Marvin Harris: biography of this American anthropologist

One of the great figures of twentieth century anthropology is that of researcher and professor Marvin Harris. This scientist made very important contributions in the study of human societies from a materialistic 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 the growing areas, etc.

Through this Marvin Harris biography we are going to take a journey through the life of this author to find out what were the most important milestones in his career and his development as a researcher.

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Short biography of Marvin Harris

Marvin Harris was born in New York City, United States, in 1927. His childhood was spent during the Great Depression, which together with the weakened family economy made his early years, in the Brooklyn neighborhood, quite precarious. His education took place at the well-known Erasmus Hall High School. It was during his studies at this institution that he met what would later become his wife, Madeline. With her he would marry 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 dazzling and after his studies he would become a professor at the same university, even presiding over the department of anthropology. In addition to his own theoretical studies he also worked in the field conducting field investigations in places of the world as diverse as New York itself (specifically the neighborhood of East Harlem), India, Ecuador, Brazil or Mozambique. Through the investigations 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 lessons from 1953 to 1980, 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 spent time 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 passed away in 2001. He was 74 years old.

His life in college and field work

Marvin Harris' love of anthropology grew out of the Charles Wagley courses he attended, and that later he would be the director of his doctoral thesis. Already during his doctorate he carried out field work in Brazil, which allowed him to generate an 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 developed research in other places, such as Chimborazo, in Ecuador. But the most important for his development was the one he did in Mozambique in the late 1950s. In these years the country was under Portuguese sovereignty. Marvin Harris' field work led him to see how the Portuguese subjected the natives to forced labor. These facts are collected in his work, "Portugal's African Wards".

Witnessing these situations would be a sea change for Harris on several levels. First at the political level, because 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, moving from a particularist-relativist approach to another positivist and materialist.

Theoretical contributions to anthropology

Throughout the long academic life of Marvin Harris, his contributions to anthropology were many. We are going to know some of the most relevant.

1. Centralizing theory: cultural materialism

The change in theoretical perspective that we mentioned earlier was reflected in his book, "The Development of Anthropological Theory," where Marvin Harris analyzes the different theoretical currents in his field with the intention of unifying them in a single, that explained the social and cultural evolution of our species through scientific principles. This ambitious project was materialized in the current baptized as 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 to say, questions relating 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 most used by Marvin Harris (and anthropologists in general) was participant observation, by which the anthropologist is introduced into a society to get to know it better at the same time that he participates 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 their study.

But with this technique a problem arises, since there are two points of view of this 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 needed both views to get closer to the real explanation of the behavior of society in question.

3. The importance of science

One of the places where Marvin Harris put the most effort was in 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." His goal was to overcome the problems that falsificationism (Popper and Kuhn's theory) posed for the social sciences.

For this he makes use of sophisticated falsificationism, a concept previously developed by the Hungarian philosopher and economist Imre Lakatos. His approach affirms 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 exist.

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His theories on cultural phenomena

The prolific work of Marvin Harris 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, Its non-consumption of pork meat would be explained because the breeding of this animal requires conditions that do not occur in the original ecosystems of these cultures. In addition, pigs cannot be used as draft animals, or 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 the Hindus from sacrificing 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 compost for the fields. In times of famine the population can consider eating them, so a religious taboo would prevent them from doing so.

2. War

On the other hand, Marvin Harris considers that the war situations between different societies of lower rank than the State, are the consequence of the arrival of a time when resources begin to be insufficient to supply the entire population. This theory is opposed to 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 the sociocultural level that this paradigm shift meant. It 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.

Bibliographic references:

• Burns, A. (2001). Marvin Harris, Making an impact in Mozambique and Brazil. The Guardian.
• Marvin, H. (1997). Culture, people, nature: an introduction to general anthropology. Longman.
• Marvin, H. (2005). Cows, pigs, wars, and witches: the enigmas of culture. Alliance.
• Marvin, H. (1997). Our species. Alliance.