society such as religion.
- Given the importance of symbolic
processes.
Behavioral Superstructure
 Mental Superstructure

25. Behavioral
Superstructure
The Behavioral Superstructure includes
recreations activities, art, sports, empirical
knowledge, folklore, and other aesthetic
products.
Examples:
• Art, music, dance, literature
• Rituals, advertising,
• Sports, games, hobbies,
• Science

27. Mental
Superstructure
The mental superstructure involves the
patterned ways in which the members of a
society think, conceptualize, and evaluate
their behavior.
Examples:
 Myths, aesthetic standards and philosophies,
ideologies, religion

29. • Therefore, cultural materialists believe
that technological and economic
aspects play the primary role in shaping
a society.
• Cultural materialism aims to
understand the effects of
technological, economic and
demographic factors on molding
societal structure and superstructure
through strictly scientific methods.