SOSA 1002 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Marvin Harris, Margaret Mead, Cultural Relativism

• School: Dalhousie University
• Department: Sociol & Social Anthropology
• Course: SOSA 1002
• Professor: Liesl Gambold

Document Summary

She chastised western society"s pomposity, writing, so that today we are still preoccupied with the uniqueness, not of the human institutions of the world at large but with our own institutions and achievements, our own civilization. The purpose of anthropology is to make the world safe for human di erences. Benedict"s rst degree was in english literature. Her work explored human development from a cross-cultural perspective and covered topics on gender roles and childrearing in both american and foreign cultures. She argues that individual development was determined by cultural expectations and was not biologically determined. Her eld work in samoa focused on female sexuality, she believed that women could explore their sexuality without being a horrible person. Marvin harris made his whole career becoming a die-hard materialist. This perspective emerged in the late 60s as a reaction to cultural relativism. Cultural materialism explains cultural similarities and di erences as well as models for cultural change.