Marvin Harris: Biography Of This American Anthropologist
One of the great figures of 20th century anthropology is the researcher and professor Marvin Harris. This scientist made very important contributions to the study of human societies from a materialist perspective, being known for studying the objective foundations of the development of different cultural practices such as the presence of diseases, the degree of aridity of crop areas, etc. .
Through this Marvin Harris biography We are going to take a tour of the life of this author to find out what were the most important milestones in his career and his development as a researcher.
Marvin Harris was born in New York City, United States, in 1927 His childhood took place during the Great Depression, which, together with the weakened family economy, made his first years in the Brooklyn neighborhood quite precarious. His education took place at the well-known Erasmus Hall High School. During his studies at this institution he met the woman who would later become his wife, Madeline. He would marry her and form a family, from which her daughter would be born.
At the age of 18, Marvin Harris decided to enlist, serving in an amphibious unit of the US Army for a period of two years, right at the end of World War II. On his return He would study at Columbia University, where he would receive his training in anthropology
His career would be brilliant and after his studies he would become a professor at that same university, even chairing the anthropology department. In addition to his own theoretical studies, he also worked in the field conducting field research in places around the world as diverse as New York itself (specifically the East Harlem neighborhood), India, Ecuador, Brazil and Mozambique. Through the research carried out in these places he was able to develop a great theoretical work that we will explore later.
At Columbia University he taught anthropology classes from 1953 to 1980, the year in which he decided to move with his wife to the city of Gainesville, Florida. Here he continued to work as a teacher and also dedicated time to writing new publications as well as enjoying his hobbies in the company of his wife. Marvin Harris spent his last years in Florida, where he finally died in 2001. He was 74 years old.
Marvin Harris’s love for anthropology arose from Charles Wagley’s courses that he attended, and who would later be the director of his doctoral thesis. Already during his doctorate he carried out field work in Brazil, which allowed him to generate important material that would culminate in his work Town and Country in Brazil. He even collaborated with the political authorities in charge of education in this country. This relationship led him to return in future years to teach a series of courses.
He also carried out research in other places, such as Chimborazo, in Ecuador. But the most important for his development was the one he carried out in Mozambique, at the end of the 1950s. In these years the country was under Portuguese sovereignty. Marvin Harris’s field work led him to see how the Portuguese subjected the natives to forced labor These facts are recorded in his work, “Portugal’s African Wards”.
Witnessing these situations would represent a radical change for Harris on several levels. First on a political level, since he would experience a change in the vision of the world that he had until then. But he would also begin to put different theoretical approaches in his future works, going from a particularist-relativist approach to a positivist and materialist one
Theoretical contributions to anthropology
Throughout Marvin Harris’ long academic life, there were many contributions to anthropology. Let’s get to know some of the most relevant ones.
1. Centralizing theory: cultural materialism
The change in theoretical perspective that we mentioned before was reflected in his book, “The Development of Anthropological Theory”, where Marvin Harris analyzes the different theoretical currents of his field with the intention of unifying them into a single, which explained the social and cultural evolution of our species through scientific principles. This ambitious project was materialized in the current called cultural materialism.
Cultural materialism divides societies into three different levels, which would be infrastructure, structure and superstructure. Infrastructure would encompass factors that have to do with the economy, demographics, technology or the environment itself. That is, the issues related to production and reproduction.
The structure, for its part, would be the set of forms about the organization at the political and domestic level within this society. Finally, the superstructure would be the most abstract part and would have to do with the beliefs, symbols and values of this sociocultural group in question. Harris affirms that infrastructure is the level that has the most weight for the development of society, but the three are interrelated.
2. Difference between emic and etic
During field work, One of the techniques that Marvin Harris (and anthropologists in general) used the most was participant observation, by which the anthropologist enters into a society to get to know it better while participating with the different members. In this way he can discover how they live, how they act, what they think about, how they relate and all the relevant questions for his study.
But with this technique a problem arises, since there are two points of view of said observation, on the one hand that of the members of society themselves and on the other that of the researcher. It is what is known as emic and etic, respectively. Although these concepts were coined by Kenneth Pike, Harris delved into them and concluded that both visions were needed to get closer to the real explanation of the behavior of the society in question.
3. The importance of science
One of the points in which Marvin Harris put the most effort was always bring a scientific approach to his theoretical contributions to anthropology In fact, in some editions of his work, Cultural Materialism, a subtitle was added that well symbolizes Harris’s battle: “the fight for the science of culture.” Its objective was to overcome the problems that falsificationism (the theory of Popper and Kuhn) posed for the social sciences.
To do this, it makes use of sophisticated falsificationism, a concept previously developed by the Hungarian philosopher and economist Imre Lakatos. His approach states that a theory can be considered scientific in that it is capable of predicting new facts and explaining them, not only to them but to others that already existed.
Marvin Harris’ prolific work allowed him to analyze very diverse cultural phenomena, establishing anthropological theories about many of them. Some of his most important works revolve around the food taboos of different societies.
1. Food taboos
For example, in the case of Jewish and Muslim populations, Their non-consumption of pork would be explained because the breeding of this animal requires conditions that do not occur in the ecosystems native to these cultures Furthermore, pigs cannot be used as draft animals, nor to obtain other resources such as milk. For this reason, it was preferable to raise other animals, for example ruminants, which also did not need the humidity conditions that are essential for pigs.
Another of the most famous taboos is the one that prohibits Hindus from slaughtering cows and eating them. The explanation in this case would be given because these animals produce more resources while alive than when they die, since they can be used to plow fields, to breed more cattle, generate milk or produce fertilizer for the fields. In times of famine, the population may consider eating them, so a religious taboo would prevent them from doing so.
2. The war
On the other hand, Marvin Harris considers that war situations between different societies of lower rank than the State are the consequence of the arrival of a time in which resources begin to be insufficient to supply the entire population This theory opposes others such as that of Napoleon Chagnon, an author who argued that it was the aggressiveness of men that inevitably produced wars.
3. Evolution of society
In the work Contemporary North American Culture, Marvin Harris studies the leap that this society experienced, from an industrial level to another based on the service sector. One of the phenomena that focuses this book is the incorporation of women into the world of work and the repercussions at a sociocultural level that this paradigm shift entailed. He also explores the origin of oligopolies and bureaucracy.
Finally, in the work Our Species he focuses on other more modern issues, such as sexuality, gender issues and inequality.
