Marvin Harris

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Marvin Harris (August 18 1927 – October 25 2001) was an American anthropologist. A prolific writer, he was highly influential in the development of cultural materialism. In his work he combined Karl Marx's emphasis on the forces of production with Malthus's insights on the impact of demographic factors on other parts of the sociocultural system. Labeling demographic and production factors as "infrastructure," Harris posited these factors as key in determining a society's social structure and culture. After the publication of "The Rise of Anthropological Theory" in 1968, Harris helped focus anthropologists' interest in infrastructural-ecological relationships for the rest of his career. Over the course of his life, Harris drew both a loyal following and a considerable amount of criticism. He became a regular fixture at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association where he would subject scholars to intense questioning from the floor, podium or bar. In his final book, Theories of Culture in Postmodern Times, Harris focused on the harmful political outcomes of postmodern theory in ways that similar to some of the critiques later developed by philosopher Richard Wolin and others.

1 Theoretical Contributions
2 Personal information
3 Works
4 External links

[edit] Theoretical Contributions

Harris' earliest work began in the Boasian tradition of descriptive fieldwork, but his fieldwork experiences in Mozambique in the late 1950s caused him to shift his focus from ideological features of culture towards behavioral aspects. His "Rise of Anthropological Theory" critically examined hundreds of years of social thought with the intent of constructing a viable nomothetic understanding of human culture that he came to call "cultural materialism." Cultural materialism began with Marx's partition of the human world into categories of superstructure and base.

Along with Michael Harner, Harris is one of the scholars most associated with the theory that Aztec cannibalism was the result of protein deficiency in the Aztec diet. While Harner was a sincere advocate of this, Harris presented it in a more hypothetical light: he used it to illustrate the idea of cultural materialism. An explanation appears in his book Cannibals and Kings.

[edit] Personal information

Harris received both his M.A. and PhD from Columbia University; the former in 1949 and the latter in 1953. He performed fieldwork in Brazil and Portuguese-speaking Africa before joining the faculty at Columbia. He eventually became chairman of the anthropology department before going to the University of Florida. During the Columbia student campus occupation of 1968, Harris was among the few faculty leaders who sided with the students as they were threatened and beaten by the police. Harris joined UF's anthropology department in 1981 and retired in 2000. He was the Anthropology Graduate Research Professor Emeritus there. Dr. Harris also served as the Chair of the General Anthropology Division of the American Anthropological Association. Harris was the author of 17 books. His research spanned the topics of race, evolution and culture, and often focused on Latin America and Brazil. [1]