Materialism
Materialism is one of the major anthropological perspectives for analyzing human societies. Materialism is a position that the physical world can impact and set constraints on human behavior. The materialists believe that human behavior is part of nature and therefore, it can be understood by using the methods of studying natural science. Materialists do not necessarily assume that material reality is more important than mental reality. However, they give priority to the material world over the world of the mind when they explain human societies. This doctrine of materialism started and developed from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, who were social thinkers.
Marx and Engels presented an evolutionary model of societies based on the materialist perspective. They argued that societies go through the following stages in order from tribalism to feudalism to capitalism to communism. Their work drew little attention from anthropology in the early twentieth-century. However, since the late 1920s, anthropologists have increasingly come to depend on their materialist explanations for analyzing societal development and some inherent problems of capitalist societies. Anthropologists who heavily rely on the insights of Marx and Engels include neo-evolutionists, neo-materialists, feminists, and postmodernists.
Sources:
- Scupin, Raymond and Christopher R. Decorse. 2000 Cultural Anthropology: A Global Perspective. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.
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McGee, R. Jon and Richard L. Warms. 2004 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. New York: McGraw Hill.
Karl Marx
(1818-1883, Prussia-France-Britain)
Friedrich Engels
(1820-1895, Germany-Britain)