brilliant insight for witch hunting and murky christian historyFebruary 20, 2007 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Marvin Harris explains witch hunting and murky christian history with scientific objectivity and love of fragil human race. We need a strong survival strategy for the next generations of human race. I hope his book would educate primitively religious people of christianity and islams for better understanding of life on earth for the sake of our childern to come.
A clear, concise, and entertaining look at tradition and tabooDecember 3, 2006 1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Harris does a great job of unlocking the mysteries behind many of the curious traditions and taboos from cultures from around the world. His analysis is delivered in easy to read and easy to understand language and he debunks myth after myth with out the arrogance or judgmental self-righteous of some other authors! An excellent read!
Unconvincing with a selective view of the researchAugust 16, 2006 22 out of 32 found this review helpful
Harris made a strong case for the beneficial role of the Hindu religion's belief that cows are sacred. The reason is because male draft animals are needed to plow the fields for next year's harvest, and cows are needed to breed the draft animals. Succumbing to temptation during a famine and killing your cow is like killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
Harris was not as convincing describing the "pig love" of the Maring tribe. They are a polygamous society in which women do all the work, both gardening and raising pigs. The pigs are beloved and wander freely. But after eight or ten years there are too many adult pigs. They cause too much destruction in the gardens, and they consume too much food. So the men agree to hold a grand feast, or kaiko, in which most of the pigs are slaughtered and eaten. Then the men go to war with the neighboring tribe.
This is a strange arrangement. If the Maring wanted to be efficient, they should pen the pigs. That way they won't damage the gardens. They should also slaughter the pigs as soon as they reach their adult size. Continuing to feed them for another eight years after they've already reached their adult size is a waste of food. That is not adaptive! Of course, Harris has an explanation. The reason why the Maring behave in their seemingly counter-productive way is that by being inefficient they can keep their population in check. Maximizing their pig production would take them dangerously close to the carrying capacity of their environment. The ritual warfare after the periodic feasts and the female infanticide also contribute to keep the size of the Maring population in harmony with the environment.
The role of "pig love" contradicts the role of "cow love." Beneficial cultural traits such as cow love are readily deemed functional and adaptive. But counter productive traits like pig love keep the population in check. Thus they are also functional and adaptive. Harris's functionalist view of anthropology is now revealed as a non-falsifiable hypothesis. If Indians did not practice cow love, Harris would doubtless say that consuming valuable breeding stock for food is an adaptive form of population control.
Another problem with the book is its description of potlatch, a practice of many primitive tribes such as the Kwakiutl. Potlatch is a practice in which the Big Men give massive amounts of food and other gifts away. This gift-giving occurs across tribal boundaries. Tribes that have had a good year give away more, and tribes that have had a bad year give away less. Thus there is a net flow of food from tribes that are successful to those that are less successful. Functionalist anthropologists like Harris see this as a simple but effective form of social insurance. Yet follow up studies of the Kwakiutl by anthropologists such as Ernest Ruyle show that the Big Men dominate their tribes. They take up to half of all the food production from the common people for themselves. They then give away only a portion of the confiscated goods - and gain social obligation from the recipient in the process. So while potlatch does play a minimal role as social insurance against bad times, it is predominately a means by which the Big Men maintain their dominance over the common people.
Finally, Harris' book presents yet another revisionist version of Christian history in which Jesus is a failed military messiah who was recast as the Prince of Peace. Revisionist Christian histories are a long tradition. In 1890 another anthropologist, Sir James Frazer, published the influential book The Golden Bough It claims, contrary to Harris, that Jesus really did mean to be killed and resurrected, but that this idea was actually borrowed from paganism. It played a role in C.S. Lewis' agnosticism, and it was only as it began to be debunked in the early 20th century that C.S. Lewis became a Christian. For a more modern debunking, see The Gospel and the Greeks: Did the New Testament Borrow from Pagan Thought? (The Student Library) by Ronald Nash. Other revisionisms claim that Jesus never existed - he was a legend. No serious historian today would endorse that position. And you can't go more than a few months without hearing about one of the gnostic gospels such as the Gospel of Judas or the Gospel of Mary.
Until reading Harris' book I had not heard of the theory that Jesus was a failed military messiah. And while Harris occassionally mentions historians by name, he does not provide a single reference. My recommendation to the more serious skeptic is to look for more reputable skeptical work. The most popular skeptical work on the historicity of Jesus is coming from a group of more than 200 historical scholars called the Jesus Seminar. They are a skeptically minded group (i.e. evangelicals do not like them) that has challenged the validity of the gospels. The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say? The Search for the AUTHENTIC Words of Jesus by Robert Funk is an accessible summary of their findings, and their work contradicts Harris' revisionism. For example, the group has a strong consensus that Jesus really did say to turn the other cheek, and to love your enemies. Hardly the words of Harris' military messiah. For a criticism of the Jesus Seminar, I would recommend just about anything by N.T. Write.
I recommend that open-minded readers instead buy Sick Societies: Challenging the Myth of Primitive Harmony by Robert Edgerton. It is an accessible but dense tour of the literature that debunks the two sacred cows of anthropology: cultural relativism and adaptivism/functionalism.
one of the best academic books I've readOctober 24, 2005 5 out of 6 found this review helpful
This book is pure gold. It eloquently explains the origins of culture by tying culture to the function it has for groups. It is absolutelty brilliant and accessible to the educated reader. I have recommended this book to all serious students of society. I'm a sociology professor and I have found it invaluable to my understanding of society and culture. If you're serious about understanding society and culture, you really must read this book. It's captivating and interesting, too -- hard to put down and entertaining.
Impressive accomplishmentJune 13, 2005 18 out of 23 found this review helpful
This book succeeds where so many other books have failed - Harris has written a scholarly book that's fun to read. What's really surprising is how little controversy this book has provoked so far.
A previous reviewer complained about Harris's style - well there's no accounting for taste, and Harris's method of leading the reader from one topic to the next in a logical sequence is part of what makes the book so good. The chapter on cow worship leads into a chapter on cultures that consider pigs disgusting - and others that treat pigs like beloved pets.
What must surely be the most controversial aspect of the book begins when Harris compares the cargo cults of New Guinea to Christianity:
--- excerpt ---
I'm sure that you've noticed the resemblance between cargo cults and early Christian beliefs. Jesus of Nazareth predicted the downfall of the wicked, justice for the poor, the end of misery and suffering, reunion with the dead, and a whole new divine kingdom. So did (cargo cult leader) Yali. Can the phantom cargo mystery help us to understand the conditions responsible for the origin of our own religous lifestyles?
-- end of excerpt --
He then goes on to point out, in the chapter called "The Secret of the Prince of Peace" that in spite of later Christian revisionism, Jesus was not actually a prophet of peace but a messianic warrior:
-- excerpt ---
The lifestyle consciousness shared by Jesus and his inner circle of disciples was not the lifestyle consciousness of a peaceful messiah. Although the gospels clearly intend to deny Jesus the capacity to carry out violent political acts, they preserve what seems to be an undercurrent of contradictory events and sayings which link John the Baptist and Jesus to the military-messianic tradition and implicate them in the guerrilla warfare. The reason for this is that by the time the first gospel was written, nonpeaceful events and sayings which had been attributed to Jesus by eyewitnesses and by unimpeachable apostolic sources were widely known among the faithful. The writers of the gospels shifted the balance of the Jesus cult's lifestyle consciousness in the direction of a peaceful messiah, but they could not entirely expunge the traces of continuity with the military-messianic tradition. The ambiguity of the gospels in this regard is best demonstrated by arranging some of Jesus' most peaceful statements in one column and the unexpected negations in another:
Blessed are the peacemakers. (Matthew 5:9)
Think not that I am come to send peace on earth, I come not to send peace but a sword (Matthew 10:34)
Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matthew 5:39)
Suppose ye that I come to give peace on earth? I will tell you nay, but rather division. (Luke 12:51)
All that take the sword shall perish with the sword (Matthew 26:52)
He that hath no sword, let him sell his garments and buy one. (Luke 22:36)
Love thine enemies; do good to them that hate you. (Luke 6:27)
And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them out of the temple... and poured out the changer's money and overthrew the tables. (John 2:15)
I should also note at this point the obviously false construction traditionally given to what Jesus said when he was asked if Jews ought to pay taxes to the Romans: "Render unto Caeser that which is Caesar's and unto God that which is God's." This could mean only one thing to the Galileans who had participated in Judas of Galilee's tax revolt - namely, "Don't pay." For Judas of Galilee had said that everything in Palestine belonged to God. But the authors of the Gospels and their readers probably knew nothing about Judas of Galilee, so they preserved Jesus' highly provocative response on the mistaken assumption that it showed a genuinely concilliatory attitude toward the Roman government.
--- end of excerpt ---
Harris doesn't mention it, but his view of human culture is based on his anthropological paradigm known as cultural materialism. Those who read and like this book and want to learn more about the basis of Harris's views should check out his book "Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture."
