Marvin Harris: biography of this American anthropologist.

A summary of the life and theoretical proposals of the anthropologist Marvin Harris.

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 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 cultivation areas, etc.

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

Brief biography of Marvin Harris

Marvin Harris was born in New York City, USA, in 1927.. His childhood took place during the Great Depression, which together with the weakened family economy made his early years in the neighborhood of Brooklyn, were quite precarious. His education took place at the well-known Erasmus Hall High School. During his studies at this institution was where he met the woman who would later become his wife, Madeline. He would marry her and start a family, from which his daughter would be born.

At the age of 18, Marvin Harris decided to enlist, serving in a U.S. Army amphibious unit for a period of two years, right at the end of World War II. Upon his return he would study at Columbia University, where he would receive his training in anthropology, anthropology, anthropology and anthropology..

His career would be dazzling and after his studies he would become a professor at the 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 (specifically in the East Harlem neighborhood), India, Ecuador, Brazil and Mozambique. Through his research in these places he was able to develop a large body of theoretical work that we will explore later.

At Columbia University he taught anthropology from 1953 to 1980, when he decided to move to the United States.1980, when he decided to move with his wife to the city of Gainesville, Florida. Here he continued to teach and also devoted 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 passed away in 2001. He was 74 years old.

His life in academia and fieldwork

Marvin Harris's love of anthropology grew out of the courses he attended with Charles Wagley, who later became the director of his doctoral dissertation.who later became the director of his doctoral thesis. Already during his doctorate, he carried out fieldwork 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 the coming 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 those years the country was under Portuguese sovereignty. Marvin Harris's fieldwork 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 mean a radical change for Harris on several levels. First at the political level, as he would experience a change in the vision of the world he had had until then. But he would also begin to put different theoretical approaches into his work to come, moving from a from a particularist-relativist approach to a positivist and materialist one..

Theoretical contributions to anthropology

Throughout Marvin Harris' long academic life, he made many contributions to anthropology. Let's take a look at some of the most relevant ones.

1. Centralizing theory: cultural materialism

The change of theoretical perspective 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 one, which would explain the social and cultural evolution of our species through scientific principles.that would explain 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, namely, infrastructure, structure and supernatural.These would be infrastructure, structure and superstructure. The infrastructure would encompass the factors that have to do with the economy, demography, technology or the environment itself. In other words, issues related to production and reproduction.

The structure, on the other hand, would be the set of forms of 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 set in question. Harris states that infrastructure is the most important level 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 by anthropologists in general) was that of participant observation.by which the anthropologist enters a society to get to know it better while at the same time participating with the different members. In this way he can discover how they live, how they act, what they think, how they relate to each other and all the issues relevant to his study.

But with this technique a problem arises, since there are two points of view of such observation, on the one hand that of the members of the society themselves and on the other that of the researcher. This is what is known as emic and eticrespectively. Although these concepts were coined by Kenneth Pike, Harris elaborated on them and concluded that both views were needed to approach the real explanation of the behavior of the society in question.

3. The importance of science

One of the points on which Marvin Harris put the most effort was to always bring a scientific approach to his work. to 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 symbolizes Harris's battle: "the struggle for the science of culture". His aim was to overcome the problems posed by falsificationism (Popper's and Kuhn's theory) for the social sciences.

To this end, 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 when it is able to predict new facts and to explain them, not only to them but to others that already existed.

His theories on cultural phenomena

The prolific work of Marvin Harris allowed him to analyze very diverse cultural phenomena, establishing anthropological theories on many of them. Some of his most important works revolve around food taboos in different societies.

1. Food taboos

For example, in the case of Jewish and Muslim populations, their non-consumption of pork can be explained by the fact that the raising of this animal requires conditions that do not exist in the native ecosystems of these cultures.. In addition, pigs cannot be used as draught animals, nor for other resources such as milk. It was therefore preferable to breed other animals, for example ruminants, which also do not need the humid 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 when alive than when they die, since they can be used to plow fields, to breed more cattle, to generate milk or to 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 warlike situations between different societies of lower rank than the State, are the consequence of the arrival of a time when resources are beginning 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 Contemporary American Culture, Marvin Harris studies the leap that this society underwent from an industrial level to one based on the service sector. One of the phenomena that are the focus of this book is the incorporation of women into the workforce and the socio-cultural repercussions of this paradigm shift. that this paradigm shift entailed. 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.

Bibliographical 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). Vacas, cerdos, guerras, y brujas: los enigmas de la cultura. Alianza.
• Marvin, H. (1997). Nuestra especie. Alianza.