Cultural Materialism

The notion that environment can and does determine the way in which people navigate through the ecosystem in which they pursuing optimization of survival by adapting to the specifics of the environment in which they live is the principle thought of cultural materialism. Leading anthropologist Marvin Harris believing that theses actions are then turned into cultural thought, the thought is then solidified by attaching a religious ideology. Culture is the way in which humans adapt to an environment. Harris (1966) argues that cultural acts such as the “prohibition of killing cattle should be understood in relation to the role that cattle play in the production of food crops, fuel and fertilizer” (Mcgee, 2003;285). The large brained individual has the ability to formulate complex thought that has proven to be the ultimate environmentally adapted defense mechanism, culture. Such cultural adaptations give great purpose to ways of living, for example, the Turkana of Kenya and the pastoral relationship with cattle. Because milk is their primary source of nutrition, Turkana rarely slaughter cattle, they also apply rules to when and who can consume a cow.

Marvin Harris explains the Hindu ideology as a form of cultural materialism. Due to the multifaceted purposes the Indian sacred cattle are forbidden from slaughter. The purpose of cattle in Hindu India according to Harris is outside of the realm of the Hindu ideology. Purposes include dung as fuel and manure, milk, traction, beef and hide. The secondary benefits are therefore similar to that of pastoral Turkana and their animal culture and treatment. Harris’ point would be that secondary products create a dependence of cyclical relationship in which religion acts as the glue that bins the law to the people and the product. Cultural materialism therefore indicates that there is a utilization of the benefits of the ecosystem in order to sustain life by cultural group that inhabits that ecosystem. An example would be the notion of “unclean” in Judaic and Muslim pig taboos.

Judaic and Muslim pig consumption law stems from the ecological cost analysis. The once presumable beneficial animal became a burden once the ecology the near east diverged from its original landscape. Toward the end of the last ice age, the emergence of agriculture led to forest reduction and grassland expansion, equivocal to the reduction of the natural pig habitat. Swine, monogastrics like humans, became competition in the rapidly changed environment that could barely provide enough sustenance for the human population, this led to the stigmatization of swine as unclean.