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Marvin Harris: Ecological Anthropology and Cultural Materialism

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Abstract

Marvin Harris has taken the vagaries of culture and grounded them in ecology. From burning witches, to worshiping animals, to proscribing foods, Harris finds religious and cultural idiosyncrasies to proceed from ecological vagaries. More than this, Harris broaches social structure, demographic constraint, race, death, sex, and fertility, all of which are traced back to some knowable ecological determinant from which they probabilistically derive. Yet, like Keeley, Harris pointedly rejects sociobiological explanations. He believed evolutionary explanations of cultural differences to be impossible, insufficient, and unnecessary. As herein explained, these assumptions stem from a misunderstanding of how rapidly populations can evolve, unfamiliarity with life history theory and related sociobiological explanations that explain intraspecific diversity, and overconfidence in phenotypic plasticity and environmental explanation more generally.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Saint Elizabeth, Morristown, NJ, USA

    Steven C. Hertler

  2. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Aurelio José Figueredo

  3. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Mateo Peñaherrera-Aguirre

  4. University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Heitor B. F. Fernandes

  5. Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

    Michael A. Woodley of Menie

  6. Unz Foundation Junior Fellow, Palo Alto, CA, USA

    Michael A. Woodley of Menie

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  1. Steven C. Hertler
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  2. Aurelio José Figueredo
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  3. Mateo Peñaherrera-Aguirre
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  4. Heitor B. F. Fernandes
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  5. Michael A. Woodley of Menie
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Correspondence to Steven C. Hertler .

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Hertler, S.C., Figueredo, A.J., Peñaherrera-Aguirre, M., Fernandes, H.B.F., Woodley of Menie, M.A. (2018). Marvin Harris: Ecological Anthropology and Cultural Materialism. In: Life History Evolution. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90125-1_13

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