Studying societies and cultures : Marvin Harris's cultural materialism and its legacy / edited by Lawrence A. Kuznar and Stephen K. Sanderson.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Kuznar, Lawrence A.

Sanderson, Stephen K.

Series:

Studies in comparative social science

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Harris, Marvin, 1927-2001.

Harris, Marvin.

Anthropologists--United States--Biography.

Anthropologists.

United States.

Ethnology--Philosophy.

Ethnology.

Culture.

Social evolution.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xii, 332 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Boulder, Colo. : Paradigm Publishers, [2007]

Summary:

One of the most important anthropologists of all time, Marvin Harris was influential worldwide as the founder of cultural materialism. This book accessibly analyzes Harris??'s theories and their important legacies today. The chapters explore cultural materialism??'s epistemology and its relation to rational choice theory, Darwinian social science, and population pressures. The authors assess recent attempts to extend and reformulate cultural materialism and highlight cross-cultural, archaeological, and ethnographic applications of cultural materialism today.

Contents:

The impact of cultural materialism : a bibliometric analysis of the writings of Marvin Harris / Pamela Effrein Sandstrom and Howard D. White

The theoretical legacies of cultural materialism and Marvin Harris / James Lett

Cultural materialism, scientific anthropology, epistemology, and "narrative ethnographies of the particular" / H. Sidky

Cultural materialism, rational choice, and the problem of general ethnography : Marvin Harris and the struggle for science in anthropology / Alan R. Sandstrom

Materialist particularity in nuclear micronesia : a pre-postmodernist theory of cultural evolution / James G. Peoples

Linking past and present : cultural materialism, archaeology, and the medieval transition in the Aegean / P. Nick Kardulias

Effects of the physical and social environment on culture : results of cross-cultural tests / Melvin Ember and Carol R. Ember

The effect of nepotism on the evolution of social inequality / Lawrence A. Kuznar, William G. Frederick, and Robert L. Sedlmeyer

Coevolutionary materialism / James W. Dow

Marvin Harris, meet Charles Darwin : a critical evaluation and theoretical extension of cultural materialism / Stephen K. Sanderson

What role does population pressure play in the evolutionary dynamics of Marvin Harris? / Robert L. Carneiro

Evolutionary materialism and Darwinian conflict theory : a critical analysis of Stephen Sanderson's extensions of cultural materialism / David P. Kennedy

When is a theoretical strategy not cultural materialism? : comments on Kennedy's critique of evolutionary materialism and Darwinian conflict theory / Stephen K. Sanderson.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 285-312) and index.

ISBN:

1594512876

OCLC:

70267137

Publisher Number:

9781594512872