Chapter 12 Flashcards
Define Cultural Materialism
Is an anthropological research orientation first introduced by Marvin Harris in his 1968 book “The Rise of Anthropological Theory” as a theoretical paradigm and research strategy. Harris developed a full elaboration and defense of the paradigm in his 1979 book “Cultural Materialism.” To Harris social change is dependent on three factors: a society’s infrastructure, structure, and superstructure.
Define Structural Marxism
Maurice Godelier and Jonathan Friedmann argued that the material base of society merely establishes broad limits on society’s structural and ideological practices, rather than directly determining their content. In practice, the structural Marxist argument approximates Steward’s assertion that a society’s “culture core” must be empirically determined in each case and does not necessarily consist of the same practices in all places. (Reminiscent of Kroebers possiblism).
Define Intensification
A ritual or ceremony performed by a community in a time of crisis that affects all members. Most commonly discussed within the context of agriculture.
-New modes of production are introduced into a society to intensify and get more products per agricultural area.
Define Carrying Capacity
the number of people, other living organisms, or crops that a region can support without environmental degradation.
Define Political Ecology
The study of day-to-day conflicts, alliances, and negotiations that ultimately result in some sort of definitive behavior, how politics affects or structures resource use.
Who is Melvin Harris?
(1927-2001) one of Julian Steward’s students that fused cultural ecology with some aspects of Marxist theory. The synthesis of cultural ecology and Harris’ interpretation of Marxist thought is what he referred to as cultural materialism. Also examined the fallacies of race as a biological construct. In it, he argued that racism is fundamentally economic in origin, and that different systems of plantation slavery in the United States and Brazil led to differing systems of racial classification. Harris stated that both emic and etic perspectives are necessary for understanding human behavior and thought. Most of his explanations however, were from an etic point of view.
-Wrote “Cattle of India”
Who is Sidney Mintz?
Student of Julian Steward. Anthropologist best known for his studies of food. Conducted fieldwork among sugar-cane workers in Puerto Rico and produced historical and ethnographic studies of slavery and global capitalism, cultural hybridity.
Who is Eric Wolf?
Introduced the term Political Ecology. Sutton and Anderson define political ecology as “the study of the day-to-day conflicts, alliances, and negotiations that ultimately result in some sort of definitive behavior; how politics affects or structures resource use. Political ecology challenges materialist and ecological perspectives that rely on Malthusianism as an explanatory device. Cultural and Political Ecology assumes that changes in the environment do not affect all segments of society in the same way; rather political, social, and economic differences in access to power account for the uneven distribution of costs and benefits of resource use.
What is the distinction between emic and etic perspectives?
An emic perspective relies on those descriptions and explanations that are meaningful to an informant, whereas etic descriptions are those used by the scientific community to generate and strengthen theories of sociocultural life.
Difference in the material base between Harris and Marx. (Important because Harris does not employ dialectics).
Marx mode of production includes the social relations of production in which people engages (such as patterns of work organization and property ownership) as well as the forces of production (technology and resources). However, Harris’ mode of production consists solely of the technology and resources where he then adds a mode of reproduction which consists of a society’s population growth rates and its means of population regulation.
How is structural Marxism significantly different from Marx’s formulation?
In practice, structural Marxist argument approximates Stewards assertion that a society’s culture core must be empirically determined in each case and does not necessarily consist of the same practices in all places.
- Marx had a very strict idea of what was in the base and what was in the super structure.
- Don’t really have to know this for the exam
What is the basic Malthusian argument about population pressures?
Malthus argues that for most people and throughout all of human history the rate of population growth exceeded the rate of increase in food supplies. He argued that “positive checks” limit population growth through “war, disease, and famine,” which constantly adjust populations to a level that can be supported by available food supplies. For a far more limited number of people, “preventative checks” limited population growth. They were primarily adopted by the wealthy who feared a surplus of children and downward mobility.
What are the critiques of the Malthusian argument about population pressures?
Major critique is that all human cultures have some knowledge of how to regulate their family size; no human population reproduce up to their biological potential. Also, no human population grows at a geometric rate because we mainly have the ability to and capacity to regulate the number of children we bring into the world.
What is the relationship between population growth and socio-political-economic factors?
- Direct correlations between the size of the populations and the socio-political-economic factors.
- Populations become more and more complex and less egalitarian.
- Most egalitarian societies are smaller communities
- At the level of the state there is a lot of stratification and a lot of distribution of work and resources
How does political ecology differ from cultural ecology?
- Political ecology is the study of the relationships between political, economic and social factors with environmental issues and changes.
- Cultural ecology is the study of human adaptations to social and physical environments. Human adaptation refers to both biological and cultural processes that enable a population to survive and reproduce within a given or changing environment
