Environmental Engineering Reference
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He uses a lot of technical jargon and argues each point meticulously, presenting a surfeit of eviden-
ce. However, the kernel of Harris's theoretical contribution can be summarized rather briefly.
All human societies consist of three interrelated spheres: first, the infrastructure , which com-
prises a society's relations to its environment, including its modes of production and reproduc-
tion—think of this primarily as its ways of getting food, energy, and materials; second, the struc-
ture , which comprises a society's economic, political, and social relations; and third, the super-
structure , a society's symbolic and ideational aspects, including its religions, arts, rituals, sports and
games, and science. Inevitably, these three spheres overlap, but they are also distinct, and it is liter-
ally impossible to find a human society that does not feature all three in some permutation.
For social change advocates, it's what comes next that should agitate the neurons. Harris's “cul-
tural materialism” 3 argues for the principle of what he calls “probabilistic infrastructural determin-
ism.” That is to say, the structure and superstructure of societies are always contested to one degree
or another. Battles over distribution of wealth and ideas are perennial and can have important con-
sequences: life in the former East Germany was very different from life in West Germany, even
though both were industrial nations operating under (what started out to be) nearly identical ecolo-
gical conditions. However, truly radical societal change tends to be associated with shifts of infra-
structure . When the basic relationship between a society and its ecosystem alters, people must re-
configure their political systems, economies, and ideology accordingly, even if they were perfectly
happy with the previous state of affairs.
Societies change their infrastructure out of necessity (for example, due to depletion of re-
sources) or opportunity (usually the increased availability of resources, made available perhaps by
migration to new territory or by the adoption of a new technology). The Agricultural Revolution
ten thousand years ago involved a massive infrastructural shift, and the fossil-fueled Industrial Re-
volution two hundred years ago had an even greater and far more rapid impact. In both cases, pop-
ulation levels grew, political and economic relations evolved, and ideas about the world mutated
profoundly.
Explaining the former example in a bit more detail may help illustrate the concept. Harris was
an early adopter of the now-common view of the Agricultural Revolution as an adaptive response
to environmental shifts at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, a period of dramatic climate change.
Glaciers were receding and species (especially big herbivorous prey animals such as mammoths
and mastodons) faced extinction, with human predation hurrying that extinction process along. “In
all centers of early agricultural activity,” writes Harris,
the end of the Pleistocene saw a notable broadening of the subsistence base to include more
small mammals, reptiles, birds, mollusks, and insects. Such 'broad spectrum' systems were
a symptom of hard times. As the labor costs of the hunter-gatherer subsistence systems rose,
and as the benefits fell, alternative sedentary modes of production became more attractive.
Lifestyles based on cultivation took root and spread, and with them (eventually) came villages and
chiefdoms. In certain places, the latter in turn mutated to produce the most radical social invention
of all, the state:
The paleotechnic infrastructures most amendable to intensification, redistribution, and the
expansion of managerial functions were those based on the grain and ruminant complexes
of the Near and Middle East, southern Europe, northern China, and northern India. Unfortu-
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