Marvin Harris

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Marvin Harris, a cultural materialist, reduces the Hindu ban on cow slaughter in, “The Cultural Ecology of India’s Sacred Cows.” Harris, offers a neo-materialist approach to understanding the central importance of cows, while arguing that a ‘religious sanctity’ has been incorrectly used to describe a phenomenon that, can be best explained by that of socio-political factors. Moreover, Harris states that the ban on cow slaughter included in the constitution of India, and the legal controversy that followed efforts to implement the ban. Thus reaching an understanding to the problem, when looking at the cultural ecology of India, one has to focus narrowly within the unquestioned economic utility of cattle within Indian life, that one must also …show more content…
Moreover, Harris asserts that instead of the Hindu theology, customs, taboos and rituals associated with Indian cattle, require a properly functioned explanation that rests upon India’s adapting response to that of ecological degradation. To simplify, the theory can be described as a ‘cultural’ materialism, in that the holy designation of the cow, is thus reduced to a socio-economic response of practical necessity.
Harris, thus proposes that the materialist explanation as a general theory, in cases where the flesh of a certain animal (in this instance, cow) is made to be a taboo, when it becomes too costly, as a direct result of the ecological changes(in India). Furthermore, it must be pointed out that some of the basic components of Harris’s theory incorporates recognition that the animal was formerly sacrificed or eaten. This is due to the rise in population density, as a response to restrictions imposed when the animal can no longer be raised( in ample numbers) to meet the requirements of societal

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