Essay on Cultural Materialism - 623 Words

When it comes to anthropological theory the combination of several established ways of thought often result in a completely new and independent way of thinking. Cultural Materialism is one of these children theories that resulted from a coming together of social evolutionary theory, cultural ecology and Marxist materialism (Barfield). The goal of cultural materialism is to explain politics, economics, ideology and symbolic aspects of a culture with relation to the needs of that society. From a cultural materialist point of view society is indisputably shaped by the factors of production and reproduction. From this all other facets of society, such as government and religion, must be beneficial to that society’s ability to satisfy the†¦show more content†¦However, cultural materialism and its more scientific approach has brought criticism from other schools of thought who feel that cultural materialism is too simple and straight forward and completely disregards the th oughts and behaviors of a society, an aspect most feel is imperative to understanding culture change. By not relying of native explanations of cultural events cultural materialism has pushed the field of anthropology to become more scientific. This in turn may help anthropology to be known more as a hard science rather than a soft science. Marvin Harris primarily laid the framework for the creation of the cultural materialistic point of view. He has written many works employing his cultural materialistic study pattern. He garnered just as much praise as he did criticism from his peers for works, which is incredible when the fact that his first book almost alienated many who held other view points. His work in India dealing with the sacred cow myth is considered to be his most successful application of cultural materialism. Cultural materialism is a relatively young school of thought and there are several up and coming anthropologists who subscribe to this point of view and are applying it to many different areas of various different cultures. 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