Cultural materialism

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The term Cultural materialism refers to two separate scholarly endeavors.

1. It is an anthropological research paradigm championed most notably by Marvin Harris.

2. It is a Marxist theory of literature.

In spite of the influence of Marx on both endeavors, there is no real overlap between the two forms of cultural materialism.

Contents

1 Cultural Materialism - Anthropological

1.1 Theoretical Principles

1.1.1 Disagreement with Marxism

1.2 +References+

2 Cultural Materialism - Literary Theory

2.1 +References+

3 External links

Cultural Materialism - Anthropological

As a theoretical orientation within the discipline of anthropology, it grows out of and reflects the influence of earlier positions, especially Marxist anthropology or political economy and cultural ecology. From political economy it adopts not only its characteristic materialism, but also the central concept of the mode of production, while from cultural ecology comes an emphasis upon the study of the relationships between various societies and their environments.

Theoretical Principles

The basic idea behind cultural materialism, as a theoretical orientation, is that social institutions do not emerge at random, but rather come to be as a result of pressures surrounding the relationship between a population and its environment. Cultural materialism, growing as it does from the Berkeley tradition of anthropology, rests on a three-fold division of culture:

Infrastructure, comprising a society's relations to the environment, which includes their mode of production and reproduction (material relations).
Structure, the domestic and political economies of a society (social relations).
Superstructure, or the greater, symbolic aspects of a society, e.g. art, religion, dance, theatre (meaningful or ideological relations).

Within this division of culture, cultural materialism argues for what is referred to as the 'principle of infrastructural determinism'. This is the essence of its materialist approach, which suggests that, while each of these subsystems of culture changes and affects the other two, the material base, or infrastructure, is in almost all circumstances the most significant force behind the evolution of a culture. In other words, infrastructure 'probabilistically determines' structure, which 'probabilistically determines' superstructure. Thus, much as in earlier Marxist thought, material changes (such as in technology or environment) are seen as largely determining patterns of social organization and ideology in turn.

Disagreement with Marxism

In spite of the debt owed to the economic theories of Marx, cultural materialism rejects the Marxist dialectic which in turn was based on the theories of the philosopher Hegel.

As Harris said in his "Cultural Materialism - The Struggle for a Science of Culture"

Ruling groups throughout history and prehistory have always promoted the mystification of social life as their first line of defense against actual or potential enemies. In the contemporary political context, idealism and eclecticism serve to obscure the very existence of ruling classes, thus shifting the blame for poverty, exploitation, and environmental degradation from the exploiters to the exploited. Cultural materialism opposes cultural idealism and eclecticism because these strategies, through their distorted and ineffectual analyses, prevent people from understanding the causes of war, poverty and exploitation. Cultural materialism opposes dialectical materialism for the very same reasons. As a political ideology, Marxist-Leninist dialectical materialism attempts to advance the struggle against exploitation by promoting a scientifically unjustifiable sense of certainty about the future. But the same sense of certainty gives additional opportunities for the perpetuation of exploitation by the new ruling classes, providing these new classes with an elaborate ideology for justifying the self-serving obfuscation of the exploitative aspects of the state systems they control. Disparagement of positivist epistemologies can lead to the dialectical inevitability of even the most misguided analysis. Cultural materialism holds that the elimination of exploitation will never be achieved in a society which subverts the empirical and operational integrity of social science for reasons of political expediency. Because without the maintenance of an empiricist and operational critique, we shall never know if what some call democracy is a new form of freedom or a new form of slavery.

+References+

Cultural Materialism - Literary Theory

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In literary and culture theory, Materialism as a nascent discipline has attracted a post-marxist character. Dollimore and Sinfield authors of Political Shakespeare began this methodology. This includes an analysis of any Historical Material, (literature included) within a politicized framework. The four characteristics of this method are: 1) Historical context 2) Theoretical Method 3) Political Commitment 4) Textual Analysis Cultural Materialists go beyond Marxism in that they focus on the marginalized rather than just focusing solely on class conflict. In this sense it is more radical and subversive. Cultural Materialists maintain moral ethic and material base of Marxism but do not subscribe to its teleological aims.

+References+

Raymond Williams

Source: Scott Wilson--- Cultural Materialism

External links

[Cultural Materialism] A site devoted to cultural materialism

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