Marvin Harris Quotes & Sayings

However, further research has shown that it is the normal condition for humans and for most other mammals. It seems pretty clear why this is the case for most mammals and for most human beings. — Marvin Harris

There already exists the electronic capability for the tracking of individual behavior by centralized networks of surveillance and record-keeping computers. It is highly probable that the conversion to nuclear energy production will provide precisely those basic material conditions most appropriate for using the power of the computer to establish a new and enduring form of despotism. Only by decentralizing our basic mode of energy production - by breaking the cartels that monopolize the present system of energy production and by creating new decentralized forms of energy technology - can we restore the ecological and cultural configuration that led to the emergence of political democracy in Europe. — Marvin Harris

In many ways the rise of the state was the descent of the world from freedom to slavery — Marvin Harris

Unfortunately, it makes as little sense
to offer this kind of explanation as to say that we have become
too "civilized " to eat insects or horses. — Marvin Harris

When a woman gives birth to a child, the child needs to be able to digest the mother's milk; but when this child is old enough to begin to eat other foods, there is some switching off of this ability to consume milk. — Marvin Harris

In view of the frequent occurrence of modern domestic groups that do not consist of, or contain, an exclusive pair-bonded father and mother, I cannot see why anyone should insist that our ancestors were reared in monogamous nuclear families and that pair-bonding is more natural than other arrangements. — Marvin Harris

Food, like sex, is one of the principal kinds of human activity that engage people when they wonder about how to account for different kinds of human behaviour. — Marvin Harris

There are very important and practical issues raised by following this alternative route which says, let's look to material conditions, to the systems of production, to the needs that human beings have, and to competing alternative solutions to the satisfaction of those needs. — Marvin Harris

Here you do have forests, where pigs could be raised by letting them root about in the forests for a good part of the year. Therefore, you have a different attitude toward them compared with what continues to exist in the Middle East. — Marvin Harris

The availability of domesticated animal species played an important role in the prohibition of cannibalism and the development of religions of love and mercy in the states and empires of the Old World. Christianity, it may yet turn out, was more the gift of the lamb in the manger than the child who was born in it. — Marvin Harris

Counter-culture celebrates the supposedly natural life of primitive peoples. Its members wear beads, headbands, body paint, and colorful tattered clothing; they yearn to be a tribe. They seem to believe that tribal peoples are nonmaterialistic, spontaneous, and reverently in touch with occult sources of enchantment ... — Marvin Harris

Pigs prefer to wallow in clean mud, but if nothing else is available, they will frequently wallow in their own urine, giving rise to the notion that they are dirty animals. — Marvin Harris

Unfortunately, the food industry has not yet faced this situation and begun taking measures to avoid exploiting our weakness for not knowing when we have had enough. — Marvin Harris

Hindus and Westerners alike see in the meat-eating taboos of India a triumph of morals over appetite. This is a dangerous misrepresentation of cultural processes. Hindu vegetarianism was a victory not of spirit over matter but of reproductive over productive forces. — Marvin Harris

I don't know of any cases where as a result of religious precepts a population have found themselves enjoying less food than they would have if they didn't follow this particular religion. — Marvin Harris

Aztecs had not only failed to repress the eating of enemy dead,
they were practicing a state-sponsored form of human sacrifice
and cannibalism on a scale never rivaled before or since. — Marvin Harris

Ethnography literally means 'a portrait of a people.' An ethnography is a written description of a particular culture - the customs, beliefs, and behavior - based on information collected through fieldwork. — Marvin Harris

I think that by following the route that I have tried to outline, one gets into a much more interesting and productive series of questions than those that result from saying simply that Chinese don't like milk because they don't like milk. — Marvin Harris

But with the Industrial Revolution and introduction of various industrial techniques for purifying sugar, we have a situation in which what we are consuming is not good nutritionally or ecologically. — Marvin Harris

Now we are in a situation in which for a significant part of the industrial world too much could become a danger, especially too much of the things which are really not good for us in such large quantities. — Marvin Harris

I don't see how you can write anything of value if you don't offend someone. — Marvin Harris

Pigs eat grass if they are very hungry, but they can't use it as a regular source of food. — Marvin Harris

If I can bring some light to bear on problems like that, I feel that people will be enlightened not only on the question but also on a way of approaching such questions. — Marvin Harris

Every theory presented as a scientific concept is just that; it's a theory that tries to explain more about the world than previous theories have done. It is open to being challenged and to being proven incorrect. — Marvin Harris

Tantrics seek oneness with the universe
through eating meat, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, dancing,
and ritual sexual intercourse. — Marvin Harris

Like most North Americans, I'd been raised on the notion that milk is the first food, and everybody must like it because it's so good and so important for growing up and for being healthy. — Marvin Harris

Anyone who
contends there is something inherently more "natural" about a
diet rich in wheat or rice than one rich in meat knows little about
either culture or nature . Of — Marvin Harris

Like all dominant groups, men seek to promote an image of their subordinate's nature that contributes to the preservation of the status quo. For thousands of years, males have seen women not as women could be, but only as males want them to be. — Marvin Harris

The general proposition is that the resources that will be utilized are the ones that contribute most to the overall efficiency of the production system. The third parameter has to do with our commercial world, our search for profits. — Marvin Harris

Yes, a general principle that comes out of research behind Good to Eat is that there are no world religions that have acted to decrease the potential for the nutritional well-being of their followers. — Marvin Harris

The commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' does not say it's O.K. to kill some people and not others. — Marvin Harris

In fact the taboo
against killing and eating one's relatives is the most fundamental
precondition if people are to live together and cooperate on a
daily basis. — Marvin Harris

We can eat and digest everything from rancid mammary gland
secretions to fungi to rocks (or cheese, mushrooms, and salt if
you prefer euphemisms). — Marvin Harris

The answer has to be sought in the material conditions of the production and utilization of cattle in India compared with the production and utilization of cattle in other parts of the world. — Marvin Harris