price - cultural materialism - a theoretical review oct 1982

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Society for merican rchaeology

Cultural Materialism: A Theoretical ReviewAuthor(s): Barbara J. PriceSource: American Antiquity, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Oct., 1982), pp. 709-741Published by: Society for American ArchaeologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/280279.

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CULTURALMATERIALISM:A THEORETICALREVIEWBarbara J. Price

A review of the principles of cultural materialism (a synthesis of Marx's causal primacy of the infrastruc-ture and Darwinian mechanisms of natural selection), this paper addresses certain substantive and meta-theoretical problems of contemporary anthropology. A position paper, it is written from the standpoint thatcultural materialism offers the most powerful and productive set of premises extant in the discipline for the ex-planation of cultural similarity and difference, stability and change, and for the nonidiosyncratic formula-tion-and potential falsification-of the broadest possible comparative and diachronic propositions. The impli-cations of this position for disciplinary and subfield relationships in the social sciences are explored.Donnithorne: ... I've written to him, to desire that from henceforth he will send me no book or pamphleton anythingthat ends in ism.Irwine: Well,I don'tknow that I'mvery fondof isms myself;butI mayas well lookat the pamphlets; heylet one see what is goingon.

George Eliot, Adam Bede, Ch. 5.INTRODUCTION

AT A TIME of active competition of paradigms in a discipline-a condition characteristic ofcontemporary anthropology-it is advisable to evaluate the competitors not only from the stand-point of data and interpretation, but also from that of metatheoretical criteria not often con-sidered by social scientists. Competition of paradigms, while an essentially healthy condition in-dicating a period of relatively rapid growth in a field, appears nonetheless to induce or increase anumber of uncertainties on the part of its practitioners. This leads to disagreements that oftendeteriorate into exercises in futility, because their underlying premises are unrecognized and un-examined. However, such competition does not imply that all competitors perform comparable ex-planatory work or do so equally well.For the present paper the central problem of the discipline of anthropology is the documenta-tion and explanation of similarity and difference, stability and change in human behavior; thefield as a whole is inherently comparative and diachronic and encompasses a wide range of sub-ject matter that overlaps the empirical concerns of a number of other social and biological/bio-medical sciences. In general, anthropology addresses this problem in a number of distinct and inpart mutually exclusive ways, each with its own hierarchy of research priorities. Idealist para-digms, in their most general form, presume that behavior is caused by ideas, beliefs, values, cogni-tions, and comparable mental templates; explanation of behavior must therefore be stated interms of these parameters. Materialism by contrast affirms that the causes of behavior are mostparsimoniously sought with consistent reference to the material conditions of life. Furthermore,actual explanations of sociocultural phenomena encountered in the literature often display agreater or lesser degree of eclecticism, i.e., of mixture of criteria drawn from each camp,usually on an ad hoc or problem-dependent basis. Others emphasize the role of history in attempt-ing to account for the ways in which things came to be as they are and function as they do.In this discussion the term paradigm, drawn from Kuhn (1970), is used in its broadest andmost neutral connotation as a general intellectual program, a set of theoretical axioms that

Barbara J. Price, New York. Mail for Dr. Price will be forwarded by the Editor, American Antiquity.

Copyright 1982 by the Society for AmericanArchaeology0002-7316/82/040709-33$3.80/1

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presents the fundamental premises of the field; determines research problems and priorities;generates research strategies, explanatory models, and theory at middle and lower levels; estab-lishes canons of verification or falsification and the rules of evidence. Neither the logical difficul-ties entailed by Kuhn's original usage (Brown 1977), nor the questions concerning the currenthomotaxial state of anthropology or its component subfields (Meltzer 1979) will be addressed.One of the competing paradigms, cultural materialism, will be analyzed in some detail in thediscussion below. Developed relatively recently in its present form (Harris 1968b, 1979a), its in-dividual components have had rather longer intellectual histories. In part because of the com-parative recency of its formulation the position is not widely understood in contemporary generalanthropology. Its principal literature is as yet small and scattered (the reader is referred to, e.g.,Ross [1978], Ross, ed. [1980], Schneider [1978], and Price [1978, 1979]). However, the currentrapid growth of this literature warrants the present review of the position. Both its advocates andits various opponents (e.g., Sahlins 1976; Diener and Robkin 1978; Conrad 1981) quite readily ad-mit its minority status in the discipline as a whole. Many of the criticisms leveled at it areparadoxically illuminating; they will provide an adversarial structure, a skeleton of misinterpre-tation on which the tenets of the position, and its empirical and metatheoretical implications, canbe presented and developed. The reader is forewarned that this will be a position paper which,like any brief, is necessarily and consistently biased; these biases will be stated as explicitly aspossible in order to clarify both what they are, and what they are not. The following generalpoints will stand as major themes:

1. Unlike most idealist paradigms, materialism is consonant with an observer-oriented canon ofproof, i.e., with verification or falsification phrased in terms of the operationalized state of thesystem (an etic research strategy). As such, it has no need for informant concurrence (an emicstrategy) to establish or confirm a proposition. While both emic and etic strategies are legitimate-ly applicable in ethnology (though with different consequences), this is not the case for archaeol-ogy. Especially in the absence of written documents, the fact that its informants cannot offer con-currence renders the etic option the only one feasible.2. Contrary to popular misconception, cultural materialism does not preclude-in fact actuallymandates-a systems model of causality rather than a single-factor or prime-mover model. In-deed, close examination of models of the latter type reveals that any postulated prime mover isitself irreducibly organized as a system (Price 1979). This does not, of course, imply that all causalparameters are of equal importance. Some will have a far more profound and wide-ranging im-pact upon the overall state of the system than will others, and cultural materialism provides con-sistent paradigmatically determined criteria for judging this.3. Cultural-materialist explanation relies consistently upon a relatively small number of causalparameters, each capable of wide, though not infinite, empirical variability under specified condi-tions; each of these is modifiable in interaction with the others in order to account for bothcultural similarity and difference, stability and change. In this way the epistemological criteria ofbreadth and parsimony are satisfied.4. By direct deduction from the paradigm, material processes and phenomena are held to bepreeminently implicated in the causation of similarity and difference, stability and change. Fromthe standpoint of archaeology especially, such processes and phenomena constitute primaryobservations, capable of operationalization. Explanations based on these will be more powerfulthan alternatives based upon other postulated or indirectly observed entities.Background Considerations: Metatheory and Epistemology

Evaluation of any theoretical framework in any discipline can be seen to be ultimately prag-matic (i.e., what explanatory work does it do and how well?) and competitive (compared with whatalternative positions?). Such assessments necessarily require consideration of a range ofepistemological and metatheoretical issues normally considered the exclusive property of thefield of philosophy of science. Broad generalized questions of causality and regularity, or prob-

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lems involving the establishment of procedures for verification and falsification are rarely ad-dressed within the social sciences. Yet the assumption that such regularities and canons of proofexist and warrant investigation is central to scientific thinking in any field. Contrary to the wide-spread, if often tacit, view that these will be discoverable when all the facts are in, they cannotbe induced from data alone; rather, they represent a way in which data must consistently betreated-i.e., as a series of intellectual operations imposed on observation. Nor can one pre-suppose that there is an absolute truth ; rather, there are only more and less powerful theories,and the presumption that the former will ultimately supplant the latter.From this perspective the role of theory is to generate and organize facts for some determinedpurpose. In the following discussion, therefore, the separation of theory language from datalanguage-a keystone of the positivist/logical empiricist paradigm that dominates much of con-temporary philosophy of science-is considerably blurred in favor of a rather more relativistposition (Brown 1977). Fact is not taken as independent of theory but as in part determined byit; the significance of a fact is modified by its theoretical context and governed by rules ofevidence that are theory-dependent. A number of interrelated characteristics of scientific think-ing thus guide the present evaluation of the relation of theory to theory, and theory to data:science is hierarchic, competitive, and probabilistic.Scientific thinking is, first of all, hierarchic. Hierarchy refers to the coexistence of propositionsat different, nested levels of inclusiveness from the most general to the most specific. A proposi-tion's breadth is partly a function of the paradigm from which it is deduced and of its vertical andlateral deductive linkages. In one paradigm a proposition may be very general, the foundation of awide range of lower-level deductions; in another, the same proposition, while remaining equallytrue, may be much more restricted in its application. Unjustified transposition of levels, inwhich a proposition is arbitrarily made more (or less) general than its paradigmatic status other-wise warrants, constitutes what is called a category mistake (Guy Oakes, personal communica-tion); an illustrative instance of this type of error in contemporary anthropology is provided by thecase of sociobiology. Within the Darwinian paradigm acknowledged by sociobiology to be itsparent, the designation of a trait as adaptive is operationalized on the basis that it outrepro-duces competing traits that do comparable work. This criterion of differential reproduction,however, poses difficulties for the explanation of the behavior of neuter castes-difficulties thatare obviated with reference to the sociobiological concept of kin selection (David Post, personalcommunication). Neuter castes, however, occur quite rarely in the biosphere; they are foundamong some-not all-ants, bees, wasps (class Insecta, order Hymenoptera), and, probably con-vergently, among termites (class Insecta, order Isoptera). If the sociobiological explanation is thestrongest extant for these special-case instances, this does not mean that the principle of kinselection necessarily constitutes a general law of living systems. While the principle must con-form to the general laws of evolution (it does), it cannot, given the absence of adequate justifica-tion by sociobiologists, be elevated to the higher level of inclusiveness.An initial corollary to the principle of hierarchy, therefore, maintains that there is an inherentasymmetry in the relationship of propositions at different levels that underwrites the proceduresby which they are tested. A more specific proposition, deduced from a more general one, cannotlegitimately contradict the latter even where it modifies or circumscribes its application: bothbelong to the same universe of discourse, and the more specific statement represents to some ex-tent a special case. Where a contradiction exists in principle, it is probable that the lower-orderstatement is wrong or has been incorrectly derived. A second such corollary entails the testing ofa theory at any level, not only against the facts (as everyone already knows ), butsimultaneously against the entire hierarchic network of theory itself, both downward againstother propositions derived from it and the observations they generate, and upward against themore inclusive propositions from which it is deduced.

Most facts or data constitute relatively low-level observations, potentially consonant withor explicable by a number of quite different theories, if perhaps in different ways. The facts,accordingly, do not speak for themselves, lack an independent power to falsify, and constitute

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evidence only insofar as they are accounted for by some theory. Testing of theory against datarepresents only half of a more complete testing procedure: a theory can be deposed only by amore powerful theory, not by facts alone (Lakatos 1970). Following the principle of hierarchy,the more powerful theory will be the one with the closer and more direct vertical and lateral net-work ties.

Thus, at all hierarchic levels, including that of the paradigm, scientific thinking is competitive.Of the numerous theories generated by deduction from even a single paradigm, some will clearlybe complementary-will deal with discrete, nonoverlapping types of special case, or will coexistat different, noncomparable levels of inclusiveness. For example, Conrad's (1981) treatment ofsplit inheritance in the Andes is, in the latter instance, a warning. Split inheritance in no way im-pugns, or even really addresses, the paradigm of cultural materialism (or any other). A special-case instance, it must be explained on the basis of some higher-order generalization, with which itis not coordinate and for which it cannot substitute without incurring another category mistake.As the hypothesis now stands, it floats at the middle level, unanchored by the logically requisitedeductive link upward through the hierarchy. On the other hand, cultural materialism does com-pete directly with historical or dialectical materialism, at the level of the mechanism by whichthey are presumed to account for their observed consequences-Darwinian natural selection inthe first case, the Hegelian dialectic in the second. In such cases of legitimate competition thestronger of two theories or explanations is the one which explains the greater range ofphenomena, or does so more parsimoniously. As with the principle of hierarchy, testing each ofthe competitors against the facts is a necessary, but not sufficient, component of the overallprocedure. Often, indeed, competing theories are quite capable of accounting for each other'sfacts; if the position of, on the one hand, Blanton et al. (1979), Blanton (1978, 1980), andKowalewski (1980) is compared with that of Santley (1980) and Sanders and Nichols (1981) on theother, it is evident that the facts of settlement distributions in the Valley of Oaxaca are not thecrux of the dispute.By analogy with the Darwinian paradigm, competition of this sort provides the equivalent of thevariation that is a necessary condition for the operation of natural selection. At certain periods inthe histories of scientific disciplines such testing, at least implicitly, of theories against othertheories is unusually active. What is not, however, justifiable as a means of resolving such com-petition is a nonstrategy called eclecticism-the conflation of principles, research strategies, andcanons of proof from two or more competitors on an ultimately ad hoc basis. This will result in acollection of propositions that by their nature cannot be compared with, or tested against, eachother from any single logically consistent set of premises: the holism advocated by Freed andFreed (1981) is a recent example. Eclecticism, moreover, recognizes neither the principle ofhierarchy nor the related point that some explanations logically entail certain others.Underlying the competition inherent in scientific discourse, therefore, is a third major prin-ciple, the principle of probabilism. A theory tested against data-the necessary but not suffi-

cient first step-produces a correlation measurable against chance. A correlation of 100% isneither expectable nor requisite to confirmation, and should a correlation of 100% occur, theevent could be analyzed as stochastic, i.e., as having occurred by chance in a probabilisticuniverse. This implies, of course, that the single counterexample lacks the power to falsify (Odileto the contrary notwithstanding, the generalization that swans are white is not vitiated as ageneralization). Falsification as a procedure thus itself becomes probabilistic rather than ab-solute. Again, a theory is not superseded by a contrary fact, but only by another theory superior tothe first when both are measured by the same epistemological criteria. The position advancedhere closely parallels that of Lakatos (1970). Granted the tests against the hierarchy and againstthe principles of breadth and parsimony, the stronger of two competing theories is the competitorthat consistently yields the higher correlations between the expected and the observed.Many critics of cultural materialism object that the position assumes what it sets out toprove-that its arguments are circular and its conclusions tautological. But on the basis of theforegoing, any theoretical position does this-must do this-to the extent that its task is to define

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certain problems as important and to direct the strategies by which such problems may be mostprofitably addressed, to provide the context that confers significance upon facts. Further, as thefollowing discussion will indicate, cultural materialism explicitly provides grounds on which thepropositions it generates can be falsified. In response to these objections, one may note that thealternatives are (1) some other theoretical framework, with different premises, which wouldnonetheless incur the same structural difficulty as this one, or (2) no theoretical framework at all.Much of American anthropology seems to have fallen, if effectively by default, into the second op-tion.Separate but Unequal? Concerning Theoretical Secessionism in Archaeology

Unless archaeology addresses the central problems of general anthropology, and does so inways compatible with those of the discipline as a whole, archaeology incurs a risk of becomingmerely a series of techniques of data retrieval, of which one might well ask Cui bono? Underlyingthe orientation of this paper is the principle of uniformitarianism, which mandates that processesobservable in the present, under stated conditions, can be safely and legitimately retrodictedwhen comparable conditions can be demonstrated. Past and present are thus treated as ex-plicable in terms of the same set of principles, the same reasoning; an intellectual frameworkcapable of encompassing both past and present is necessarily more powerful than one mandatingseparate treatment of each according to its own rules. On the one hand the comparative basis ofanthropology is significantly strengthened when past (extinct) examples can be included forstudy. Perhaps more to the point, it is preferable in a diachronic discipline to collect diachronicdata as directly as possible; reconstruction of such information by indirect means, although alegitimate and often justifiable procedure, is inevitably less satisfactory.These points are advanced in full recognition of a recent tendency in archaeology (cf. Clarke1968) to disciplinary separatism : advocacy of the position that archaeology requires its owntheory. This separatist stance is rejected in the present paper as unproductive, as having in factgenerated no theory above the middle level. And it is precisely at the middle level and below thatarchaeology does require special-case statements. Such statements, however, cannot be taken asa rallying cry for paradigmatic independence. Indeed, as noted earlier, they acquire significanceonly insofar as they are explicitly linked to higher-order generalizations. This paper advocates acultural-materialist paradigm as fully consonant with the generally accepted aims and goals of ar-chaeology, a subfield that currently appears to lack effective or explicit higher-order direction.On however preliminary a basis, the foregoing offers a framework for examination of the devel-opment of specifically archaeological theory in the period approximately contemporary with thatof cultural materialism, notably the position known as the new archaeology. Although in manyways comparable with the materialist paradigm (in reaction to historical particularism, both areovertly concerned with the lawfulness of behavior), the new archaeology does not operate at acomparable hierarchic level. From its inception its emphasis was upon middle-level and lower-level theory, and its focus was on the methodology of data retrieval, description, processing, andinterpretation. Its metatheoretical roots, moreover, are more deeply imbedded than are those ofcultural materialism in a relatively narrowly construed logical empiricist tradition. In that thetenets of this school have to some extent become common currency in American archaeology,the position has in recent years lost much of its distinctive identity, even where heirs and suc-cessors can still be recognized. This very ascendancy of much of its content, however, warrantssome consideration of its development.As is probably usual, the paradigms of the borrowing field, not those of the donor, determine orcircumscribe the impact of the borrowed elements. In the case of the new archaeology themassive and deliberate infusion of concepts taken from the philosophy of science representsalmost entirely borrowings from the logical empiricism dominant in the latter discipline in the1950s and 1960s. The work of Hempel especially had wide influence (cf. Binford 1972; Redman1973; Watson et al. 1971; Salmon 1975; Schiffer 1976), despite the fact that this work, in thediscipline in which it originally belonged, is rather specialized and representative of only one of

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a number of competing positions within logical empiricism itself (Brown 1977). In its new homethis body of concepts assumed a degree of generalization and dominance it originally lacked,probably because much of its original context was not concomitantly borrowed. Thus, while testsagainst data are well developed, tests of theory against competing theory upward and laterallythrough the hierarchy are in effect neglected.

Perhaps in part a consequence of the almost exclusive concern of both the parent logical em-piricism and the offspring new archaeology with deductive logic, the procedural emphasis ofthe latter might be considered expectable. What is surprising, however, is that the new ar-chaeology begins its downward deductions at so resolutely middle a level, precluding significantgeneralization and producing a corpus of work remarkable (at least in retrospect and given its ini-tially revolutionary program) for its intellectual conservatism. Interest in the higher levels has, ifanything, dwindled. Despite the early focus on the discovery of laws there remains a sense of triv-ialization. Given the initial lack of emphasis on an overt use of higher-level theory to guide anddirect work at the middle level, this tendency too might have been predicted; in any case, theresults float, unanchored at the top. The heavy artillery of deductive logic-even when thisneed not really be considered the sole contents of the arsenal-is trained on relatively insignifi-cant targets, even when so many more ambitious ones are within range.In recent years, moreover, the new archaeology seems increasingly uncomfortable with evenmiddle-level theory. For example, the linkage proposed by Deetz (1965) between observedchanges in ceramic design complexes and the independently documented breakdown ofmatrilocal residence among the Arikara was embraced enthusiastically, if uncritically, by Long-acre (1970) and Hill (1970) for the Southwest. Plog (1980) has responded in an interesting fashionto this formulation, more specifically to its extension: while he criticizes the methodology of datacollection and statistical analysis, he seems to have made no concerted effort to develop a com-peting middle-level generalization hierarchically coordinate with the one held to be inadequate.The implication is that the facts are capable of torpedoing the theory-what Lakatos (1970)

calls naive falsification. Major behavioral reasons, other than the statistical, that explain why theLongacre-Hill extension is misguided, are suggested but not explored. Thus, even the falsificationof this one instance does not test, much less vitiate, the original generalization. The preoccupationwith methodology for its own sake, as Meltzer (1979) concurs, is an intellectually conservativeretreat; it seems, indeed, parallel to the trajectory of American sociology in this century.Granted that archaeology confronts certain substantive and theoretical problems peculiar to it.Questions of chronology, for example, do not arise in ethnology, an essentially if not exclusively

synchronic field; these questions necessarily require distinctive methods and techniques, treat-ment of which lies beyond the scope of this discussion. Despite the obvious necessity for develop-ing and refining methodologies appropriate to investigation of more general causal problems, it isultimately the latter that are the raison d'etre of the former; very little of this work actually raisesinherently theoretical questions. In ethnography, furthermore, behavior can be observed directly,while in archaeology much behavior must be reconstructed, indirectly, from its still-observableconsequences. If such a step mandates consistent procedures of its own, it does not follow thatthese operations constitute theory above the very lowest level, if that. The principle of hierarchyindicates that any such procedures are themselves directed and their application guided bymiddle-level and higher-level theory, however implicit; the former do not substitute for the latter.Finally, where both emic and etic research strategies are legitimately and appropriately ap-plicable in ethnography, only the etic option is open to archaeologists if they are to produce state-ments that can be either operationalized or falsified. Counter to the strongly emic tendency ob-served in the cultural anthropology of recent years, this paper suggests a potential alliance be-tween archaeology and an etic ethnology (Harris 1968a), an alliance justified by comparability ofparadigm. They share far more, even given the difference in traditional subject matter, thaneither does with an idealist cultural anthropology governed by an emic research strategy.

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CULTURALMATERIALISM:WHAT IT IS AND IS NOTLike any materialist paradigm cultural materialism maintains that human behavior-itssimilarities and differences, stability, and change-is best explained with consistent reference to

the material conditions of life. Although the existence of consciousness, intentions, beliefs, ideals,values, and comparable mental constructs is not impugned by such a strategy, such phenomenaare regularly treated as explananda, and as epiphenomenal to processes more powerfully ex-plained in other terms; propositions concerning them will therefore be relatively low on thehierarchy. This section will present the principal tenets of the cultural-materialist position, inpart by contrasting it first with what it is not, and second with some of the more frequent misinter-pretations found in the literature and the grapevine and tendered in criticism. Cultural material-ism will then be differentiated from the more prevalent form of materialism-historical or dialec-tical materialism-on the basis of the mechanism held to account for its operation. Finally,justification for this procedure will be presented.Marx and Darwin

Historically the causal primacy of the material is a position associated with the work of Marx,one which, however, had its greatest impact upon anthropological theory through the work ofJulian Steward ([1936] and especially [1955]). Marx's division of the behavior stream into infra-structure (broadly, the technoeconomy of production), structure (domestic and political economy),and superstructure (ideology) reappears in White's (1949) distinction of technology, sociology,and ideology. As presently used, the definitions of these concepts basically follow those of Harris(1979a). Actually, there is considerable ambiguity in Marx's own writing concerning whichbehaviors are properly assigned to which sector, and Marx's actual or self-proclaimed intellec-tual heirs have muddied these waters still further. Many of the resulting disputes have ap-proached the truly scholastic and lie mercifully beyond the scope of this paper.Steward's (1955) differentiation of core (those features empirically determined to be mostclosely related to subsistence economy) and secondary features (those less directly linked and ac-cordingly capable of considerably greater variability), while crosscutting the Marx schema tosome extent, resembles it in function. Both writers set forth an explanatory hierarchy of traits, aseries of investigative priorities, a distinction of classes of behaviors that directs the study of theinterrelations among them. The Steward strategy relies less on a layering of discrete traits,more on empirical identification of type of actual systemic function and degree of systemic impactof behaviors along a continuum of more closely related . . . less closely related. Readilyamenable to both operationalization and to quantification, this method of assignment permits thesame trait to be treated as a core feature in one context, a secondary feature in another depend-ing on the work actually performed in a given system. The investigative priority of the infrastruc-

ture or core is directed by the observation that much of life is actually spent making a living, thatthis is a necessary condition for any other behaviors, and that the arrangements for doing thissuccessfully will affect or influence other behaviors.Orthodox Marxism and most, if not all, its descendants, rely on the Hegelian dialectic to pro-vide a mechanism by which the theory operates to produce its effects, in this case a mechanismbased on the resolution of inherent contradictions or oppositions in a system. Structural Marxistsespecially appear to concentrate on the dialectical mechanism of explanation to the virtual exclu-sion of Marx's more substantive and more significant contribution to theory, notably the principleof the causal primacy of the material conditions of life (cf. Harris 1979a:Chapter 8). They mayperhaps be more appropriately called structural Hegelians rather than structural Marxists. Butbecause neither a contradiction nor its resolution can be reliably operationalized, indepen-dent observers cannot reliably agree that a specific observation constitutes an example of either.Hence, there is no basis except faith for the intersubjective validity required for all scientific

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discourse. Given that the causal primacy of the infrastructure is taken as the fundamentalpremise of any materialist strategy, it may be noted that many, if not all, of the relevantparameters will be quantitative in range of values and in operation, and that all are linked in rela-tions of positive and negative feedback. Under such circumstances, analysis in terms of dialec-tical opposites seems intellectually tortured. For the mechanism of the dialectic, culturalmaterialism substitutes Darwinian natural selection (Price 1978, 1979), a statement of nonran-dom survival of some, but not all, randomly occurring variations in a system. This strategy is themore powerful (it can explain stability as well as change), more parsimonious (it postulates no ad-ditional principles or entities), and has greatly expanded and more direct lateral and hierarchicties through the general structure of theory (see below).Variation is effectively random with respect to the factors that govern differential retention ormodification of the variants; it arises constantly in all living systems and does not, in terms of anevolutionary paradigm, require explanation. While Darwin himself did not do so, we maylegitimately accept this as given. It constitutes a necessary condition for selection, the processthat explains why some variants will be perpetuated, others modified, and still others elimi-nated-a nonrandom process operating upon raw material that is taken to be random at this level(at other levels, e.g., the biochemical, regularities can be assumed). Note that this paradigm ex-plicitly eschews the teleology often attributed to it: the need for a particular variant underspecified circumstances will not call it forth, regardless of whether such need is in any way per-ceived. Similarly, human foresight, purpose, planning-often cited to justify a suspension ofnatural selection in the domain of cultural behavior-cannot be invoked to explain either the per-sistence or the rejection of behaviors. Instead, these mental constructs serve only to generatevariation in the system, upon which selection, neither guided nor controlled by man, operates con-tinuously and in a quite impersonal fashion. Should a favorable variant occur, by chance, itshould out-reproduce competing variants, i.e., those that do comparable work but not so wellunder specified conditions. Contrary to widespread assumption, therefore, no evolutionaryparadigm can deal with the problem of origins (cf. Diener and Robkin 1978); these random,idiosyncratic, and essentially historical. Harris's own usage (e.g., 1977) is in this sense mislead-ing; closer reading reveals it as a shorthand for differential survival or reproduction.Establishment of a trait within a system is not sensu strictu a problem of origins at all, but of dif-ferential reproduction; thus, the analytical separation of function (impact upon the system)from origins is justified. What is, however, unwarranted is the assumption that function and dif-ferential reproduction of traits are similarly unrelated-i.e., that functional ecology hasnothing to do with evolution. What it has nothing to do with, instead, is history.An adaptive trait is operationalized simply on the basis of its differential reproduction. Adap-tation, in this sense, is a quantitative process, one involving assessment of degree, of more than /less than. While there may be no such thing as a completely nonadaptive (adaptively neutral)trait, selection pressure is clearly more stringent on some than on others. As measured by the in-dex of differential reproduction there is a hierarchy of more-important to less-importantphenomena, based on the degree of difference made to the system as a whole. It follows that adap-tation as a process can be operationalized on the basis of numbers and distributions of popula-tions bearing the trait in question. Beyond this statement the questions of what is and what is notadaptive, and to what extent, are matters for empirical investigation and cannot be deduced apriori. More to the point, adaptation-and evolution in general and in principle-is necessarilyshort-term and opportunistic. To consider a trait adaptive in the long run is a contradiction interms, and any analysis invoking such a concept is illegitimate in principle; Romer's Rule correct-ly directs investigation to the immediate survival value of any innovation. The long run isnothing more than a continuous series of short runs, of nows, placed end to end and-if a longrun is to be discerned at all-linked by an uninterrupted positive feedback loop; whatever thepayoffs of a given trait, these are and must be in the now only.Although considerable misunderstanding attends the Darwinian model itself, its extension tocultural phenomena raises additional controversy; in classical Marxism its application con-stitutes the long-standing heresy of mechanical materialism. Apart from this, however, there

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seems to be a chronic, if unexamined, impression that such extension is either reductionist (entail-ing a biologizing of aspects of behavior not under demonstrable genetic control), or in somesense metaphorical (translated from one domain to another, either as homology or merely asanalogy). Underlying this group of related problems is the misapprehension that Darwinian selec-tion is applicable only to biological traits, genetically transmitted-traits for which the termreproduction is interpreted quite literally to imply a particular set of mechanisms taken asgiven, and for which the criterion of reproductive success is a priori, built firmly into the defini-tion of the concept of adaptation. The immediately following discussion will explore these issuesin some detail, in an attempt to distinguish what is logically and substantively essential to selec-tion theory from what may be regarded as accidental accretions to it. To the extent that this at-tempt is successful, the result will develop the potentially radical position that, whether applied tobiology or to culture, the natural selection invoked in both is the same process.Cultural materialism in no way implies that biological heritability constitutes a necessary con-dition for the operation of selection. In effect, the assumption of a particular mechanism ofreproduction of traits is rejected as not required by the theory. Logically all that is requisite isthat in all cases there be some regular, consistent, and specifiable means of transmission of traitsregardless of the substantive nature of those means (a matter for empirical investigation). Darwinhimself, with no reference to Mendel's work and with no access to molecular genetics, specifiedno consistent or correct mechanism of transmission; logically and epistemologically there was nonecessity for him to do so (the very real pressures were sociological ones). Without compromise ofepistemological legitimacy, therefore, such a mechanism can equally comprise the teaching andlearning that govern cultural behavior. Such a distinction of means of transmission is in fact aconvenient basis for differentiation of these two spheres of inquiry, and accounts for the clearlyobserved differences in the transmission process when the two spheres are compared. In the in-stance of learned behaviors, transmission can occur far more rapidly than is possible for thebiological reproduction of genetically heritable traits; donor and recipient populations neednot be related through common ancestry or interbreeding.What has been accomplished thus far is the removal of the question of specific means of trans-mission from the province of selection theory altogether, to suggest instead that the problem is farmore closely related to the broader issue of how a trait comes to exist in a system-i.e., to thequestion of origins in its most general sense. Some may consider this strategy to be an access ofpurism, an unnecessary restriction of the scope of the theory. Yet, as noted previously, naturalselection cannot and technically need not account for the entry of traits into a system, but only fortheir differential retention, modification, or elimination. Assuming only the transmission of traitsas a necessary condition, the ways in which the transmission is actually achieved is analyticallyirrelevant to their eventual fate. It is only this last that selection theory is capable of address-ing.Thus, it is both possible and productive to assert that steel axes outreproduce stone axes(i.e., the former spread at the expense of the latter), or that higher-energy modes of productiondisplace lower-energy competitors in habitats capable of supporting either. In neither exampleis there any necessary reference to the gene pools of the populations emitting the behaviors inquestion; the behavioral changes described may, or may not, involve changes in gene pools.Ultimately, however, questions of genetic continuity, while perhaps inherently interesting, areanalytically separate from and entirely irrelevant to the present discussion. As shall be shownbelow, the question of population numbers alone is central. For the present paper an adaptivetrait is most broadly and neutrally defined as one which facilitates its own reproduction, bywhatever means it is demonstrated to do so. Reductionism, imputed by many to any attempt to ap-ply selection theory to cultural behavior, ensues only when identity of mechanism is presumed-as sociobiology does, albeit somewhat inconsistently, but as cultural materialism explicitly doesnot do.Despite differences in the mechanisms involved, however, the inexorability of the differentialreproduction criterion definitionally integral to selection theory in biology is retained in the ap-plication to culture. A trait in either domain is designated as adaptive to the extent that it out-

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reproduces competing traits doing comparable work: this is true by definition, and the exten-sion entails no alteration of this fundamental and essential aspect of the theory. Differentialreproduction, however it occurs, accounts for the retention, modification, or elimination of agiven variant, genetic or behavioral, for the changing frequencies of competing traits vis-a-viseach other. In both domains, furthermore, the criteria by which the process of differentialreproduction is operationalized are identical: the numbers and distributions of populations bear-ing the trait in question. Since the same measurement of the degree of difference a trait makesupon a system is equally applicable to both, probabilities increase accordingly that we are deal-ing less with an extension than with the same process. Given this perspective, debate concern-ing whether the extension is truly homologous or merely analogous is entirely moot.Unlike the dialectic, therefore, a natural selection model is applicable throughout the bio-sphere, to all living systems including the special case of human cultural systems. In terms ofcriteria already presented, this renders the Darwinian mechanism more powerful than its dialec-tical competitor. If dialectics can explain the course of human events, they can explain only thecourse of human events, requiring additional statements to provide a link to the higher-order,more generalized processes of living systems. Without such linkage the mechanism necessarilyfloats-or, alternatively, deductively requires that human existence entails the suspension of thelaws of life. This would be tantamount to claiming that human social life is not in principle, afterall, a part of nature. A separation-dialectical opposition, if you will-of man and nature explicit-ly or implicitly underlies much of Western social science (it seems perhaps most notably, thoughnot uniquely, developed in France); but its mere persistence does not guarantee its productivity,and cultural materialism rejects the dichotomy. While Darwin and Marx are more often con-trasted than conjoined as thinkers, there is a solid substantive and epistemological bridge be-tween them; to the cultural materialist they accomplish more together than does either takenseparately.What provides that bridge is the concept of energy, here understood as the capacity to do work,and seen as potentially constituting the direct link not only between human society as a specialcase and the biosphere in general, but between the biosphere as special case and the rest of theuniverse. An energy criterion, in sum, provides a foundation for what could approach a unified-field-theory for the social sciences. Energy is calories; it is capital and labor; in some contexts it ismoney (a special case; the laws of economics-the more restricted domain-are hierarchicallysubordinate to the more generally applicable laws of energy capture and flow. The former must,and do, conform to the latter. Thus, the position advocated here explicitly reverses the relation-ship proposed by Rapport and Turner [1977]).Although the bulk of this paper was written prior to the appearance of Adams's (1981)stimulating and provocative analysis of Darwinian selection and energetic theory, much of the im-mediately preceding discussion is strikingly congruent with his treatment, even where he invokesa somewhat different set of intellectual ancestors. What is puzzling in the present context,however, is the partial nature of the convergence. Adams uses these bodies of theory to develop aposition explicitly intended to counter cultural materialism, and yet his result is only marginallydifferentiated from it. He seems, in effect, to have fallen into the characteristic tendency to op-pose Marx and Darwin in explanation. Thus, he loses sight of two facts. First, that the mechanismof Darwinian natural selection has always characterized the cultural-materialist explanation ofsimilarity and difference, stability and change, and second, that this principle has indeed set itapart from other, competing, materialist positions (Price 1978, 1979). Furthermore, the variationon which selection operates may be stated consistently in terms of energetic differentials (seebelow); the primacy of the infrastructure is itself justifiable on energetic grounds. For the presentpaper the competitive edge of cultural materialism derives precisely from its synthesis of Darwinand Marx-a synthesis treated as fundamental by all of its practitioners even where one aspector another may be differentially emphasized. Adams unaccountably fails to recognize that thissynthesis is critical to a position that has never acknowledged any contradiction between thetwo contributions.

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Energy and BehaviorAn energy criterion for measurement and comparison is hardly new in anthropology. White'sdictum that culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita increases (1949, 1959)

has long been considered a virtual truism; Adams (1975) has used energy to describe and analyzesociopolitical systems and especially the concept poitical power. In ecology the work ofHoward Odum (1971) uses energy as a principal integrative concept for his analysis ofecosystems. Certain general and fundamental implications of the energy criterion are especiallygermane to the present discussion. First is a statement of what might be called basic energyeconomy: all living systems must take in more energy than they expend to procure that energy (liv-ing necessarily entails energetic costs of metabolism, growth, reproduction)-the individual fail-ing to do so dies, and the population failing to do so eventually becomes extinct. For a familiarcultural special case instance, the statement can be phrased more specifically: if you spend morethan you earn, youa go into debt; and if this situation persists, you go bankrupt.Any subsistence strategy, therefore, represents a compromise between two polar ex-tremes-maximizing intake and/or minimizing expenditure. Living systems, in other words, arelazy and greedy; in this best of all possible worlds, maximizing laziness usually entails minimizinggreed (i.e., cutting consumption) and conversely, maximizing greed normally entails workingharder. Depending on the context, the substantive components of such strategies may be highlyvariable, but this set of constraints is universally applicable. One of the thornier problems con-fronting cultural evolutionary theory is to explain why, and under what circumstances, peoplecan be induced to work harder, often for declining returns on their labor. Ultimately, this becomesan aspect of the classic problem of the explanation of inequality, in that nonegalitarian institu-tions play a significant positive-feedback role in the process.All behavior, furthermore, incurs energetic costs and yields energetic returns; both costs andreturns are in principle measurable. Therefore, a statement of relative efficiency-the ratio ofcosts to returns-can in theory be used to characterize all behavior. A statement of efficiency,however, is a variable rather than a constant. Not only is its value altered by the manipulation ofeither term but, because behavior always occurs in some environment, some context, different oc-currences of even descriptively the same behaviors may not be comparable in their efficiency.This suggests that comparison of behaviors according to the work they do, and how well, is atleast as valid as the more traditional comparison on the basis of form. Steward's point (1955) thata trait may be a core feature in one system but secondary in another is closely related. To il-lustrate, the complex of wheeled vehicles and road transport had a different energetic impact inthe context of Mesopotamia (where, interestingly, it is established relatively early) from thatnoted in Egypt (where it occurs rather late). Given Egypt's geography, most of the inhabited areawas easily and efficiently accessible by boat; construction of roads would not only have been cost-ly, it would have removed valuable irrigated land from agricultural production and thereby haveraised the costs still more.The costs and returns of all behavior, relative and absolute, permit the investigator to constructan intersubjectively valid hierarchy of relative systemic importance of all observed behaviors.Those behaviors which harness, or encapsulate, relatively more energy will be relatively more im-portant systemically-a more generalized formulation of Steward's core-secondary distinction.Natural selection should act most inexorably upon these behaviors designated as core to producestability or change in response to actual circumstances. Because these are the behaviors that canbe expected to produce the most profound repercussions on the overall state of the system, theyare also the ones that should be most easily recoverable from the widest range of cultural con-texts in terms of both ethnographic and archaeological data (assuming, of course, that the in-vestigator looks for them).

Energy-richer traits in a system determine or circumscribe energy-poorer ones. While such adeduction may not yet-if ever-be fully demonstrable empirically, it does suggest initial investi-gative priorities, thus serving as a preliminary means of evaluating competing explanations. It

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may be noted, for example, that trade (Millon 1973; Webb 1975) and productive intensificationcompete as prime-movers invoked to explain processes of state formation. Recognizing that thisis merely one restricted facet of a wider and more complex debate (Price 1979), and leaving asidefor the moment the question of prime-mover formulations and their epistemological adequacy,cultural materialism directs attention first to the parameter responsible for the bulk of caloricproduction. In most cases, particularly paleotechnic ones, trade-largely a long-distance trade insumptuaries-directly or indirectly employs only small numbers of a total population and repre-sents only a small fraction of the total energy harnessed (i.e., accounts for very little of a gross na-tional product or equivalent); this generalization can be tested empirically. Thus the trade may belargely explicable on grounds of some energy-richer variable capable of underwriting growth inthis, or some other, economic sector.Expansion of the scope of such trade, alteration of its patterning, enhancement of the profes-sional specialization that attends it, and the size and structure of markets can be understood notas the result of some internal dynamic of the trade itself, but rather as a function of the ability ofthe food-producing sector to expand concomitantly. This last may be inhibited by some fac-

tor-land, water, labor-not related to, or addressed by, exchange. If such intensification ischecked, growth in the trade sector should be checked correlatively. In effect, of course, thesetwo prime movers are systemically linked rather than competing variables (Price 1979), al-though the linkage is asymmetrical.Finally, these are the behaviors that, given the convertibility of matter and energy, will mostprobably, and to the degree that they are systemically important, be manifest in material form.Whatever else a material object may represent, it is directly the energy expended on it. Naturalselection thus operates upon the energy differentials of competing variants that do comparablework. Under any stated conditions some will perform that work more efficiently, either becausethey are less expensive or because they yield higher returns-or both. A more efficient behaviorwill out-reproduce, will displace, a less efficient alternative. Frequencies of competing behaviors(the criterion of population numbers and distributions) will alter-increase or decrease-as con-ditions change.Population, Carrying Capacity, and Negative Checks

Following Malthus, this paper assumes that populations have an inherent tendency to expanduntil that expansion is halted by the imposition of some negative check. Neither the extremely lowgrowth rates for pre-Neolithic populations (Carneiro and Hilse 1966), nor the frequently observedincidence in human (and other) populations of behaviors, however motivated, which result inlimitation of growth, vitiates this assertion. Contrary to the positions espoused by Cowgill (1975)and others, such phenomena may be taken, rather, to indicate the stringency of negative checksoperating on such populations. Behaviors that regulate demographic increase in response to in-creased costs and diminished returns may themselves be a regular and predictable check ongrowth. A negative check-Liebig's Law of the Minimum-may involve whatever element (notmerely calories) is necessary to survival, and that is available in the shortest supply. The substan-tive identification of the element cannot be determined in advance (David Post, personal commu-nication), but the manifestation that it is limiting will always be reflected in the increasing costs ofits procurement and the diminishing returns on such investment.A tiresomely recurrent criticism of cultural materialism is that it reduces all issues of culturalevolution to problems of protein procurement. This misapprehension stems initially from the in-stance of the explanation of the endemic warfare of the Amazonian Lowlands. Chagnon (1968,1973) claims that because plantains, the principal staple of the Yanomamo, will grow anywhere inthe habitat, and because there is ample agricultural land, there is no limiting factor imposing anegative check on these populations, and they cannot therefore be fighting over anything. Thecauses of the warfare must accordingly be sought in the nature of their political institutions.While concurring that agricultural land is not in fact limiting, Harris (1979b) has noted that aplantain staple must be supplemented with animal protein in order to provide a balanced diet. For

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a population lacking domestic animals (except dogs, which are not eaten) and which consumes lit-tle fish, that animal protein must be derived from the hunting of land animals. The latter, given thenature of tropical forest ecosystems (Ross 1978; Roosevelt 1980) tend to be relatively scarce anddispersed in their distribution. Relatively expensive to procure, these animals constitute thelimiting factor and the focus of competition between and among groups dependent on them.From the perspective of this paper, however, it is entirely specious to make the general claimthat a factor empirically shown to be limiting in one specified ecosystem is inevitably limiting inall ecosystems. Such a procedure is entirely distinct from the paradigmatic mandate that it is in-cumbent upon the investigator to identify the actual limiting factor in a given ecosystem. Substan-tive identification of the factor is an empirical matter, though its consequences as a negativecheck are not. In fact, at different times and places, and in different systems, arable land, waterholes, soil fertility, irrigation water, and labor supply can all be identified as limiting.Another controversial concept, carrying capacity, is determined by the limiting factor, thenegative check, and limitations upon carrying capacity are set not by the exhaustion of a neededresource but by the increased costs and declining returns on making a living. It makes little senseto point to unutilized resources that might have been used if population had actually reachedcarrying capacity, or to cite such resources as unused and thereby infer that population hasstabilized below carrying capacity. On the contrary, resources can be defined only on the basisof their actual exploitation by a population (behavior defines the niche); some identifiable poten-tial resources may never enter the system at all because their exploitation may be too expen-sive, too unprofitable, or too risky. The oil crisis comes to mind: untapped oil sources, long known,have remained untapped because getting that oil out is too costly a process-or has been in thepast, when oil from elsewhere, even with the transport costs, was cheap and in reliable supply. Aresource not worth bothering with at one time, under stated conditions, may become utilized asthose conditions change.Population pressure, the obverse of carrying capacity, must accordingly be defined not in termsof absolute size or density, but in terms of the increasing energetic costs and diminished returnsinvolved in sustaining a given way of life. Depending on the mode of production of a given popula-tion and the relevant conditions of its habitat, such pressure can occur at any demographic level.A population of hunter-gatherers may experience pressure in a habitat at densities well below.5/km2; that same habitat, populated by cultivators (different relevant conditions, differentniches) may easily support densities in the hundreds. Observation indicates a range of possibleresponses to such conditions. Fission and emigration of population into areas capable of support-ing them but not yet doing so-mediated or not by competition and warfare-may constitute oneseries of options. Or a population may intensify production at home (Boserup 1965), may workharder or longer or more frequently, and may accept a declining return on labor (i.e., may cut con-sumption), as it alters its strategy from one of maximizing yields per unit of labor to one of max-imizing yields per unit of land or other resources. Conversely, any observed increased incidenceof any of these behaviors or their material consequences enhances the probability of populationpressure even if the latter is not directly or independently observed.Since the statement of basic energy economy is apparently violated by the process of produc-tive intensification, the costs of this option must always be measured against the costs of alter-native options for a given system. They will all vary with circumstances, and if the materialistparadigm mandates that these be investigated first, it cannot a priori predict their values.Moreover, the most efficient solution may entail a mix of strategies-colonization of some newareas, warfare (its consequences will vary with technoeconomic and sociopolitical context), in-tensification of production. What can be an efficient mix of strategies in one setting may be toocostly-the expense of spirit in a waste of shame-or yield too low a return in another. In anycase it is the costs and returns, regardless of the perceptions of the actors, that govern the proWb-abilities of retention or elimination of a given complex of behavior under stated conditions. An ad-ditional consequence of reliance on an energy criterion for cross-cultural comparison is thatwhile such reliance does not resolve the formalist-substantivist controversy, it demonstrates the

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irrelevance of the entire debate and thus moots it. Since this issue has inhibited nearly a genera-tion of development in economic anthropology, any such refocusing is likely to result in productivi-ty gains.Prime Movers and Systems Models

Causal priority of the infrastructure is thereby justified with reference to the concept ofenergy: it is the infrastructure that is largely responsible for energy capture. This position differsfrom the technological determinism of White (1949, 1959), in that relative efficiency is here heldto be determined by the systemic interaction of technology with demonstrably relevant environ-mental and demographic parameters that affect the costs of and returns from technological orother behaviors. Cultural materialism differs also, and comparably, from the environmentaldeterminism, furthermore, are effectively prime-mover theories, whereas cultural materialismnecessarily invokes a systems model-a procedure that makes it less mechanical than sys-temic Marxism.In a systems model of causality, feedback relations-positive or negative-among componentelements are held capable of affecting the relative value of each and the state of the whole. Nosingle factor, however designated, can be treated as a sole determinant; the same factor in theanalysis of processes governing stability and change can be interpreted simultaneously as bothcause and effect. A strategy of this sort obviates the often uncomfortable squabbling among com-peting single-factor theories (see the discussion of trade versus productive intensification above),all of which resemble each other structurally but differ among themselves in the particular primemover selected. Thus, to debate increased productivity causes population pressure againstpopulation pressure causes increased productivity is to create an apparent head-on collisionstubbornly unresolvable in its present form. This can now be more productively rephrased: What,under a wide range of conditions, can we say about the relationship of population and productiveregime? When are these variables linked in positive (reinforcing), when in negative (neutralizing)feedback? With what consequences to existing conditions and to the overall state of the system?Prime mover theories, particularly when they compete directly, seem to result from the decom-position of causal constellations more profitably treated as irreducible systems (Price 1979). Thisprocedure is far more common than its complement, the amalgamation of a number of single-factor theories into a single systemic formulation by emphasizing the mutually repercussive rela-tions among the relevant variables.Several misconceptions nonetheless attend the adoption of the systems model of causality.Epistemologically empty in itself, it can neither select the variables that will comprise it, norassign differential weighting/explanatory power to any. But it cannot be assumed that all ob-served components will be of equivalent importance. Systems theory in other words is not atheory at all; it must be used in conjunction with some higher-order generalization, to which thetasks of selection and weighting ultimately fall. Kohl (1981) has, in somewhat different terminol-ogy, noted the separability of systems model from governing paradigm (cf. also Price [1979]).Those variables determined to produce the most profound effects upon other variables and uponthe whole are defined as more important. When the paradigm employed is materialist, these willbe factors identified and quantifiable as harnessing or controlling the greater amounts of energy.It follows that it is insufficient merely to document the appearance of a trait in a system; what isneeded instead is specification of the energetic work it does and of the degree of difference itmakes to the state of the whole. For example, much of the disputation concerning the significanceof irrigation in the evolution of culture unfortunately reflects this form of error. From this defini-tion of relative importance of various factors, moreover, it follows that the systemically more im-portant traits should also be more obvious, in the sense that they should be more easilyrecoverable from a wide variety of contexts.As defined here, a systems model does not entail enshrinement of the concept of equilibrium asnormal or necessary to a system. Were this the case, it could explain stability (maintained by

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deviation-correcting, negative-feedback mechanisms) but remain unable to deal with change. YetFlannery (1968) explicitly addressed an overtly nonhomeostatic problem with considerable suc-cess. It is chiefly here that cultural materialism, with its strongly evolutionary emphasis, differsfrom the more functionalist human ecology of Vayda (1971) and Rappaport (1967, 1971). The lat-ter position emphasizes questions of equilibrium maintenance and restoration. One is stronglytempted, indeed, to identify this position as the more appropriate target for the criticisms ofDiener and Robkin (1978)-especially their separation of functional ecology from evolution-instead of a somewhat idiosyncratically conceived cultural materialism.Contrary to popular belief, cultural materialism is not incapable of dealing with questions ofstructure or superstructure. Rather, the energy criterion suggests that the behaviors indicated bythese concepts are measurable in terms of costs and returns (cf. Adams 1981) and thereby re-quires their treatment from the same set of initial premises and rules of reasoning. Accordingly,such behaviors will be of analytical importance to the extent that they are demonstrably involvedin the overall energetic system. It is not inconceivable that the belief that cultural materialismcannot address these questions may stem in fact from its refusal to treat structure and infra-structure as the idealists do, i.e., as explicable only in terms of themselves, with reference to prin-ciples unique to these domains.Domestic and Political Economy

Social and political institutions are expensive energetically in proportion to their size and com-plexity, with some institutions, or aspects of institutions, requiring more energy than others.Within this domain also there is a hierarchy. On the basis of the foregoing, the most importantcharacteristics of sociopolitical structure should be most readily apparent to the investigatorwhose perceptions are governed by a paradigm directing attention to those characteristics. Muchextant ethnographic description, however, appears to focus primarily upon secondary, effectivelystylistic, features of social and political institutions, upon the terminology of relationships at theexpense of size, composition, and physical arrangement of coresident groups, for example, andhas tended to treat this sphere as not only autonomous but determinative. British social an-thropology, known initially for such an emphasis, still seems to retain much of it. Ironically,perhaps, the substantive school of American economic anthropology stumbles into this samepitfall (Polanyi 1957) by advocating treatment of economic processes and transactions on thebasis of their embedment in social institutions. Cultural materialists, while fully recognizing therelation of the economic and the social, would reverse the postulated direction of determinacy.That is, they would analyze the critical features of social forms as in effect the flow chart ofenergy capture and distribution. Other specifiable characteristics of social organization aretreated as important to the extent that they can be deduced from or linked with the energy system.What is proposed, in other words, is a hierarchy of relative importance based on demonstratedenergetic involvement-a hierarchy that contrasts in its basic premises with those more frequent-ly encountered in the literature.Even traditional problem areas in social organization can, however, be approached from anumber of avenues, no one of which is dictated by the inherent character of the data. Rather, thequestions posed by the investigator determine the relative importance of the observations takenand recorded, and ultimately the uses to which they can be put. Lineality and the analysis ofunilineal descent groups constitute a case in point. In the customary treatment of problems offiliation, alliance, corporateness, etc., there is a strong emic component, which focuses on ter-minology, symbol, the prescriptive and the ideal. Necessarily culture-specific and particularizing,much of the undeniably rich description that results stands as it own raison d'etre, generalizableonly with difficulty if at all.When, however, social formation is linked to technoenvironmental and demographic context, itbecomes possible to generate propositions amenable to comparative testing and falsification.Murphy (1979) has postulated that unilineal descent in Lowland South America functions as arule of exclusion, limiting the numbers of potential claimants to resources exploited by a group.

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For the Tallensi, Worsley (1956) correlates degree of corporateness of kin groups with increasedpressure on agricultural land; Meggitt (1965) notes increased emphasis on the agnatic principleamong the Mae Enga in areas of land scarcity. It follows that bilaterality-a rule that maximizesrecruitment options-can be suggested as a response to conditions in which labor rather thanland constitutes a limiting factor in the productivity and security of a local population (cf. Price1981). Because such propositions are generated from an etic research strategy and can be testedcomparatively against the observed state of an energetic system, they can, on a probabilisticbasis, potentially and in principle be retrodicted (see below) despite the practical problems un-questionably posed by such a procedure.Many contemporary ethnographic studies of political institutions, especially studies at the locallevel, have focused upon problems of leadership, information processing, and decision-making atthe expense of the traditionally central concept governing political studies: power. Although aninteresting body of data has been amassed, this change of emphasis is unfortunate-a birthrightsacrificed for a mess of pottage-in that the concept of power can be operationalized directly interms of energy (Adams 1975). Control of force (Fried 1967) is expensive, and thus necessarily im-plies differential access to the total energy produced by a population; since it is thus not a culturaluniversal, this point may account for its displacement from political anthropology. In general,political nodes of whatever type serve inevitably as energetic nodes, however structured; theroles of such nodes in information control and decision-making are analytically epiphenomenal tothis function.One can explain on a regular basis why cultural systems, under specified conditions, should in-crease in energy content (and conversely, one can potentially identify negative checks whichabort this process). But without reference to such increase it is difficult to explain why informa-tion should comparably and independently proliferate, let alone why, and by what mechanisms,such proliferation could account for institutional transformation. Information processing anddecision-making, while undeniably human behaviors, involve little energy expenditure per se. Theenergy involved in making one decision rather than another rarely entails signlificant differentialsof cost. Only the translation of the decision into some course of action, and the institutions in-volved in such actions, can be said to incur such measurable cost-return differentials. In that caseit seems preferable, on grounds of parsimony, to accord explanatory priority to these behavioral/energetic parameters directly, rather than to their subsidiary, if ubiquitous, accompaniments.The currently increasing interest, however, in information and decision models to explain pro-cesses such as state formation (Flannery 1972; Wright 1978) warrants closer examination of ad-ditional problems raised by these models.It is first necessary to distinguish the questions of why and how individuals make decisionsfrom those of why and how the implemented decisions succeed or fail; the two pertain to differentanalytical levels. Because the two sets of questions constitute different research problems,evidence relevant to the former may be only superficially so to the latter; the questions asked dic-tate the appropriate use of whatever data may be in evidence. In an ethnographic context, thecomplex of motives and intentions that inevitably comprises a part of the decision-making processcan be directly observed; even the strongly emic component of this complex is a legitimate and in-teresting subject of investigation. But such data for past decisions are unrecoverable in principleand cannot legitimately be retrodicted (see below). Thus, the only surviving observable evidencewill be of the behavioral consequences of the original intentional and motivational complex and,hence, can stand in a specific relation only to a different question altogether, one amenable onlyto etic analysis. Second, it is erroneous to assume isomorphism between this complex and thebehavioral effects it generates. This is the best-laid-plans problem. As previously noted, foresightand planning constitute one source of variation in the behavior stream but are not adequate to ex-plain the retention, modification, or elimination of any possible variant-and these last are allthat we can observe. Third, a related point: unless antecedent conditions (e.g., this complex atten-dant on decision-making) are analytically distinguished from ensuing effects, the result incurs thefallacy of assuming the consequent: the only evidence by which the conditions can bereconstructed is through their observed consequences. As a major problem confronting any form

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of analogical reasoning, this consideration will be treated in a later section of this paper in some-what different form.Energetic definitions of cultural evolution suggest a recasting of Steward's levels of socio-

cultural integration as essentially arbitrary and heuristic chunks of a quantitative continuumwith no naturally occurring breaks, rather than as a series of mutually exclusive taxa or types(cf. Service 1962; Fried 1967). Although a causal, explanatory, or descriptive model need not inprinciple be isomorphic with the data it orders, the consonance of the continuous-variation optionwith the data as they appear to the observer is in this instance suggestive and becomes still moreso when both archaeological and ethnographic instances, treated in the same ways, broaden thetotal comparative base. Any classification is merely a convenient shorthand statement of similari-ty and difference on the basis of problem-dependent criteria imposed by the investigator. Thisproposed revision, while no exception, offers certain pragmatic advantages. The energeticchanges implicated in cultural evolution are held to be incremental and governed by positive feed-back. Hence, they are additive and scalar. Therefore, the behaviors that comprise them shouldreflect the addition of new work to old, with feedback modification of both, and should Guttmanscale (Carneiro 1968, 1969). Since those behaviors which are systemically most important andmost broadly determinative should be those most closely involved with energy harnessing andflow, they should constitute the principal basis of classification and should account for much ofthe similarity and difference observed from one system to another.Accordingly, terms such as egalitarian, ranked, and stratified are used in this paper inthe continuous-range rather than in the typological sense. Such a strategy obviates the oftenthorny problem of transitional stages and intermediates (often the most processually in-teresting, if interstitial, aspects of typology); it moots both the arid bickering over how particularexamples are to be classified (Sanders and Price 1968; Henderson 1979), and the illusory sense ofaccomplishment that seems to result from the assignment to one or the other category (evenwhere most investigators would probably order the same series of examples in the same way).Superstructure: Emic and Etic Considerations

Contrary to the almost ubiquitous assumption, a cultural-materialist strategy does not precludetreatment of superstructure, of ideology. Rather, the propositions it generates may be strongerthan those resulting from the premise that this sphere is independent, precisely because ideologythereby becomes explicitly subject to the same canons of proof as any other component of thebehavior stream (Harris 1974; Ross 1980). Idealists are most likely to assert the explicabilityof ideology only in terms of itself and to emphasize the causal priority of this domain. To thecultural materialist, however, behavior, including that manifested in ideology, performs work; ittoo is therefore involved to some extent in energy harnessing and distribution. Given this perspec-tive, the kinds of questions asked of ideology will be different from the traditional ones. Governedby the paradigmatic difference, the new questions explicitly address problems that arise in thecourse of investigating the relationship of superstructure to other aspects of behavior. Thus, theresulting propositions may not conform to traditional expectations concerning how they ought tolook. First, apart from behavior associable with them, ideas cost nothing and leave no directmaterial impact upon the environment. It costs no more to think one thing than another, unless thedifference entails distinct behavioral consequences. For this reason cultural materialism tends totreat ideas and beliefs as epiphenomenal to behavior, on the grounds that the more energy-richtrait tends to determine the more energy-poor one. Second, much of the content of ideology istreated as stylistic, as variable because variability makes so little systemic difference. Whatstrikes many readers as austere in this procedure is that propositions are tested not against thebeliefs or perceptions of the actors, but against the state of the system.Individuals in our own society seem, for example, to be adopting a dietary strategy of vege-tarianism with increasing frequency. This practice is rationalized or justified by the practitionerson various grounds-health, nature, purity, myth, religion, etc., all highly variable within thesample (an interesting potential research problem for idealists is the explanation of how and why

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quite different beliefs cause such similar behavioral effects). It is, however, inescapable thatmeat is expensive and becoming more so, and that household incomes have not kept pace with in-flation. One response, not necessarily personally attractive or easily maintained, is to cut con-sumption. Regardless of whether the actors admit this motivation (few of them do), this last is thereal consequence of their behavior, and the ideology, whatever its specific content, seems to makethe practice easier. Interestingly, the changed practice would in principle be recoverable ar-chaeologically where the motivations or beliefs of the actors, in the absence of written records,would not. This is basically Harris's argument (1966) concerning the sacralization of Indian cat-tle. The behaviors attendant on this complex are adaptive-they increase population numbersand densities-given the constraints of Indian ecosystems. But under crisis conditions they wouldbe difficult to maintain in the system without, for instance, massive and expensive investments offorce. Ideology seems, indeed, to have a regular systemic function, particularly obvious in state-organized polities (although by no means limited to them), of reducing the costs of force which,whatever its payoffs, is nonetheless not cheap to impose. Rather cynically, it may be noted thatthe more people are taught to believe in the sanctity of private property, the less one needspend-within limits-on policemen.Particularly in the domain of ideology, therefore, the difference between an emic, actor-oriented research strategy and an etic, observer-oriented one is most clearly highlighted. It mustbe remembered that in the present context this distinction refers to the method by which state-ments are verified or falsified, rather than to data, much of which can, with greater or lesserfacility, be accounted for from the standpoint of either. Cultural materialism relies primarily uponthe etic option, as m

price - cultural materialism - a theoretical review oct 1982

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