Evolutionary, Adaptionist, and Materials Theories

1. Evolutionary, Adaptionist, and Materials Theories • Julian Steward’s Cultural Ecology and Multilinear Evolution • Marvin Harris’s Cultural Materialism

2. Birth of Modern Cultural Anthropology • 1930s • Evolution re-emerges in American Anthropology • Anti-Boasian (historical particularism) • Implicitly Marxist

3. 20th Century Evolutionists • 20th Century Evolutionists • Leslie White • Julian Steward • Marvin Harris • Eleanor Burke Locke

4. 20th Century Evolution • 20th Century Evolution • Scientific laws linking culture change to material • Reconnection to the work of Morgan and Tylor

5. Anthropology within American Culture • The Red Scare • Because of anti-communist fervor in the US, 20th Century evolutionists had to avoid explicit reference to Marxism • Reprisals by federal government (McCarthyism) and university presidents • “red-baiting” in anthropology journals

6. Anthropology during the Red Scare • Morris Opler accused Leslie White of “Stalinistic Anthropological Analysis” • Those practicing materialist research strategies were marginalized • Used Tylor and Morgan as facades for Marx and Engels • Red Scare lasted to 1970s in the academy but 1980 is Anthropology

7. 20th Century Evolution • Main focus: “Concern with the causes of change” • Causal explanations are materialist, in contract to historical or idealist • Changes in the modes of production set in motion changes in cultural processes

8. Monolineal to Multilineal Evolution • Morgan & Tylor: Evolutionary stages are smooth and monolineal • Steward & Harris: Evolution is multilineal • Similar cultural patterns equate to similar environmental situations • Cultures have evolved to their own, particular environments

9. Cultural Materialism • Cultural materialism can explain cultural practices • “Broad evolutionary trends” • Explanations for cultural processes in terms of material rather than in ideology.

10. Julian Steward • Cultural Ecology and Multilinear Evolution • Father of Human Biological Ecology (HBE) • Education: • UC Berkeley • Cornell 1925 (BA) • Berkeley 1929 (PhD): N. American Indian Groups

11. Julian Steward • Early Career • During Great Depression • University of Michigan, then U of Utah • UC Berkeley 1334-36 research on Shoshone • “fundamental pattern of Shoshonean society was derived from the fact that ‘pursuits concerned with the problems of daily existence dominated their activities to and extraordinary degree and limited and conditioned their [social] institutions’”

12. Julian Steward • Materialist • Influential in the 1950s and 1960s • Search for causal relationships • Considered the bridge between Boas’s historical particularism and White’s cultural evolution

13. Impact on Anthropology • Development of area studies • Anthropology should concern itself with changes in culture and development in ‘3rd World’ • Large research projects with teams of investigators

14. Impact on Archaeology • Moved the field from cultural history to cultural evolution • “New Archaeology” --relationship between society and the environment • Society changes through time

15. Parallel Patterns • Early research on band society and drew parallels between distant groups: Shoshone, Australian Aborigines, the San in Kalahari, and the Semang of Malaysia

17. Stewart was Unconventional • Focused on understanding a single problem in culture, not seeking to understand the entire culture as a complete system (problem-orientated fieldwork) • Concerned with “adaptive relationships between humans and their environments” and not with the culture traits, styles, and norms • Emphasized parallels between cultures based on adaptation instead of on historical diffusion/migration

18. 3-Steps for Cultural-Ecological Investigation • 1. Analyze relationships between exploitative/productive technology and the environment (material culture) • 2. Analyze the behavior pattern involved in the exploration of a specific area by means of a specific technology • 3. Analyze how the method used to exploit the environment affects other aspects of culture.

19. Material Conditions • The structure and ideology of a group is influence by “classes of material conditions”--of the environmental situation AND economic arrangements

20. Multilinear Evolution • Core Tenants of Multilinear Evolution • Humans are adaptive • Human groups relate varyingly with the environments

21. Multilinear Evolution • 2 Key Concepts • parallel cultural forms and functions do occur in independent/discrete cultures • These common forms/functions have identical causality • In order to find regularities cross-culturally: • 1. Define and apply typography of social phenomenon • 2. Specify the causal relationships and identify parallel causal relationships through time • 3. Propose and test hypothesis against case studies

22. Marvin Harris: Cultural Materialism • 1953 PhD from Columbia • Taught 1953 -1981 • University of Florida from 19891 - 2000 • Latin America (Brazil, Angola, Mozambique) • Ethnography on a mining town • Brazil cannot be classified as a rural “developing” nation because it has many urban nuclei

23. Cultural Materialism • “Human Social Life is a response to the practical problems of earthly existence” • Marx & Engels

24. Techno Determinist: Infrastructure • 1956: Town and Country in Brazil • Foundational concept of infrastructure • “technological, economic, demographic, and environmental activities and conditions directly related to sustaining health and well-being through the social control of production and reproduction”

25. Techno Determinist: Infrastructure • Techno Determinist • Documented: Economic pursuits, public economy, class, and race • “Urban Ethos”: Complex of interconnected values, emphasizing a preference for living in town rather than in the country • Seems idealistic, but this is a social arrangement that is defined and reinforced by infrastructure

26. Anthropology within American Culture • 1958: Minorities in the New World (1958) coauthored with Charles Wagley • 1964: Patterns of Race in the Americas • Roots of racism in the Americas • Economic origins of racism • Latin America and USA • Racism as part of the infrastructure

27. Magnum Opus • 1968: The Rise of Anthropological Theory • Critique of Western thinking about nature, culture, and evolution • 1. Anthropologic thought has been a failed scientific effort of the Enlightenment that reproduced ideology as absolute fact • 2. Cultural materialism is more logical

28. Magnum Opus • 1968: The Rise of Anthropological Theory • Critique of Western thinking about nature, culture, and evolution • 1. Anthropologic thought has been a failed scientific effort of the Enlightenment that reproduced ideology as absolute fact • 2. Cultural materialism is more logical

29. Harris is sexy • Epistemology and anthropological thought: • 1968 The Rise of Anthropological Theory • “from Plato to Montesquieu to Hegel--and anthropological schools--from culture and personality to structuralism to cultural evolution.” • 1. Boas as atheoretical: historical particularism misinterpreted cultures through ethnocentric values of the Enlightenment • 2. Cultural Materialism

30. Cultural Materialism • Cultural Materialism • Philosophical materialism: Supernatural does not exist / irrelevant; decisions are made based on the physical world, not on ideology • Dialectical materialism: unending ebb and flow of material in shape and meaning

31. Cultural Materialism • Principle of techno-environmental and techno-economic determinism as a research strategy • Requires analysis of the epistemological nature of the acquisition of scientific knowledge: false binary of the observed and the observer • Mental -v- behavioral events • Emic -v- Etic events

32. The 2 Distinctions • Mental: Thoughts and feelings • Behavioral: Physical Actions and the effects on the environment --cumulative affects of all humans who have ever lived • Emic: View from the participant’s perspective (the native informant) • Etic: View from observer’s perspective (the observer)

33. Tripartite scheme of Etic Behavior • 1. Infrastructure: the interface between nature and culture in human’s effort to overcome limitations at the boundary between humans and the ecological world • 2. Structure: Social relations and arrangements • 3. Superstructure: Symbolic importance

34. Infrastructure • The most opportunities for research and funding for research occur when one investigates at the infrastructure • It is a contested boundary • Cultural values are made apparent when one observes how the process is negotiated • Innovation reverberates into the structure and superstructure

35. Process to Understand Cultural Patterns • 1. Explain phenomena in terms of infrastructure • 2. Explain how the innovation at the infrastructure affects the shape of the structure and superstructure

36. Infrastructure is determinant • Infrastructure innovation affects structural and symbolic-ideational systems • Structural and symbolic-ideational innovation reduce efficiency in the infrastructure (but less so) • Heart of Harris’s argument is the assumption that anthropology is a science and should focus its efforts on generating law-like generalizations about human infrastructure (HBE??)