Do You like book Cannibals And Kings: Origins Of Cultures (1991)?
A tour de force that takes a stab at rationally explaining the evolution of several unrelated aspects of culture. While Harris sounds a bit too sure of himself at times for his sometimes sweeping conclusions to be taken at face value, he does provide the reader with many eureka moments that makes this book an enjoyable read. To get the most out of this book skim first and then read in detail selectively. IMHO:Best bits: Gender bias & Male supremacy, Female infanticide, Cannibalism, Cultural taboos around pork beef and vegetarianismWorst bits: Pristine states, Capitalism, Hydraulic traps"In life, as in any game whose outcome depends on both luck and skill, the rational response to bad odds is to try harder"
—Hari
Materialist Frameworks: Cultural Ecology and Cultural MaterialismPigs for the Ancestors by Roy Rappaport 1967, 1984Cannibals and Kings by Marvin Harris 1977Rounding out my recent readings on materialist frameworks within anthropological theory, these two books move past looking at cultural ecology as a type of evolutionism, and explore the concept in more of a deterministic framework. Building on Steward’s efforts to understand the interplay between culture, production processes, and environment, both Roy Rappaport’s Pigs for the Ancestors (1967) and Marvin Harris’s Cannibals and Kings (1977) put forth case studies which focus on functional relationships within specified groups, and their relations with the broader environment; however, Rappaport presents a more cultural ecological perspective, looking at how ritual acts as a “homeostat,” balancing human and environmental relations, while Harris takes a more cultural materialist approach, discussing cultural adaptive responses that have attempted to combat the determinative factor of steady population growth. In Pigs for the Ancestors, Rappaport puts forth his cultural ecological theoretical framework by presenting the interplay between pig and human populations, sweet potato production, warfare, cultivation lands, and pig-slaying festivals among the Tsembaga Maring, which inhabit a discrete eco-system in New Guinea’s central highlands. At the center of these dynamic factors is the Maring kaiko ritual cycle, which Rappaport contends, internally functions to regulate population numbers, land use, periods of warfare, protein intake, and energy expenditure. As described in Pigs, when the pig population increases to the point that human and natural resources are endangered, women and men engage in an interplay that results in a consensus, whereupon warfare is suspended so that trade and ritual feasting (protein intake) can take place; the “Maring ritual, in short, operates…as a homeostat - maintaining a number of variables that comprise the total system within ranges of viability.” (Rappaport 1967: 229) In addition to presenting his systems based ethnography, in Pigs Rappaport also quantifies his hypothesis by presenting floral and faunal lists and rates of yield and consumption, among other data, furnishing future anthropologists with a model by which they can quantitatively analyze the nutritional needs of a group and their stock animals. At Columbia, both Rappaport and Harris were exposed to each other’s theoretical frameworks; they are fairly similar in some regards, however, Harris embraces a far more deterministic perspective than Rappaport. In Cannibals and Kings, Harris presents cultural materialism, which is an integration of evolutionary theory, cultural ecology, and historical materialism into a pervasively culturally deterministic approach. Harris uses cultural materialism as a means for better understanding and explaining the broad path of cultural evolution since the Agricultural Revolution. His hypothesis is that cultural processes are a reflexive response to population pressure, population growth being a primary determinant of cultural history. According to Harris, as population has increased worldwide, numerous widespread practices have emerged as adaptive responses; these cultural practices have included warfare, female infanticide, agricultural intensification, animal domestication, and redistributive chieftainships. In Harris’s view, each of these adaptive responses functioned to temporarily arrested population pressure; however, as population growth has continued, it has resulted in feudalistic structures, where never ending technological innovation, continually increasing energy expenditure, and greater social controls exist. Harris explains male supremacy, the origins of the state, food taboos, cannibalism among the Aztec, the Mayan collapse, “hydraulic civilizations,” the emergence certain religions, and even Marxism, to all be cultural bi-products of population pressure. I find Rappaport’s cultural ecological theoretical framework clearly both functionalist and materialist, yet understand that in Pigs he was attempting to move past these paradigms and look at ritual not just as a function, but more of an adaptive structure. While Rappaport certainly discusses the Tsembaga political system, group structure, and warfare, he successfully finds a way to study the ecological effects of ritual without having to bring up its dependency on other social institutions. One contention I have is that although Rappaport states that the kaiko has no “practical result on the external world,” doesn’t it in fact play a key role in keeping the Tsembaga ecosystem in balance, having a significant ecological, economic, and political effect on the Tsembaga themselves, as well as the surrounding Maring peoples and greater New Guineans? (Rappaport 1967: 3) As for Harris, while I applaud his attempt to put forth a general process of cultural history, the impossibly deterministic approach he employs, in my opinion, has backfired, leaving his analyses to be a bit overstated and simplified.
—Ann
After reading some books I feel enriched with a better understanding of human nature, the sources that shaped us and society. Well Cannibals and Kings is one of the perfect books to help with such a task! It provided tones of information, put in a logic and easy to understand form; confirmed many of my believes, shade light on others and provided better explanations where I lacked them. I still need to read Jared Diamond's and Thomas Sowell's versions, of which a heard only good stuff. I find it's very important for every economist or fighter for liberty to complete his understanding of the world with such anthropological studies in order to militate for better economic measures!
—Catalina
