Cultural Materialism Summary

Frank W. Elwell (2006) introduced the theoretical framework of Marvin Harris and Cultural Materialism, and explained how such frameworks viewed the role of elites within sociocultural systems (p. 46). As mentioned by C. Wright Mills and discussed in class, the elite class is often composed of individuals that hold key leadership roles in the most important institutions of society, such as government, financial, and corporate institutions. These individuals acquire their elite status by achieving an extremely relatively high degree of legitimized, authoritative power, which is a common byproduct for those holding important leadership roles in the major institutions that dominate in a society. Elite status empowers these individuals with a great

46). Elwell highlighted how Cultural Materialism asserted that elite classes have a tremendous influence upon many aspects sociocultural systems, yet, the elite class has not acquired “absolute rule” over societal affairs (p. 46). Further, Cultural Materialists have acknowledged that elites possess a great deal of power and control, but that the degree of this power and control varies across time and space. For example, elites’ power varies across different societies and throughout history. Elwell noted how Cultural Materialist analyses of the elite usually begin with tasks such as identifying the elites that are specific to the society that is being analyzed, determining the degree of power that has been attained by this group of elites, and discovering the “interests, biases, and assumptions” associated with the elites that are specific to the society that is being analyzed. (p.

Harris emphasized the infrastructure first when analyzing sociocultural systems, and Harris adopted the term primacy of the infrastructure to represent this practice. By first analyzing the infrastructure, Harris would then analyze the complex relationships, or feedback loops, that he believed to exist between the infrastructure, structure, and superstructure. Harris’s theory effectively illustrated just how deeply the infrastructure influences entire sociocultural systems. In addition to this, his theory demonstrated the interrelatedness between aspects of sociocultural systems by tracing how social change occurring in one area of social systems does not simply impact that one area of a social system alone. As a matter of fact, Harris’s theory demonstrated how changes in one area of social system influences other areas of social systems via complex feedback loops. Sociocultural systems are incredibly complex systems that involve interactions between potentially infinite amounts of variables. Therefore, theoretical frameworks for sociocultural systems should attempt to be all-inclusive to account for the complexity of these systems. Harris’s theory strives to account for the complexity of social systems, which is why this theory can be incredibly useful in explaining so many aspects of social