Cultural materialism is a theortical approach to research in anthropology and sociolog , which gives priority to material conditions in explaining the causes of sociocultural differences and similarities.
Cultural materialism proposes three divisions for the components of cultures: infrastructure, structure, and superstructure. The infrastructure corresponds to the production and reproduction practices and would causal priority over the other two sectors to be more related to human survival and well - being. The structure is made up of organizational characteristics such as kinship relationships and economic policy. The superstructure is made up of ideological and symbolic sectors such as religion.
The term cultural materialism was introduced in Marvin Harris's The Development of Anthropological Theory in 1968. Harris argued that the anthropological schools that emerged in the early twentieth century through the 1940s abandoned the search for the causes and origins of institutions and gave a conception of culture that exaggerated the irrational and inscrutable ingredients of human life. Given this, he proposed an approach based on the work of the anthropologists Leslie White and Julian Steward and their respective theories of cultural evolution and cultural ecology .
The word materialism of cultural materialism comes from the recognition of Karl Marx's formulation on the influence of material production and processes on social life known as dialectical materialism. However cultural materialism rejects the dialectical conception of history from Hegel of the dialectic materialism . It also adds reproductive pressure and economic variables to material conditions. The word cultural serves to distinguish the material causes of sociocultural phenomena from other organic materialisms. Thus cultural materialism opposes the biological reductionism of racial, sociobiological and ethological explanations of sociocultural differences and similarities.
