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Theoretical Framework and Genesis of Cultural Materialism in Political Studies

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Theoretical Framework and Genesis of Cultural Materialism in Political Studies УДК 32.001 L. Bidochko THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK AND GENESIS OF Cultural Materialism IN POLITICAL STUDIES The article deals with the main methodological and theoretical background of cultural materialism as an anthropological approach and a research strategy. Synthesizing Marxists’ historical materialism, cultur- al ecology, and neo-evolutionism, first cultural materialist Marvin Harris elaborates a tripartite scheme of the cultural system (infrastructure, structure, and superstructure), extending and extolling the infrastruc- ture as something that includes demography and ecosystems, in addition to the productive forces and mode of production. Cultural materialism rejects dialectical materialism and class struggle, giving priority to in- frastructural variables in the causal arrow of determination. Keywords: cultural anthropology, cultural materialism, determinism, emic and etic, historic materialism, Marxism, neo-evolutionism, reductionism, structure and superstructure. With the development of the humanities, there not just drown from the natural sciences (as in the was a problem of their scientification, development case of mechanicism), but converted in accordance of uniform and universally accepted theoretical and with the object of study, the human society, which methodological foundations, principles of obtaining was seen as an enormously complex, but objective and structuring of knowledge about the man and so- and cognizable system. Historical materialism, de- ciety. In this respect, natural sciences seemed to be veloped by Karl Marx, became the blueprint for the the obvious model for the humanities, as they were modernhistorical and sociological science. On the much more developed. The principles of causality one hand, scientific schools, positioning themselves and nomology that allowed the natural sciences to as Marxist and neo-Marxist, continue to play a sig- create an adequate model of the material world and nificant role in the academic environment currently. to promote technical progress, could provide for de- On the other hand, criticism of Marxism not only velopment of social knowledge as well, freeing it contributes to the renewal of historical materialism from the descriptiveness, subjectivity, and teleolo- (as in the case of moving the research focus of the gy, and enable the social progress. culture and ideology by GyörgyLukácsand Antonio Immanuel Kant stated that the doctrine of the na- Gramsci), but borrows many of Marx’s postulates ture would contain science in its proper sense only (like Max Weber in sociology, AnnalesSchool in to the extent that Mathematics can be applied to it; history); it also became a mechanism for de-politi- in XIX–XX centuries, physics rules the roost in the zation and legitimizing Marxism. philosophy of science. A “bridge,” which managed If at the level of concrete scientific methodology to connect the natural sciences and humanities, was historical materialism successfully seeped in the hu- embedded in biology. Evolutionism quickly ad- manities, in the field of general scientific philosophy hered to the social sciences. The success of biology came under attacks held in various directions. The and psychology in explaining the nature of the high- actual purpose of these attacks was forcing Marx- er nervous activity contributed to finding the mate- ism out of the scientific horizon. Historical material- rial basis of the “spiritual world” and considering ism was accused of politicizing science, reduction- the external stimuli as causes of human behavior. ism, and metaphysics. Of course, Marxist scholars Seeking to adopt the unity of science, which could were in sympathy with leftist political movements not be provided by the so-called “first positivism,” or even directly participated in them. However, this Friedrich Engels interpreted social development as politicization could not be necessarily explained by the highest form of motion of the matter (mechani- the ill will of scientists towards making scientific cal, physical, chemical, and organic), which emerge objectivity turbid. They rather came out of the pos- on the basis of the lower elements; it includes but is tulate of post-non-classic philosophy of science not reducible to them. about social determinism of the science. In addition, As a result, the humanities have been scientified studying the dynamics of social development, social by taking materialist methodology. The latter was science will inevitably integrate predictive and © Bidochko L., 2016 L. Bidochko. Theoretical Framework and Genesis of Cultural Materialism in Political Studies 19 prescriptive functions, which leads to the increas- of Finnish philosopher G. H. von Wright) or to the ap- ingly important interest in the scientific community proval of the postmodern “ignoramus et ignorabimus,” to political regulation of the social development. defamatory social knowledge. Reductionism has never been a Marxist method- Construed as being of secondary importance, ological principle; on the contrary, the classics of Mar- some times secondary constraints needs to be placed at xism rejected it, stressing the autonomy of spheres of the heart of interpreting the paradigm.All the scientific public life, such as politics or culture (although history knowledge is instrumentalized and socially construct- critics have tried to put the materialist conception as ed. Any scientific approach and scientific knowledge “economic reductionism»). Yet reductionism and the as such is still massively dependent on political, eco- concomitant use of implicit deduction became a bug of nomic, financial, ideological, moral, and other “non- the theoretical considerations and case studies of many academic” elements; political stimulus often deter- orthodox Marxists. Nevertheless, this trend has been mines the formation and assessment of the knowledge. observed among the other, non-Marxist schools in the Let us outline the academic and ideological “cra- social sciences. This can be explained by the fact that dle” of cultural materialism. It was in the Columbia society is a chaotic system, the complexity of which University; then some of these people moved to the increases against the background of progress in differ- University of Michigan. By and large, different peo- ent spheres of social life (the economy, social struc- ple there came from Brooklyn; they have returned ture, and culture). Social sciences, seeking to fulfill from the Second World War and had left-wing lean- their practical function, tend to simplify their own the- ings, hence the materialism. “It was the time of Mc- oretical constructs and methodological approaches for Carthyism, – Stephen Reyna, one of the students of to give the desired result (the formation of ideologies Marvin Harris notes. – If you were known as a left- and social engineering). ist, you would not get a job. So they tended to create In short, the social sciences have not kept pace left positions, but they left out the explicitly left lan- with the social development, which ultimately leads guage. I was part of them. I was a student of Marvin to an increase in the irrelevance of models they offer. Harris... We were for the most part “progressives” in The response to this in the scientific community is ei- the US, not explicit Marxists.” ther creation of new theories, or update of the con- “There was the counterculture, the War, Black ceptual and methodological arsenal of existing ones Power, Women’s Lib, Stonewall, SDS and Weather- (development of “protective belt” of the research pro- man. Revolution. They all played out in front of gram, to use the terminology of ImreLakatos), return your eyes, from the later 1960s through the early to the starting point of epistemology, “blessed” by the 1970s. You could not escape the power of events to founding fathers. One of the most vivid examples of shape ideas,” notes Brian Ferguson, another student such a return in the history of science is a famous slogan of Harris [2, p. 2]. of Otto Liebmann “Back to Kant!” that lay the foun- Although McCarthyism, heightened political re- dation of philosophical schools of neo-Kantianism. pression against supposed leftists, became thing of Thus, the Western neo-Marxists criticized the the past, and cultural materialism was born in late “mechanistic reductionism” and “economic reduc- 1960s, opened declaring of leftism at that time was tionism” of Second International theorists (Kautsky- not preferable. Left intellectuals, in fact, have also Bernstein-Plekhanov), referring to Marx’s “The mimicked. It cannot be said though that cultural ma- Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon” and En- terialism was a veiled version of Marxism. Cultural gels’s “Letter to Joseph Bloch.” Post-positivists materialism was rather a revision of Marxism; and aimed their criticism at the real inherent versatility of the nature of roots of revisionism seem to be more the explanatory paradigm inherent to the historical woven than just camouflaging historical materialism materialism (“metaphysical” in Popper’s terminolo- by calling it an anthropological research strategy. gy). However, according to the criteria of falsifiabili- Scientific research strategy is an unequivocal set ty, virtually the entire humanitarian science falls be- of guidelines referring to some epistemological sta- yond the understanding of science in Popper’s tus of the studied variables, the kinds of lawful rela- sense. This approach has resonated in the part of the tions between them, and connected theories, created humanitarian response
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