"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"
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Efficiency is doing a lot of ideological work here. Marvin Harris, the patron saint of cultural materialism, isn’t offering a neutral description of how societies happen to use resources; he’s smuggling in a razor: whatever looks like tradition, morality, or “culture” is often downstream of what keeps the production system humming. The intent is to deflate romantic explanations of human behavior and replace them with a colder engine model: inputs get selected because they maximize output, and the winners are the resources, techniques, and social arrangements that make the whole machine run better.
The subtext is a challenge to the self-image of modern capitalism. When Harris slides from “overall efficiency” to “our commercial world, our search for profits,” he’s pointing at the hinge where a seemingly technical principle becomes a political one. Efficiency for whom? In a profit-driven system, “overall” is frequently a euphemism for “measurable in money,” with costs externalized onto workers, communities, and ecosystems. Harris wants you to notice that what gets called rational allocation can be a culturally enforced tunnel vision: profits masquerading as progress.
Context matters: Harris is writing in the long shadow of mid-century anthropology’s battles over explanation. Against symbolic or purely interpretive readings, he argues that material constraints and economic incentives shape what survives as a norm. The rhetorical power of the passage is its bluntness. It refuses consolation. Culture, in this view, isn’t just meaning-making; it’s also triage under scarcity, disciplined by markets, and dressed up afterward as common sense.
The subtext is a challenge to the self-image of modern capitalism. When Harris slides from “overall efficiency” to “our commercial world, our search for profits,” he’s pointing at the hinge where a seemingly technical principle becomes a political one. Efficiency for whom? In a profit-driven system, “overall” is frequently a euphemism for “measurable in money,” with costs externalized onto workers, communities, and ecosystems. Harris wants you to notice that what gets called rational allocation can be a culturally enforced tunnel vision: profits masquerading as progress.
Context matters: Harris is writing in the long shadow of mid-century anthropology’s battles over explanation. Against symbolic or purely interpretive readings, he argues that material constraints and economic incentives shape what survives as a norm. The rhetorical power of the passage is its bluntness. It refuses consolation. Culture, in this view, isn’t just meaning-making; it’s also triage under scarcity, disciplined by markets, and dressed up afterward as common sense.
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| Topic | Business |
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