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10 Marks150 words
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Cultural Materialism — 2019 Paper I
Question · 2019 · Paper I · 10 Marks
Cultural Materialism
Model Answer
VAID ICSApproach
- Demand of Question: Explain Marvin Harris’s Cultural Materialism and its materialist interpretation of culture.
- Structuring the Response: Present infrastructure, structure and superstructure, illustrate infrastructural priority, and briefly evaluate the approach.
- Key Dimensions to Cover: Marvin Harris, infrastructure, structure, superstructure, etic approach, sacred cow interpretation and material determinism.
Model Answer
Introduction: Cultural Materialism, associated primarily with Marvin Harris, explains cultural similarities and differences through the material conditions of human existence, particularly production, reproduction, technology and ecology.
Three components:
- Infrastructure: Includes subsistence, technology, modes of production, reproduction and ecological relations.
- Structure: Includes domestic organization, kinship, political economy and division of labour.
- Superstructure: Includes religion, ideology, symbols, values and art.
Harris generally proposed:
Infrastructure → Structure → Superstructure
Material explanation: Cultural Materialism gives explanatory priority to infrastructural conditions because they directly affect survival and reproduction.
Harris’s interpretation of the sacred cow in India illustrates this approach. Cattle provide:
- traction;
- manure;
- fuel;
- milk;
- agricultural utility.
Religious protection of cattle could therefore also have an ecological-economic basis.
Methodology: Harris emphasized etic and scientific analysis, while treating emic beliefs as part of the cultural system to be explained.
Criticism: The approach is criticized for excessive material determinism and for underestimating symbolism, history and human agency.
Conclusion: Cultural Materialism provided anthropology with a powerful framework linking culture with ecology and political economy, though material explanations need to be integrated with cultural meanings.
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