While he did not make up the theoretical perspective from whole cloth, Marvin Harris, a cultural anthropologist, is responsible for the most systematic statements of the cultural materialist research strategy.  Through numerous books, chief among them The Rise of Anthropological Theory (1968), Cultural Materialism (1979), and Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times (1999), he has also been the major proselytizer for the perspective. The reaction of anthropologists can be gleaned from the subtitle of the book Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture.  The struggle within anthropology much resembles the "paradigmatic revolutions" of Thomas Kuhn (1970), and has become hard-fought on both sides.  In Cultural Materialism professor Harris not only systematically presents the research strategy of cultural materialism, but vigorously critiques other competing strategies (and non strategies) in anthropology and sociology. While Harris has gained some adherents within anthropology, it remains an embattled perspective that has been attacked vigorously by critics within the discipline.  In sociology the perspective has been largely ignored. 

If sociologists know the perspective of cultural materialism at all it is often knowledge of a more simplistic version of the strategy that is summarized and then torn apart by critics.  The fact that Harris's cultural materialism is so little known within sociology is surprising in some respects.  Although coming from a different discipline, the perspective shares several themes (functionalism, a concern with demography, and positivism to name a few) and theoretical traditions (Marx, Spencer, and Malthus) with sociology.  Like sociology (perhaps more so than anthropology), the perspective is firmly based in both science and empiricism.  Through cultural materialism, Harris claims to have developed a systematic research strategy for investigating all human societies, a research strategy that is as sorely lacking in sociology as in anthropology. Still, the perspective is rarely mentioned in sociology texts and scholarship, scarcely given passing mention in our courses. 

But given the breadth of sociology and the explosion of books, articles and data about all aspects of social life, it is perhaps understandable that sociologists can barely keep up with their own more narrow specialization let alone be well versed in the general epistemological and theoretical debates in a related field.  Also, as an anthropologist, Harris has mainly been concerned with applying the perspective to the traditional societies of hunters and gatherers, horticulturists and pastoralists--societal types that are not considered central in the sociological tradition. 

Harris, however, claims to have developed a universal analytical strategy--a theoretical strategy of equal relevance to hunting and gathering, industrial or even hyper industrial societies. You would think that such a claim, particularly when made by a social scientist of the stature and obvious heft of Marvin Harris (numerous books and monographs, including major texts in anthropological theory, general, and cultural anthropology as well as a past president of the American Anthropological Association) would attract more attention and investigation within sociology (and attract its share adherents, as it has in anthropology).  This paper, then, is intended as a comprehensive summary of Marvin Harris's research strategy of cultural materialism.  On this occasion of the reissue (2001) of his two primary texts detailing the roots and branches of the perspective, The Rise of Anthropological Theory and Cultural Materialism, this paper is especially intended to interest sociologists and their students in this comprehensive research strategy. 

Assumptions

Cultural materialism (CM) is based on two key assumptions about human societies.  First, like most macro social theory, CM is based on the assumption that society is made up of component parts that are functionally interrelated.  When one of these component parts change, other parts must adjust to that change.  An institution such as the family cannot be looked at in isolation from other parts of the sociocultural system--from other institutions (say economic, political or religious) nor from cultural beliefs and ideologies.  For example, in order to fully comprehend the recent changes in the American family, the rise in divorce, single-headed households, the decline in family size and the increase in daycare, you must relate these changes to changes in the economy (say the rising cost of living), as well as changing cultural beliefs (such as the rise of consumerism).  When one part of the sociocultural system changes it often has effect on many other parts of the system.  While viewing society as a system of interrelated parts is at the core of most macro social theory, theories differ in terms of what components are considered to be most important or central in determining the rest of the sociocultural system.  Theories also differ on the weight to assign these central components--some going so far as claiming that these central components "completely determine" other parts of the system (various forms of Marxism), others settling more for a strong influence expressed in terms of probabilities. 

The second major assumption upon which CM is based is that the foundation of sociocultural systems is the environment.  Like all life forms, human beings must take energy from their environment in order to survive.  All life, including humans, must therefore live within the constraints of their immediate environment.  The two major environmental constraints are the continued availability of natural resources and the tolerance of the environment (including people) for pollution.  While human action can modify these constraints--say by devising new technologies to produce more food, or engaging in social practices to limit further population growth--these environmental constraints can never be eliminated or completely overcome.  Human technology can never create resources, just tap into those resources that exist in nature.  Technologies can modify the type and quantities of resources needed for survival, and increases and decreases in human reproduction can modify the amount of resources required, but no combination of the two can eliminate our ultimate dependence on our environment.  Since our relationships to the environment are essential to human life itself, social practices that serve to modify environmental constraints must have great impact on the rest of the sociocultural system, must be central to understanding any widespread social practice, ideology, or belief in that system. 

Universal Pattern of Sociocultural Systems

According to CM, all human societies are patterned along similar lines.  Based on the physical environment, all components of sociocultural systems can be organized into: 

• Infrastructure
• Structure
• Superstructure

The Mode of Production consists of "(t)he technology and the practices employed for expanding or limiting basic subsistence production, especially the production of food and other forms of energy, given the restrictions and opportunities provided by a specific technology interacting with a specific habitat" (1979, p. 52).  Within the mode of production Harris includes such variables as the technology of subsistence, work patterns, and technological-environmental relationships. In accordance with standard practice among anthropologists and sociologists, there have been several different modes of production throughout human history, beginning with hunter and gatherer, and then to horticulture, pastoral, agrarian and industrial.  This classification scheme of different modes of production (which can be further broken down into "simple" and "advanced") is based on the technology and social practices used to draw subsistence from the environment, as well as the type of resources used by a society to exploit that environment.  For example, Lenski and Lenski (1994) classify societies on the basis of such factors as metallurgy, use of the plow, iron, and the use of fossil fuel. 

The Mode of Reproduction consists of the technologies and social practices employed for expanding, maintaining or limiting population size.  In this category Harris lists such social technologies and practices as mating patterns, medical influence on fertility, natality and mortality, contraception, abortion, infanticide, and the nurturance of infants. The technologies and social practices within the mode of reproduction are prime determinants of the population size of a sociocultural system. 

Like all life on earth, human beings must obtain sustenance from their environments.  All human action is therefore necessarily limited by environmental constraints, chiefly the availability of food.  The amount of food that a particular environment can provide is limited by natural factors (such as land fertility, potential domesticates, climate, rainfall patterns) and human technologies and social practices (such as the domestication of plants and animals, fertilizers, irrigation, plow, insecticides). The amount of food that a particular sociocultural system needs is also determined by its population size.  It is through modifications of the technologies and practices within the infrastructure (both the modes of production and reproduction) that societies increase or decrease the type and amount of resources required from their environment. 

One can see how the infrastructure interacts with the environment by considering a hypothetical hunting and gathering band that, because of the depletion of game species, is experiencing some hard times.  Assuming the band is rooted by tradition to their forest (or hemmed in by powerful neighbors), they have only a few options.  They can intensify their mode of production, using better technology to more efficiently hunt animals, broaden their subsistence base to harvest plants and animals that they previously spurned, or reduce their population size immediately through such practices as infanticide or geronticide, or more long-term through changes in mating patterns to better space out births.  After making these adjustments they will again be existing within their environmental constraints until either a change in the natural environment (say a change in climate), or a change in their subsistence technology (say the adoption of the bow and arrow), or population level (say an increase in births) again upsets the balance.  Whatever technologies and practices people employ to adjust to these environmental constraints will necessarily have great impact on other parts of the sociocultural system. All sociocultural systems, not just hunting and gathering societies, must live within their environmental limits.  These constraints must necessarily be passed on to other parts of the sociocultural system. 

Harris terms the second major component of sociocultural systems as the Structure.  This component consists of the organized patterns of social life carried out among the members of a society.  One of the necessary survival functions that each society must fulfill is to maintain orderly and secure relationships among individuals, groups, and neighboring societies.  The threat of disorder, Harris asserts, comes primarily from the economic process which allocate labor and products to individuals and groups.  Thus Harris divides the structure of sociocultural systems into two parts: the Political Economy and the Domestic Economy. 

The political economy consists of groups and organizations that perform the functions of regulating exchange, consumption and reproduction between and within groups and other sociocultural systems.  This component consists of such elements as political organizations, military, corporations, division of labor, police, service and welfare organizations, as well as professional and labor organizations.  The Domestic Economy represents the organization of reproduction, production, exchange and consumption within domestic settings (such as households, camps).  This part of the structure consists of family, the domestic division of labor, age and sex roles, and friendship networks. 

Given the importance of symbolic processes for human health and happiness, Harris also posits the universal existence of a superstructure.  Again, Harris divides this component into two parts: the Behavioral Superstructure and the Mental Superstructure. The behavioral superstructure includes recreation activities, art, sports, rituals, games, science, folklore, and other aesthetic products.  The mental superstructure involves the patterned ways in which the members of a society think, conceptualize, and evaluate their behavior.  Harris actually posits that these mental categories run parallel to the universal behavioral components of sociocultural systems.  Running parallel to the infrastructure, for example, are such mental components as subsistence lore, magic, religious beliefs, and taboos that serve to justify, encourage, and evaluate productive and reproductive behavior.  Similar mental superstructural ideologies, beliefs, and taboos serve to justify, encourage, and evaluate behavior occurring in the domestic and political economies and in the behavioral superstructure as well.  However, for the sake of simplicity, Harris designates all of these elements as the "mental superstructure" by which he means: "...the conscious and unconscious cognitive goals, categories, rules, plans, values, philosophies, and beliefs about behavior elicited from the participants or inferred by the observers" (1979, p. 54). 

All sociocultural systems, according to Harris, have these three major components: Infrastructure, Structure, and Superstructure.  The major principles of cultural materialism concern the interdependent relationships among these component parts. 

The Strategy

Harris advocates a specific strategy for analyzing sociocultural systems.  When trying to understand or explain a widespread social practice or belief, he urges, always begin with an examination of infrastructural-environmental relations. This, he calls, the Principle of Infrastructural Determinism (a somewhat unfortunate choice of terminology since Harris explicitly recognizes the probabilistic nature of the relationships).  The mode of production and reproduction (infrastructure) will "probabilistically determine" (strongly effect) the political and domestic structure, which in turn will probabilistically determine (strongly effect) the behavioral and mental superstructure.  This, Harris believes, should be the guiding strategy in any analysis of a social phenomenon.  Look to the infrastructure first. 

The rationale behind giving the infrastructure such priority rests upon the fact that it is through infrastructural practices that society adapts to its environment by modifying the amount and type of resources required for life. 

"Infrastructure, in other words, is the principal interface between culture and nature, the boundary across which the ecological, chemical, and physical restraints to which human action is subject interact with the principal sociocultural practices aimed at overcoming or modifying those restraints.  The order of cultural materialist priorities from infrastructure to the remaining behavioral components and finally to the mental superstructure reflects the increasing remoteness of these components from the culture/nature interface. Since the aim of cultural materialism, in keeping with the orientation of science in general, is the discovery of the maximum amount of order in its field of inquiry, priority for theory building logically settles upon those sectors under the greatest direct restraints form the givens of nature. To endow the mental superstructure with strategic priority, as the cultural idealists advocate, is a bad bet.  Nature is indifferent whether God is a loving father or a bloodthirsty cannibal. But nature is not indifferent to whether the fallow period in a swidden field is one year or ten. We know that powerful restraints exist on the infrastructural level; hence it is a good bet that these restraints are passed on to the structural and superstructural components" (1979, p. 57).

Harris, of course, did not simply make up this principal but bases it on the insights of social theorists and observations of social scientists in the past.  The principle of infrastructural determinism is specifically based on a reformulation of the insights of Karl Marx (production) and T. Robert Malthus (reproduction).  Harris's unique contribution is in clearly defining both population and production variables (eliminating the obscuring "dialectic" from Marx and the moral angst from Malthus) and in combining and interrelating these two powerful forces in the infrastructure. 

A society's infrastructure is the primary cause of stability and change in its structure, and the structure, in turn, is the primary cause of stability and change in its superstructure.  Through the principle of infrastructural determinism, cultural materialism provides a logical set of research priorities for the study of sociocultural life.  But while the infrastructure is considered to be of primary importance, the structure and superstructures are not mere reflections of infrastructural processes, but are in interaction with the infrastructure. 

CM considers societies to be very stable systems.  The most likely outcome of any change in the system, whether this change originates in the infrastructure, structure, or superstructure, is resistance in the other sectors of society.  This system maintaining negative feedback is capable of deflecting, dampening, or extinguishing most system changes.  The result is either the extinction of the innovation or slight compensatory changes that preserve the fundamental character of the whole system. 

But structures and superstructures can provide positive feedback to innovations as well, and when this occurs, change is rapid and fundamental--revolutionary in character.  In general, sociocultural change that releases more energy from the environment is likely to be swiftly adapted and stimulate accommodating change within the structure and superstructure. 

Individual Behavior

In the great debate between materialists and ideationalists, Harris is firmly in the materialist camp.  To assertions that human values or reason are the foundation of society, Harris counters with the claim that mind is formed by challenges presented by environment, and these challenges will always shape human behavior and thought.  For Harris, there is a basic imbalance between our ability to have children and our ability to obtain energy for their survival.  This basic imbalance between nature and nurture is expressed in individual lives through cost/benefit decisions regarding sexual behavior, children, work, and standard of living. 

According to Harris, mankind is relatively free from biological drives and predispositions. As a species, Harris asserts, we have been selected for our ability to learn most of our social behavior rather than for any specific instinctual behavior.  The selection processes responsible for the evolution of sociocultural systems occurs at the individual level according to several "selective principles" operating at that level.  These selective principles are the bio-psychological cost/benefit calculus that serves to guide human behavior within a given sociocultural system. It is through these individual cost benefit decisions that aggregates change, it is through these adaptations that Harris is able to explain how infrastructure mediates between culture and nature.  Harris enumerates four selective principles: 

1. People need to eat and will generally opt for diets that offer more rather than fewer calories and proteins and other nutrients.
2. People cannot be totally inactive, but when confronted with a given task, they prefer to carry it out by expending less rather than more human energy.
3. People are highly sexed and generally find reinforcing pleasure from sexual intercourse--more often from heterosexual intercourse.
4. People need love and affection in order to feel secure and happy, and other things being equal, they will act to increase the love and affection that others give them (1979, p. 63).

The fact that humans have a bio-psychological predisposition to maximize their diets or maximize the love given them does not mean that there are not widespread antithetical behaviors and thoughts in many societies.  Many Americans, for example, have taken the option of diets that offer more rather than fewer calories and proteins to a high art, and now must opt for fewer calories and proteins to maintain their health (though such denial is a discipline, one that many of us have yet to master).  Similarly, many in hyper industrial societies have opted for expending less energy so often that now we must consciously look for ways of exercising the body (though again, this is a discipline).  Similarly, there are vegetarians in the world, there are those who practice sexual abstinence, there are those who murder their children.  "Nothing in the statement of pan-specific bio-psychological principles indicates that selection acting through the preferences of individuals will in the long term contributed to the maximization of anticipated results.  On the contrary, the selection of maximizing traits recurrently leads to ecological depletions.  Thus the pursuit of more proteins frequently ends up with people getting fewer proteins; the adoption of labor-saving devices ends up with people working harder; the escalation of male sexual activity leads to a systematic shortage of women; and greater affective bonding transmuted by politics leads to greater exploitation of one class by another" (1979, pp. 63-64). The selective principles that guide individual cost/benefit decisions often lead to social paradoxes, puzzles that cultural materialism is particularly well suited to solve. 

The Role of Elites

While the selective principles are universal, the ways in which societies meet individual needs for food, energy conservation, sex, and love, as well as the extent to which these needs are met throughout the population of a society, are highly variable. The entire sociocultural system rests on the cost/benefit calculus individuals use to exploit their environments to meet their  biopsychological needs.  But it is not the simple calculation of the greatest good for the greatest number of people that accounts for sociocultural change.  Many changes are more satisfying to some members of society than to others.  Changes that enhance the position of elites are likely to be those that receive positive feedback from structural institutions, positive feedback from the dominant ideologies within the society.  Infrastructural change that enhance the position of elites are likely to be amplified and propagated throughout the system.  Changes that hurt elite interests are likely to be resisted. 

CM is in agreement with Marx when he states: "The ideas of the ruling class in each epoch are the ruling ideas."  The elite are able to impose direct and indirect economic and political sanctions to get their way.  Elite also encourage ideas and ideologies favorable to their position.  However, CM does not claim absolute rule by an elite.  The amount of power and control exercised by elite is an empirical question, it varies across societies and through time.  One of the first tasks of a Cultural Materialist analysis is to attempt to identify the elite within a sociocultural system, gauge the amount of power that they wield, and uncover their interests, biases, and assumptions when analyzing the sociocultural system. 

Intensification

Like all life on earth, human beings must expend energy to obtain energy from their environment.  Harris notes that the amount of energy that social systems expend to obtain energy have expanded significantly throughout social evolution. Hunting and gathering bands, Harris notes, expended less than 100,000 kilocalories per day.  This energy expenditure increases to about one million per day for slash-and-burn farming villages, 25 billion per day for irrigation states (Mesopotamia, Mesoamerica), and over 50 trillion per day for hyper industrial societies. This expansion in energy budgets has been accompanied by an increase in both human productivity and population, all of which has had dramatic consequences for the rest of the sociocultural system. 

"Anthropologists have long recognized that in broadest perspective cultural evolution has had three main characteristics: escalating energy budgets, increased productivity, and accelerating population growth" (1979, p. 67). Harris asserts that there is a direct relationship between increases in productivity and population growth.  Increases in production cause population to grow, which then further stimulates greater productivity.  This is Malthus's application of the law of supply and demand applied to the relationships between food production and population growth.  As the food supply increases, food becomes cheaper, and more children survive (or are allowed to survive).  As there are more mouths to feed, food becomes more expensive, thus causing more land to be put under the plow, or greater investment in time and energy, and technology to increase food production.  While Malthus (and Harris) recognize that the relationships among the fertility of people and land are a good deal more complex than this simplified assertion, they insist that there is a recurrent reciprocal relationship among the two. 

Recall that, according to Malthus (and Harris), our ability to produce children is always greater than our ability to produce energy for their survival.  Because necessary checks to population growth are always present, and because until relatively recent times, these checks tend to be violent toward women, fetus, and children, sociocultural systems use increases in productivity to allow population to expand.  Because of this reciprocal relationship between population and production, over the course of sociocultural evolution, both population and food production have grown.  Periods of increase in food productivity, whether it be because of the application of new technology or the expansion of cultivated land, have been met with expansions of population. Periods of stability in food production, or contraction in productivity, have been marked by the same phenomena in population level.  Over the course of sociocultural evolution, however, the long-term tendency has been for both productivity and population to intensify.  This intensification, according to CM, has great impact on other parts of the sociocultural system. 

The effects of our vast numbers and powerful technology (including the technology of reproduction) have made it increasingly obvious that infrastructural factors play a key role in sociocultural stability and change.  World population and industrial technology, both infrastructural factors, are now massive.  Both are presently growing at an exponential rate.  It is a sociocultural system.  You can't do one thing.  This tremendous size as well as its recent exponential growth (or intensification) has had tremendous impact on the environment (depletion and pollution) and has caused tremendous change in human organizations, beliefs and values.  Cultural materialism is a research strategy uniquely suited to exploring both short-term sociocultural stability and change, or the long-term social evolutionary process itself. 

Should you wish to quote from this material the format should be as follows:

Elwell, Frank, 2001, The Cultural Materialist Research Strategy, Retrieved June 1, 2002 (use actual date), http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Harris/Index

Harris, Marvin, 1968. The Rise of Anthropological Theory.  New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.

Harris, Marvin, 1979. Cultural Materialism: the Struggle for a Science of Culture.  New York: Random House.

Harris, Marvin, 1999. Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times.  California: AltaMira Press.