Cultural Materialism

Cultural materialism refers to two separate scholarly endeavours:

  • Cultural materialism (anthropology), an anthropological research orientation first introduced by Marvin Harris
  • Cultural materialism (cultural studies), a movement in literary theory and cultural studies originating with left-wing literary critic Raymond Williams

Famous quotes containing the words cultural and/or materialism:

    The men who are messing up their lives, their families, and their world in their quest to feel man enough are not exercising true masculinity, but a grotesque exaggeration of what they think a man is. When we see men overdoing their masculinity, we can assume that they haven’t been raised by men, that they have taken cultural stereotypes literally, and that they are scared they aren’t being manly enough.
    Frank Pittman (20th century)

    The open frontier, the hardships of homesteading from scratch, the wealth of natural resources, the whole vast challenge of a continent waiting to be exploited, combined to produce a prevailing materialism and an American drive bent as much, if not more, on money, property, and power than was true of the Old World from which we had fled.
    Barbara Tuchman (1912–1989)