One of the most important anthropologists of all time, Marvin Harris was influential worldwide as the founder of cultural materialism. This book analyzes Harris's theories and their important legacies. It explores cultural materialism's epistemology and its relation to rational choice theory, Darwinian social science, and population pressures.

Introduction The Potentials and Challenges of Cultural Materialism; I: The Legacy of Cultural Materialism: I; 1: The Impact of Cultural Materialism; 2: The Theoretical Legacies of Cultural Materialism and Marvin Harris; II: The Epistemology of Cultural Materialism; 3: Cultural Materialism, Scientific Anthropology, Epistemology, and “Narrative Ethnographies of the Particular”; 4: Cultural Materialism, Rational Choice, and the Problem of General Ethnography; III: Applications of Cultural Materialism; 5: Materialist Particularity in Nuclear Micronesia; 6: Linking Past and Present; 7: Effects of the Physical and Social Environment on Culture; IV: The Darwinian Challenge to Cultural Materialism; 8: The Effect of Nepotism on the Evolution of Social Inequality; 9: Coevolutionary Materialism; 10: Marvin Harris, Meet Charles Darwin; V: The Legacy of Cultural Materialism: II; 11: What Role Does Population Pressure Play in the Evolutionary Dynamics of Marvin Harris?; 12: Evolutionary Materialism and Darwinian Conflict Theory; 13: When Is a Theoretical Strategy Not Cultural Materialism?

“A thought-provoking, stimulating volume on the past, present, and future of cultural materialism that is both laudatory of Harris' research strategy and critical of it.” —Paul Shankman, University of Colorado