Structural and Eclectic Revisions of Marxist Strategy: A Cultural Materialist Critique [and Comments and Reply

Abstract

Many anthropologists are no longer hesitant to identify themselves as Marxists, but along with this common identification there has developed a raging dispute as to what a Marxist anthropology is all about. Recent critiques of cultural materialism, the avowedly Marxist strategy developed by Marvin Harris, have attacked it for being a "vulgar" or "mechanical" interpretation of Marx. Two of these critiques, those of Jonathan Friedman and H. Dieter Heinen, are examined in this paper. The cultural materialist perspective and Harris's associated epistemological distinction between emic and etic operational procedures are briefly explained. They are then used as an orientation for a critical review of Friedman's structuralist and Heinen's eclectic perspective. Friedman's work is examined in conjunction with that of other anthropologists, principally Maurice Godelier and Marshall Sahlins. These three theorists have attemped to develop a dialectical, antipositivist research strategy based upon a synthesis of Levi-Strauss's structuralism and Marx's historical materialism. The nature of this synthesis and its effect on what is considered to be proper sociocultural explanation are critically examined here. The author's conclusion is that the materialist orientation of Marxist strategy is destroyed by the attempt to incorporate Levi-Straussian structuralism into its fabric. This conclusion is reached following discussion of two critical propositions: (1) that Levi-Straussian structuralist hypotheses are by their nature unfalsifiable and (2) that Friedman and Co. have failed to make the critical distinction between emic and etic operational procedures. Heinen's critique of Harris's position is shown to be based upon a misrepresentation of cultural materialism. Finally, it is argued that Heinen's own eclectic revision of Marxist strategy (he argues that we must give equal weight in historical explanation to emic rules of behavior) ignores the determinant role of relations of production and the problem of intracultural cognitive diversity.