|
|
The
Enduring Legacy of Marvin Harris and Cultural Materialism
Paper
Presented
at an
Invited Session
of the
Central States Anthropological Society
on
Marvin Harris and the Controversy Surrounding Cultural Materialism:
Retrospective and Future Potential
at the
101st Annual Meeting
of the
American Anthropological Association
on
20 November 2002
in
New Orleans, Louisiana
James Lett
Indian River State College
3209 Virginia Avenue
Ft. Pierce, FL 34981-5596
(772) 462-4523
|
Cultural materialism
has many virtues, foremost among them its explicit appeal to the
epistemology of science, but the paradigm is fundamentally flawed in ways
that will severely limit its usefulness as a guideline for future
anthropological research and analysis. When anthropology finally emerges
as a mature scientific discipline (one devoted exclusively to discovering facts
and generating theories in the genuine scientific senses of the
terms), the theoretical principles of cultural materialism will not play a
major role. On the other hand, Marvin Harris was a proponent of several
essential propositions that will serve as a blueprint for the construction
of a mature science of anthropology. The legacy of cultural materialism
will be distinct from the legacy of Marvin Harris.
|
The Legacy of Cultural
Materialism
|
There are several
fundamental difficulties with the paradigm of cultural materialism, as
various critics have pointed out (Robarchek 1989; Barkow, Cosmides, and
Tooby 1992; Magnarella 1993; Sperber 1996; O’Meara 1997; Lett 1997), but
I will mention just four interrelated problems that seem to be especially
damaging.
|
Problem # 1:
Cultural Materialism is based upon a form of functionalism that lacks
genuine explanatory power.
As Barkow, Cosmides, and Tooby (1992:625) explain, cultural materialism is
based upon a "present or future oriented" form of functionalism
which seeks to account for any particular phenomenon by asking "How
is it explained by the utility of its consequences?"—a question
that makes the fundamental error of placing the consequence before the
cause. Given that "causal explanations must necessarily focus on
antecedent conditions," it follows that the "consequences of a
phenomenon can be neither the cause of the phenomenon nor its
explanation" (Barkow, Cosmides, and Tooby 1992:625). The only form of
functionalism that is tenable is a "past-oriented" form of
functionalism, such as that found in evolutionary theory: "Darwin’s
theory of natural selection provides an explanation of how functional
design can emerge from a noneforesightful causal process...[based on the
notion that] a design feature’s functional consequences in earlier
generations explain its presence in this one" (Barkow, Cosmides,
and Tooby 1992:625).
|
Even if the principle
of infrastructural determinism claimed only to account for the persistence
of cultural traits rather than the emergence of cultural traits, it
would still lack explanatory power, because, unlike the principle of
natural selection, it fails to identify a feedback mechanism with
sufficient selective power to accomplish the task that is purportedly
accomplished (Sperber 1996:47-48). What, for example, is the feedback
mechanism between a superstructural element such as religion and an
infrastructural element such as the mode of production that is comparable
to the feedback mechanism between protective coloration and reproductive
success in a biological organism? There is a fundamental reason cultural
materialism cannot identify a satisfactory answer to this question:
protective coloration and reproductive success are material phenomena,
whereas religion and the mode of production are abstractions—which
illustrates a second fundamental problem facing the paradigm.
|
Problem # 2: Cultural
Materialism is not based upon an ontology of materialism.
As Sperber (1996:10) observes, "ontological questions have practical
implications for anthropological research," and they include such
questions as "what kinds of things are cultural things?" and
"how do cultural things fit into the world and how do they relate to
things other sciences are about?" He maintains that anthropology
lacks well-developed answers to these questions, and that the paradigm of
cultural materialism is no exception: "The difference between
self-proclaimed materialists and those whom they accuse of idealism is
that ‘materialists’ see representations [such as "belief,"
"culture," "infrastructure," or
"superstructure"] more as effects of material conditions,
while ‘idealists’ see them more as causes of material
conditions" (Sperber 1996:64). It does not matter which direction the
causal arrows are said to point, however—the problem is that both ‘materialists’
and ‘idealists’ imagine that material and non-material
"things" enter into causal relationships with one another, and
that simply cannot happen. According to the ontology of materialism (as
opposed to the ontology of dualism, for example), everything is
material, including religious beliefs and modes of production. "From
a truly materialist point of view," Sperber (1996:11) observes,
"effects cannot be less material than their causes."
|
Cultural materialists
are aware of this criticism, but the response they have offered is
indicative of the ontological confusion that is inherent in their
paradigm. Rather than describe the infrastructure, structure, and
superstructure as material entities with material connections, cultural
materialists maintain that cultural things are both material and
non-material: "the identification and analysis of empirical
(physical) but abstract, superorganic entities is a necessary and feasible
component of sociocultural science" (Harris 1997:412). "[E]ven
though some cultural things cannot be touched or seen," Harris argues
(1999:52), "they are nonetheless real." But what does
"real" mean in this context? Harris (1999:53) maintains that
"as long as the model is constructed on an identifiable physical base
and is built up according to explicit logical and empirical steps, it can
lay claim to having a physical reality." This is hardly what
"physical reality" means in the natural sciences, and it is
hardly an unambiguous answer to the questions posed by Sperber and other
critics of cultural materialism: what kinds of things are cultural
things, how do they fit into the world, and how do they relate to the
things studied by other scientific disciplines? The fact that cultural
materialism is not based on an ontology of materialism leads directly to
another fundamental problem: the paradigm cannot hope to identify causal
forces, because "everything that has causal powers owes those powers
exclusively to its physical properties" (Sperber 1996:10).
|
Problem # 3: Cultural
materialism’s causal principle (i.e., infrastructural determinism) does
not identify agents or forces that have genuine causal power.
Among anthropologists, Tim O’Meara (1997; 2001) is the scholar most
responsible for developing this argument. Following the philosopher of
science Wesley Salmon (1984), O’Meara (1997:405) "distinguishes ‘causal
processes’ such as baseballs, windowpanes, and electromagnetic fields,
which have causal efficacy in themselves, from ‘pseudo processes’ such
as shadows and spots of light, which do not." He argues that "superorganic"
entities (such as infrastructures, structures, and superstructures) are
pseudo processes; they cannot possibly have causal efficacy because they
are not physical entities. According to O’Meara, "explanations of
human affairs [such as those generated by cultural materialism] are
necessarily faulty if they assert or imply that supraindividual or
otherwise superphysical patterns or entities have causal efficacy in
themselves"; instead, he argues, legitimate explanations of human
affairs must be "limited to causal-mechanical explanations of the
operations and interactions among individual human beings and other
physical entities" (O’Meara 1997:408). Robarchek (1989:904) made
this same point earlier when he argued that "any factor purported to
have causal efficacy must in some way articulate with human motivational
complexes if it is to find behavioral expression...[and that any]
theoretical formulation that purports to offer a causal explanation of
human behavior in terms of some extrinsic factor must explicitly specify
the mode of this articulation."
|
O’Meara does not deny
that cultural materialism identifies useful correlations among different
types of events (such as the correlations between modes of production and
forms of religious organization). Such correlations, however, are not
indications of causal relationships. "Patterns of behavioral events
in human affairs are not laws that ‘determine’ individual behaviors or
their aggregates," O’Meara (1997:406) explains; instead, those
patterns are simply "clues to the causal-mechanical properties of
humans and their constituent parts." Identifying those
causal-mechanical properties of humans entails identifying the evolved
features of human minds and bodies, and those features have a physical
reality in human anatomy and physiology. Thus, O’Meara (1997:410)
concludes, "if only physical entities have causal efficacy by virtue
only of their physical properties, then ‘objective’ or ‘empirical’
science literally means ‘physical’ science."
|
Many scholars have
observed that the natural or "physical" sciences, unlike the
social sciences, have achieved a high degree of mutual consistency,
interconnectedness, and explanatory power stemming from a shared set of
ontological and epistemological assumptions (Tooby and Cosmides 1992:19;
Sperber 1996:10; Wilson 1998:49-71). By insisting that its subject matter
is unique to the social sciences, cultural materialism refuses to embrace
that entire set of ontological and epistemological assumptions
characteristic of the natural sciences, and it separates itself from the
possibility of complete integration with the more successful fields of
scientific inquiry. This reflects a fourth fundamental problem with the
paradigm.
|
Problem # 4: Cultural
materialism is insufficiently grounded in biological evolution.
The
evolutionary processes that produced human beings are the same processes
that have shaped the morphology, physiology, and behavior of all organisms
on the planet. Thus understanding the selective forces that shaped human
evolution is essential for understanding human nature—and understanding
human nature is essential for understanding why humans behave the way they
do (Boyd and Silk 2000). Cultural materialism largely ignores the
specifics of human nature and the details of human evolution. Instead,
cultural materialism is content to posit the existence of four
"bio-psychological constants:" humans need to eat, they prefer
to minimize the amount of work they have to do, they enjoy sexual
intercourse, and they seek to increase the love and affection that others
offer them (Harris 1979:62-63).
|
In comparison to the
expansive list of human universals identified by the newly emergent
paradigm of evolutionary psychology (Brown 1991; Barkow, Cosmides, and
Tooby 1992; Buss 1999), the list suggested by cultural materialism is
woefully incomplete. Cultural materialism’s raison d’etre is to
explain the reasons for the similarities and differences among the world’s
cultures, but when cultural materialism attempts to explain human
universals without reference to the evolved details of human nature it is
doomed to failure. The principle of infrastructural determinism will not
explain, for example, the universality of violent male sexual jealousy,
nor will it explain the fact that, on average, husbands are older than
their wives in every society in the world. These human universals can only
be explained by a shared human nature, and that shared human nature can
only be explained by the evolutionary forces that shaped it.
|
Marvin Harris
explicitly rejected the "Neo-Darwinism" of evolutionary
psychology; in the Boasian tradition, he remained "opposed to the
application of these bioevolutionary principles to culture," and he
continued to regard culture as a distinct ontological realm that must be
understood in its own unique terms (Harris 1999:106). That was his major
mistake. As Donald Brown (1991:6) convincingly demonstrates in his book Human
Universals, "human biology is a key to understanding many
human universals." Lacking sufficient "conceptual
integration" with the biological sciences, cultural materialism
cannot hope to achieve the same level of success enjoyed in the various
disciplines of the natural sciences. The laws of chemistry may not be
reducible to the laws of physics, but they are compatible with them; that
degree of mutual consistency is characteristic of all the natural
sciences, and it is largely responsible for their unparalleled success (Cosmides,
Tooby, and Barkow 1992:4). By declaring its subject matter to be a
separate ontological domain, cultural materialism removes itself from the
possibility of "consilience" with other realms of scientific
knowledge. This is a fatal error, because Wilson (1998:53) is undoubtedly
correct in observing that the "explanations of different phenomena
most likely to survive are those that can be connected and proved
consistent with one another."
|
Tooby and Cosmides
(1992:23) describe the set of assumptions underlying cultural materialism
as the "Standard Social Science Model," and they argue
convincingly that the Standard Social Science Model "suffers from a
series of major defects that make it a profoundly misleading
framework." Nearly a decade ago, Marvin Harris (1994) asserted that
"cultural materialism is alive and well and won’t go away until
something better comes along." Fair enough: something better has
come along. It’s called evolutionary psychology, and it takes an
epidemiological rather than a superorganic approach to culture. It
conceives of socio-cultural phenomena as "ecological patterns of
psychological phenomena" (Sperber 1999:31), and the psychological
phenomena to which it refers are the universal cognitive mechanisms shaped
by human evolution. Cultural materialism was a brave, ingenious, and
well-intentioned effort to achieve an objective understanding of
sociocultural systems, but it will be supplanted by paradigms that apply
the ontology of materialism and the epistemology of science more
consistently, more thoroughly, and more productively.
|
The Legacy of Marvin
Harris
|
Nevertheless, if Marvin
Harris was wrong on several of the particulars about the best way to
approach understanding and explanation in anthropology, he was right on
virtually all of the principles. The work of Marvin Harris embodies at
least six propositions that will prove to be of lasting value for
anthropology.
|
Proposition # 1:
Anthropology should be thoroughly and exclusively grounded in the
epistemology of science.
Marvin Harris was not the first anthropologist to maintain this
proposition (see White 1949; Steward 1955; Dole and Carneiro 1960), but in
the second half of the twentieth century he was its foremost proponent (at
least among cultural anthropologists). The necessity of a scientific
foundation for anthropology was the central theme of what was probably his
most important book, The Rise of Anthropological Theory (Harris
1968), and it was the explicit goal of what was perhaps his second most
important book, Cultural Materialism (Harris 1979). Cultural
Materialism is subtitled The Struggle for a Science of Culture,
and that phrase aptly summarizes Harris’s lifelong ambition.
|
Even if Harris made
some errors when he applied the epistemology and ontology of science to
cultural materialism, as various critics have alleged (e.g., Lett 1990;
Sperber 1996; O’Meara 1997), the definition of science that he
propounded throughout his career was fundamentally sound. For Marvin
Harris (1979:27), science was "an epistemology which seeks to
restrict fields of inquiry to events, entities, and relationships that are
knowable by means of explicit, logico-empirical, inductive-deductive,
quantifiable public procedures or ‘operations’ subject to replication
by independent observers." There are many other ways of expressing
these essential ideas, of course (e.g., O’Meara 1989; Lett 1996), but
the influence of Marvin Harris’s conceptions (if not his exact
phraseology) can be readily discerned in most contemporary cultural
anthropologists who identify themselves as scientific anthropologists
(e.g., Gellner 1988; Sangren 1988; Appell 1989; O’Meara 1989; Reyna
1994; Carneiro 1995; D’Andrade 1995; Murphy and Margolis 1995; Cerroni-Long
1996; Spiro 1996; Kuznar 1997; Lett 1997; Cronk 1999).
|
Marvin Harris believed
that anthropology would be irrelevant if it were not scientific, and he
was right. In the Distinguished Lecture he delivered to the American
Anthropological Association at its annual meeting in 1991, he reflected
upon the unanticipated and revolutionary collapse of state communism in
Europe in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s: "What do
anthropologists have to say about all this? A branch of the human sciences
that ignores these immense events, that interprets them exclusively in
terms of relativized ‘local knowledge,’ or that derides the attempt to
understand them in terms of nomothetic principles runs the risk of being
confined to the backwaters of contemporary intellectual life" (Harris
1992:295). It speaks well for anthropology that Marvin Harris enjoys many
supporters on this point. Spiro (1986:278), for example, poses this
pointed question: "For if, in principle, ethnographic studies...can
only contribute to unique understandings of this or that belief or custom
or this or that primitive or peasant culture in all of its particularity, what
possible intellectual relevance might such studies have?"
[emphasis added]. In the same vein, D’Andrade (1995:4) observes that
"anthropology without science is not much," and Carneiro
(1995:14) comes to a similar conclusion: "For it is here, in
ethnology, that broad theories are built and generalizations crafted;
where the major questions of anthropology are asked and answered...What
have post-modernists contributed to these great problems? Nothing."
The problem with anthropology, Marvin Harris (1991:83-84) was fond of
saying, "is not that we have had too much of positivist social
science but that we have had too little." He was right again.
|
Proposition # 2:
Anthropology should be resolute and resourceful in responding to
competitive approaches based on irrationality, pseudoscience, and/or
anti-science.
Marvin Harris was a persistent and persuasive critic of
"obscurantism," the term he applied to the common set of
assumptions underlying "astrology, witchcraft, messianism, hippiedom,
fundamentalism, cults of personality, nationalism, ethnocentrism, and a
hundred other contemporary modes of thought that exalt knowledge gained by
inspiration, revelation, intuition, faith, or incantation as against
knowledge obtained in conformity with scientific research principles"
(Harris 1979:316). He forcefully rebutted the challenge posed to
scientific knowledge by Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan fantasies (Harris
1979:319-324), and he warned about the moral and political dangers
inherent in the rising tide of Evangelical Protestantism and other
religious movements in the United States in the second half of the
twentieth century (Harris 1987:141-165). Marvin Harris was unhesitant in
confronting the errors of "ethnomania," or the irrational
tendency of each racial and ethnic group "to pay far more attention
to its own origins, history, heroism, suffering, and achievements than to
those of other racial and ethnic groups" (Harris 1999:111), and he
took great trouble to expose the myriad fallacies and shortcomings
inherent in the anti-science of postmodernism (e.g., Harris 1995b;
1999:153-160).
|
Proposition # 3:
Anthropology should be a holistic discipline that integrates the methods
and findings of the four sub-fields of archaeological anthropology,
biological anthropology, cultural anthropology, and linguistic
anthropology.
In the later stages of his career, Marvin Harris (1994:62) opened one of
his essays with a comment that expressed a long-held conviction: "At
the outset, I wish to disassociate myself from the impression, sometimes
carelessly and sometimes deliberately conveyed, that anthropology can be
equated with cultural anthropology, or much less, with ethnography."
He proceeded to argue that the strength of anthropology lay in the fact
that cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, biological anthropologists,
and linguists were involved in a collaborative effort to understand a wide
range of interrelated problems, including "the origin of the
hominids, the emergence of language and culture, [and] the evolution of
cultural differences and similarities" (Harris 1994:62). Marvin
Harris’s commitment to holism in anthropology was genuine and deep
(Harris 1997a). He was the author of a four-field introductory textbook, Culture,
People, Nature, that was in its seventh edition at the time of his
death (Harris 1997b), and he served as President of the General
Anthropology Division of the American Anthropological Association.
|
Proposition # 4:
Anthropology should be a discipline whose practitioners communicate in
language that is clear, direct, intelligible, and unambiguous.
Marvin Harris had no patience with sloppy, inexact, or pretentious
writing. He was especially impatient with the typical writing style of
postmodern anthropologists: "Their neobaroque prose style—with its
inner clauses, bracketed syllables, metaphors and metonyms, verbal
pirouettes, curlicues and filigrees—is not a mere epiphenomenon; rather,
it is a mocking rejoinder to anyone who would try to write simple
intelligible sentences in the modernist tradition" (Harris
1999:156-157). With the principal exception of The Nature of Cultural
Things, which he published early in his career (Harris 1964), Marvin
Harris almost always achieved his goal of writing simple intelligible
sentences. You may not have agreed with what he said and you may not have
liked him for having said it, but you rarely had trouble understanding
what he meant to say.
|
Proposition # 5:
Anthropology should be a discipline whose practitioners reach out beyond
the academy to communicate anthropological knowledge, perspectives, and
insights to the general public.
Among anthropologists, Marvin Harris was not only one of the leading
theoreticians of his time—he was also one of the best-selling popular
authors of his generation (Harris 1974; 1977; 1985; 1987; 1989). On the
whole, his trade books have stood the test of time well. Cows, Pigs,
Wars and Witches is still fun to read, full of provocative ideas and
interesting connections, as is Cannibals and Kings. Good to Eat
may be good to debate, as far as some anthropologists are concerned, but
it is still good to read, as far as many in the general public are
concerned (it certainly shows off to good advantage the anthropological
penchant for cross-cultural comparisons and counter-intuitive
explanations). Why Nothing Works is still intriguing for its
synthesizing overview of contemporary American culture, even if some of
the details are becoming dated, and anyone who reads Our Kind will
walk away with the accurate impression that anthropology is a varied,
exciting, and dynamic discipline.
|
Proposition # 6:
Anthropology should be thoroughly grounded in a well-developed sense of
morality that champions the cause of social justice.
Marvin Harris was an uncompromising advocate of scientific objectivity,
but at the same time he was also an unwavering proponent of humanistic
morality. "I agree that scientific inquiry must be carried out in a
manner that protects its findings from political-moral bias to the
greatest possible degree," Harris (1999:58-59) declared, "but
this does not mean that scientific inquiry should be (or can be) conducted
in a political-moral vacuum." He was proud of the fact that
"science-oriented anthropologists have a long history of contributing
to the struggle against racism, antisemitism, colonialism, and
sexism" (Harris 1999:62), and he resented the fact that
anti-scientific anthropologists attempted to claim a more developed sense
of morality for themselves: "To claim the political-moral high ground
one must have reliable knowledge. We have to know what the world is like,
who is doing or has done what to whom, who and what are responsible for
the suffering and injustice we condemn and seek to remedy. If this be so,
then science-minded anthropologists can plausibly claim that their model
is not only moral but morally superior to those that reject science as a
source of reliable knowledge about the human condition" (Harris
1995a:424).
|
Conclusion
|
Marvin Harris was
passionate about his convictions, and he could be uncompromising in their
defense. He was, at times, dismissive of colleagues with whom he
disagreed, and he did not suffer fools gladly. He was regarded by many of
his critics as arrogant, but that may have been largely due to the fact
that he was more intelligent, more articulate, more creative, and more
productive than most of his critics. Even if Marvin Harris was wrong about
cultural materialism (as, ultimately, I believe he was), he was right
about the scientific and humanistic principles upon which he based his
paradigm. Marvin Harris possessed an unusual combination of keen
intellectual curiosity, acute intellectual capacity, and exceptional
intellectual creativity, and he used all of his remarkable talents in
trying to solve the riddles of culture. When even more satisfying
solutions to those riddles are eventually developed, they will be
developed by anthropologists who adhere to the fundamental principles
Marvin Harris espoused.
|
If I may end on a
personal note, I consider it ironic that so many of Marvin Harris’s
critics found his personality to be off-putting. I found him to be
considerate, fair-minded, and capable of exceptional charm. When I was a
graduate student at the University of Florida, Marvin Harris frequently
conducted graduate seminars in his home, where he was a gracious and
genial host. When he decided to change the venue for his seminars (from
the sterile concrete-block basement where the Anthropology Department was
housed to his spacious glass-walled house set in the midst of a densely
wooded lot), he fundamentally improved the tone of the course (and
displayed his humanistic appreciation for the value of aesthetics in the
process). In one of his seminars on anthropological theory, I submitted a
term paper extolling the merits of interpretive anthropology (I was much
younger then, and considerably more impressionable). In his evaluation of
my paper, Harris offered these comments: "While ultimately
unconvincing as far as I’m concerned, this is an excellent paper—thoughtful
and thought-provoking." Those are the comments of a reasonable man
who recognized the value of reasoned debate, and they provide a model that
anthropology would do well to emulate.
|
|
References
|
Appell, G. N.
1989 Facts, Fiction, Fads, and Follies: But Where Is the Evidence?
American Anthropologist 91(1):195-198.
Barkow, Jerome H., Leda
Cosmides, and John Tooby, eds.
1992 The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of
Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.
Boyd, Robert and Joan
B. Silk
2000 How Humans Evolved. 2nd edition. New York: W.W. Norton and
Company.
Brown, Donald E.
1991 Human Universals. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Buss, David M.
1999 Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind. Boston: Allyn
and Bacon.
Carneiro, Robert L.
1995 Godzilla Meets New Age Anthropology: Facing the Post-Modernist
Challenge to a Science of Culture. Europa 3-21.
Cerroni-Long, E. L.
1996 Human Science. Anthropology Newsletter 37(1):52,50.
Cosmides, Leda, John
Tooby, and Jerome H. Barkow
1992 Introduction: Evolutionary Psychology and Conceptual Integration. In
The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture.
Barkow, Jerome H., Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby, eds. Pp. 3-15. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Cronk, Lee
1999 That Complex Whole: Culture and the Evolution of Human Behavior.
Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
D’Andrade, Roy G.
1995 What Do You Think You’re Doing? Anthropology Newsletter 36(7):1,4.
Dole, Gertrude E. and
Robert L. Carneiro, eds.
1960 Essays in the Science of Culture In Honor of Leslie A. White. New
York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.
Gellner, Ernest
1988 The Stakes in Anthropology. The American Scholar 57:17-30.
Harris, Marvin
1964 The Nature of Cultural Things. New York: Random House.
1968 The Rise of
Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture. New York: Thomas
Y. Crowell Company.
1974 Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches: The Riddles of Culture. New York:
Vintage Books.
1977 Cannibals and
Kings: The Origins of Cultures. New York: Vintage Books.
1979 Cultural
Materialism: The Struggle for A Science of Culture. New York: Random
House.
1985 Good to Eat:
Riddles of Food and Culture. New York: Simon and Schuster.
1987 Why Nothing Works:
The Anthropology of Daily Life. New York: A Touchstone Book. (Originally
published in 1981 as America Now.)
1989 Our Kind: Who We
Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going. New York: Harper & Row,
Publishers.
1991 Anthropology:
Ships That Crash in the Night. In Perspectives on Behavioral
Science: The Colorado Lectures. Richard Jessor, ed. Pp. 70-114. Boulder,
Colorado: Westview Press.
1992 Distinguished
Lecture: Anthropology and the Theoretical and Paradigmatic Significance of
the Collapse of Soviet and East European Communism. American
Anthropologist 94(2):295-305.
1994 Cultural
Materialism Is Alive and Well and Won’t Go Away until Something Better
Comes Along. In Assessing Cultural Anthropology. Robert Borofsky,
ed. Pp. 62-76. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc.
1995a Comment on ‘Objectivity
and Militancy: A Debate’ by Roy D’Andrade and Nancy Scheper-Hughes.
Current Anthropology 36(3):423-424.
1995b Anthropology and
Postmodernism. In Science, Materialism, and the Study of Culture.
Martin F. Murphy and Maxine L. Margolis, eds. Pp. 62-77. Gainesville:
University Press of Florida.
1997a Anthropology
Needs Holism; Holism Needs Anthropology. In The Teaching of
Anthropology: Problems, Issues, and Decisions. Conrad Philip Kottak, Jane
J. White, Richard H. Furlow, and Patricia C. Rice, eds. Pp. 22-28.
Mountain View, California: Mayfield.
1997b Culture, People,
Nature: An Introduction to General Anthropology. 7th edition.
Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
1997c Comment on ‘Causation
and the Struggle for a Science of Culture’ by Tim O’Meara. Current
Anthropology 38(3):410-418.
1999Theories of Culture
in Postmodern Times. Walnut Creek, California: AltaMira Press.
Kuznar, Lawrence A.
1997 Reclaiming a Scientific Anthropology. Walnut Creek, California:
AltaMira Press.
Lett, James
1990 Emics and Etics: Notes on the Epistemology of Anthropology. In
Emics and Etics: The Insider/Outsider Debate. Thomas Headland, Kenneth
Pike, and Marvin Harris, eds. Pp. 127-142. New bury Park, California: Sage
Publications.
1991 Interpretive Anthropology, Metaphysics, and the Paranormal. Journal
of Anthropological Research 47(3):305-329.
1996 Scientific Anthropology. In Encyclopedia of Cultural
Anthropology. David Levinson and Melvin Ember, eds. Pp. 1141-1148. New
York: Henry Holt.
1997 Science, Reason, and Anthropology: The Principles of Rational
Inquiry. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Magnarella, Paul J.
1993 Human Materialism: A Model of Sociocultural Systems and a Strategy
for Analysis. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida.
Murphy, Martin F. and
Maxine L. Margolis
1995 Science, Materialism, and the Study of Culture. Gainesville:
University Presses of Florida.
O’Meara, J. Tim
1989 Anthropology as Empirical Science. American Anthropologist
91(2):354-369.
1997 Causation and the Struggle for a Science of Culture. Current
Anthropology 38(3):399-418.
2001 Causation and the Postmodern Critique of Objectivity. Anthropological
Theory 1(1):31-56.
Reyna, S. P.
1994 Literary Anthropology and the Case Against Science. Man 29:555-581.
Robarchek, Clayton A.
1989 Primitive Warfare and the Ratomorphic Image of Mankind. American
Anthropologist 91(4):903-920.
Salmon, Wesley
1984 Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sangren, P. Steven
1988 Rhetoric and the Authority of Ethnography: ‘Postmodernism’ and
the Social Reproduction of Texts. Current Anthropology 29(3):405-435.
Sperber, Dan
1996 Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach. Malden, Massachusetts:
Blackwell Publishers Inc.
Spiro, Melford E.
1996 Postmodernist Anthropology, Subjectivity, and Science: A Modernist
Critique. Comparative Studies in Society and History 38:759-780.
Steward, Julian H.
1955 Theory of Culture Change: The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Tooby, John and Leda
Cosmides
1992 The Psychological Foundations of Culture. In The Adapted Mind:
Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture. Jerome H. Barkow,
Leda Cosmides, and John Tooby, eds. Pp. 19-136. New York: Oxford
University Press.
White, Leslie A.
1949 The Science of Culture: A Study of Man and Civilization. New York:
Grove Press, Inc.
Wilson, Edward O.
1998 Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Vintage Books. |
|
|