6 Quotes & Sayings By Marvin Harris

Marvin Harris is a leading anthropologist specializing in the prehistory of humans. He is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is also Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas, where he founded and directs the Center for Anthropology and Globalization. Harris has written or edited more than twenty-five books on human evolution, including The Cultural Transmission of Genes (1984), Cannibals and Kings (1986), The Rise of Anthropological Theory (1985), Ethnography and the Historical Imagination (1996), The Rise of Anthropological Theory (2006), The Pleasures of Exile: A Cultural Journey into Brazil (2008).

I don't see how you can write anything of value...
1
I don't see how you can write anything of value if you don't offend someone. Marvin Harris
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In view of the frequent occurrence of modern domestic groups that do not consist of, or contain, an exclusive pair-bonded father and mother, I cannot see why anyone should insist that our ancestors were reared in monogamous nuclear families and that pair-bonding is more natural than other arrangements. Marvin Harris
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Hindus and Westerners alike see in the meat-eating taboos of India a triumph of morals over appetite. This is a dangerous misrepresentation of cultural processes. Hindu vegetarianism was a victory not of spirit over matter but of reproductive over productive forces. Marvin Harris
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In many ways the rise of the state was the descent of the world from freedom to slavery Marvin Harris
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Here you do have forests, where pigs could be raised by letting them root about in the forests for a good part of the year. Therefore, you have a different attitude toward them compared with what continues to exist in the Middle East. Marvin Harris