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A 5 page analysis and review of Marvin Harris' Our Kind, a book which continues his series of well-written, informative texts, which outline his theories of cultural materialism, in a manner that makes his ideas accessible to the non-scientific, general reading public. According to Dr. Harris, cultural materialism is an approach to understanding human social structure that is predicated on one simple, basic premise, which is that "human social life is a response to the practical problems of earthly existence" (1990). In other words, Harris proposes that it is not our genes that create our destiny, but rather the demands of the environment in which we live. No additional sources cited.
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5 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khmarhar.rtf
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his series of well-written, informative texts, which outline his theories of cultural materialism, in a manner that makes his ideas accessible to the non-scientific, general reading public. According to Dr.
Harris, cultural materialism is an approach to understanding human social structure that is predicated on one simple, basic premise, which is that "human social life is a response to the
practical problems of earthly existence" (1990). In other words, Harris proposes that it is not our genes that create our destiny, but rather the demands of the environment in which
we live. Throughout his books, Dr. Harris uses cultural materialist theories to explain a wide variety of social phenomena, explaining everything from food taboos, to religion, to warfare. Is
it reasonable to expect people to be reasonable? The answer to that question likes in the demands being made on a particular society during a particular time. The actions of
a society may appear to be unreasonable on the surface, or from another cultural perspective, but make sense within the context of that particular culture. For example, Westerners see
Indians starving to death while their cattle still live because they are honored as sacred animals. To the Western mind, this makes no sense. However, Harris points out that, from
an agricultural standpoint, it makes perfect sense. The farmer who slaughters and eats his cattle, including his oxen, cannot plow when good weather comes. This farmer has to sell his
farm and migrate to an uncertain future in the city because he has no animal to pull the plow. Harris writes that "Cattle had to be treated like human beings
because human begins who ate their cattle were one step away from eating each other" (1990). Are men and woman really much the same or significantly different? While
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