Cultural materialism is an anthropological theory that views cultural practices and social structures as adaptations to material conditions and constraints. It posits that culture has three levels - infrastructure, structure, and superstructure - and that the infrastructure level of technology and economics has the strongest influence in shaping a society, with changes cascading up to the structural and superstructural levels of social organization and ideology. The theory aims to scientifically explain cultural similarities, differences, and changes through analysis of environmental, technological, demographic, economic and material factors.

1. Cultural
Materialism

2. Marvin Harris
 A cultural
anthropologist, is
responsible for the
most systematic
statement of cultural
materialist principles.
 Proponent of
Cultural
Materialism.

3. Cultural Materialism
 Explains cultural similarities and
differences as well as models for
cultural change within a societal
framework.
 A scientific research strategy that
prioritizes material, behavioral and etic
processes in the explanation of the
evolution of human socio-cultural
systems.
 Consist of three distinct levels:
Infrastructure, structure and
superstructure.

4. Assumptions
 Cultural Materialism is based on two
key assumptions about societies. First,
the various parts of society are
interrelated. When one part of society
changes, other parts must also change.
 The second assumption of CM is that
the foundation of the socio-cultural
system is the environment.

5. Three distinct
levels

6. Infrastructure
 Promotes the idea that
infrastructure, consisting of
“material realities” such as
technological, economic and
reproductive (demographic)
factors mold and influence the
other two aspects of culture.

7.  The material infrastructure
consists of the technology and
social practices by which a
society fits in to its environment.
 It is through the infrastructure that
society manipulates its
environment by modifying the
amount and type of resources
needed.

9. Infrastructural
Component
Technology (mode of
production)
Population (mode of
reproduction)

10. The modes of
production and
reproduction are attempts
to strike a balance
between population level
and the consumption of
energy from a finite
environment.

11. Mode of Production
- Consists of behaviors aimed at satisfying
requirements for subsistence.
- Technology and the practices employed for
expanding or limiting basic subsistence
production, especially the production of food
and other forms of energy.
 Technology of subsistence
 Technological-environmental relationships

12. Examples:
 Hunting and Gathering
 Horticulture
 Pastoral
 Agrarian
 Industrial
 Hyper-industrial

14. Mode of reproduction
- Consisting of behaviors aimed at
controlling destructive increases or
decreases in population size.
- Technology and the practices
employed for expanding,
limiting and maintaining
population size.

15. examples
 Demography
 Mating patterns
 Fertility, natality, mortality
 Nurturance of infant
 Medicine
 Contraception, abortion, infanticide

17. Structural
- This component of socio-cultural systems
consists of the organized patterns of social
life carried out among the members of a
society.
- Each society must maintain secure and
orderly relationships among its people, its
constituent groups, and with neighboring
societies.
 Political Economy
 Domestic Economy

18. Political Economy
- These groups and organizations perform
the functions of regulating production,
reproduction, exchange, and consumption
within and between groups and socio-
cultural systems.
- These groups may be large or small, but
their members tend to interact without
any emotional commitment to one
another.

19. Examples
 Political organizations, factions,
military,
Corporations, Division of labor,
police,
Education, media, taxation, urban,
rural hierarchies, war, class, caste,
Service and welfare organizations,
Professional and labor organizations.

21. Cultural economy
Consists of a small number of
people who interact on an
intimate basis. They perform many
functions, such as regulating
reproduction, basic production,
socialization, education, and
enforcing domestic discipline.

22. Examples
Family structure, domestic division
of labor, education, age and sex roles,
Community, domestic discipline,
hierarchies, sanctions,
Voluntary organizations,
Friendship Networks,
Some religious groups.

24. Superstructure
- “Superstructure” sector consists of
ideological and symbolic aspects of
society such as religion.
- Given the importance of symbolic
processes.
Behavioral Superstructure
 Mental Superstructure

25. Behavioral
Superstructure
The Behavioral Superstructure includes
recreations activities, art, sports, empirical
knowledge, folklore, and other aesthetic
products.
Examples:
• Art, music, dance, literature
• Rituals, advertising,
• Sports, games, hobbies,
• Science

27. Mental
Superstructure
The mental superstructure involves the
patterned ways in which the members of a
society think, conceptualize, and evaluate
their behavior.
Examples:
 Myths, aesthetic standards and philosophies,
ideologies, religion

29. • Therefore, cultural materialists believe
that technological and economic
aspects play the primary role in shaping
a society.
• Cultural materialism aims to
understand the effects of
technological, economic and
demographic factors on molding
societal structure and superstructure
through strictly scientific methods.