Marvin Harris Review

JOURNAL OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR

CULTURAL CONTINGENCIES: A REVIEW OF MARVIN HARRIS'SCANNIBALS AND KINGS1

ERNEST A. VARGASWEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY

What other people do gives rise to endlessgossip, usually accompanied by reactions ofcuriosity and moral judgment. We want toknow why people act as they do. Concur-rently, we want further or fewer occurrences ofthose actions and thus we comment on thedegree of their propriety. Mostly the actionalone, its topography, suffices for us to call itright or wrong. But sometimes we wait untilwe find out why the person (or group) behavedin that manner. Whether or not this mitigatesour disapproval or mutes our approval, at-tempting to relate action to cause puts us inthe position of scientist rather than moralist.Take for example the following actions:

Contemporary hunter-collectors ...possess . . . many mechanical techniquesfor inducing abortion . . . such as tyingtight bands around the stomach, vigorousmassages, subjection to extremes of coldand heat, blows to the abdomen, and hop-ping up and down on a plank placed acrossa woman's belly 'until blood spurts out ofthe vagina." (p. 15)

Infanticide runs a complex gamut fromoutright murder to mere neglect. Infantsmay be strangled, drowned, bashed againsta rock, or exposed to the elements. More

'Harris, M. (1977). Cannibals and Kings: The Originsof Cultures. New York: Random House. xii + 239 pp.,including index. (Reprinted 1978 as First VintageBooks edition.) Unless otherwise noted, all quotationsare from Cannibals and Kings (1977 ed.).The description of Harris's thesis often quotes his

argument or paraphrases it closely, but this presenta-tion is more unequivocal than his; phrases such as"tends to," "could have," "almost always" have beendropped for the sake of exposition.

Reprints may be obtained from Ernest A. Vargas,Department of Educational Psychology, College ofHuman Resources and Education, West VirginiaUniversity, Morgantown, West Virginia 26506.

commonly, an infant is 'killed" by neglect:the mother gives less care than is neededwhen it gets sick, nurses it less often,refrains from trying to find supplementaryfoods, or "accidentally" lets it fall from herarms. (p. 16)From Brazil to the Great Plains, Amer-

ican Indian societies ritually dispatchedhuman victims in order to achieve certainkinds of benefits. . . . One group, theTupinamba, combined ritual sacrifice withcannibalism.On the day of the sacrifice the prisoner of

war, trussed around the waist, was draggedinto the plaza. When at last his skullwas shattered, everyone "shouted andwhistled." If the prisoner had been given awife during his period of captivity, she wasexpected to shed tears over his body beforejoining in the feast that followed. Now theold women "rushed to drink the warmblood," and children dipped their hands intoit. "Mothers would smear their nipples withblood so that even babies could have a tasteof it." The body was cut into quarters andbarbecued while "the old women who weremost eager for human flesh" licked thegrease dripping from the sticks that formedthe grill. (pp. 102-103; Harris's quotationsare from an eye-witness account by HansStaiden)The initial reaction to these actions may be

that although we belong to the same species asthey, these are savages, or at least uncivilizedpeople, and such behavior can be expected ofthem. With respect to the last example, how-ever, during this same time along the sameBrazilian coast, Frenchmen were competingwith Portuguese in the slave trade. As thehistorian John Hale (1966, p. 166) dryly put

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it, 'To strengthen themselves against the Por-tuguese, the Frenchmen were anxious to se-cure an alliance with local cannibal tribes; asan inducement, they imported West AfricanNegroes for the Brazilian Indians to eat."These examples, judged as exotic or disturb-ing from our current cultural perspective, il-lustrate a common theme in Harris's book,Cannibals and Kings: the natural and inevitableshaping of human conduct by material andbiological conditions.What produces behavioral topographies

that are sufficiently specific and pervasive toearmark a culture? Harris answers that cul-tural forms evolve from cycles of intensifica-tion and depletion of the environment. Hepostulates that reproductive pressures within agiven setting lead to intensified production;this depletes the environment, inciting newsystems of production with characteristiccultural activities evolving with them. Physicalchanges such as those of climate also initiatethe cycle of depletion and intensification, thelatter defined as "the investment of more soil,water, minerals, or energy per unit of time orarea" (p. 4). Climatic changes, by producingsuch effects as animal migration or widespreaddrought, threaten the standard of living of thesocial group impacted, which in turn leads tomore effective productive technologies if thegroup succeeds in solving its problems. Suchsuccess engenders a Pyrrhic victory, however,for under the press of population the environ-ment eventually becomes depleted and stan-dards of living are again threatened if thegroup fails to find still newer and more effi-cient means of production. At each turn of thecycle, cultural forms reflect the cost-benefitsolutions to living conditions and their unin-tended outcomes.

Although almost linearly inevitable in itsstarkness, what Harris proposes is not'-sim-plistic. As he describes the subtle interplay be-tween reproduction, intensification, ecology,technology, and culture, it quickly becomesapparent that a series of feedback loops with"choice" points characterizes this interplay.The cultural forms that occur do so only atcertain "values" of the parameters defining hismodel of cultural evolution. Once certain con-

ditions are reached, however, and their conse-quences encountered, these shape the behaviorof a group, a band, a tribe, an entire society.

THE EVOLUTION OF CULTURESHarris begins with a group in equilibrium

with its surroundings; the number of peoplematch the setting in which they live so that allthe resources necessary for a comfortable stan-dard of living are easily at hand. He arguesfrom both past and present data that this equi-librium was usually the case with hunting-collecting groups. But if population size in-creased or ecological conditions worsened,standards of living fell, endangering the ex-istence of the group. Extreme action to de-crease numbers was then taken. In its begin-nings, Harris's analysis does not differ muchfrom other ecological accounts that examinethe relation between population density andthe carrying capacity of an environment. Forexample, under conditions of severe depri-vation, many species cannibalize their young(density alone can produce that behavior; seeCalhoun, 1962).

In its own way, the human species acts sim-ilarly. Harris estimates that 'infanticide duringthe paleolithic period could very well havebeen as high as 50 percent" (p. 15). Lacking ef-fective contraceptive measures, the other alter-natives for lowering the number of the groupwere not as effective- geronticide was only ashort-run emergency measure, and abortionwas even more costly, often eliminating themother along with the infant.Techniques of population regulation main-

tained the health, welfare, and safety of thegroup, but these draconian efforts to stabilizeor lower the size of the group produced aver-sive outcomes.

Population regulation was often a costly ifnot traumatic procedure and a source of in-dividual stress . . . this stress- or reproduc-tive pressure, as it might more aptly becalled- . . . accounts for the recurrenttendency of pre-state societies to intensifyproduction. (p. 5)

Reproductive pressure, "the severe costs in-

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volved in controlling reproduction," predisposedhunter-collectors to avoid those techniques andinstead intensify production (p. 5). Intensifica-tion, however, depleted the environment evenfurther, thinning the margin between what thegroup needed and what it could get. Suchdepletion stimulated the effort to regulatepopulation. There was no escape from the di-lemma of depleting the environment or thin-ning the group.

Ecological disasters accelerated these effects.At the end of the last ice age, changes inclimate reduced the population of big-gameanimals. Paleolithic hunters and collectorsresorted to intensification. The fewer theanimals, the greater the effort to hunt them.Combined with loss of grazing grounds, sucheffort eventually wiped out entire species andgenera of large land animals. Hunter bandsthen gradually shifted from animals to plantsfor their primary subsistence.With improved carrying capacity of the en-

vironment through horticulture and agricul-ture, populations grew, bands and villagesproliferated, and the press against living stan-dards resumed. Warfare provided a solution:It maintained a favorable ecological relation-ship by dispersing population over wider ter-ritory and lowering its regional density. Itcreated no-man's-lands between settlements,thus inadvertently providing wildlife shelterswhere populations of plants and animals couldbe sustained. But these two benefits could notbe achieved if the victors failed to prevent thegrowth of their own populations. Greaternumbers of deaths were required than nor-mally obtained through the everyday hazardsof life, or even through war. Victors, as well aslosers, could not secure sufficiently low rates ofpopulation growth simply through male com-bat because number of females determines thereproductive rate of a group. "The biologicalreality is that most males are reproductivelysuperfluous" (p. 39). Female infanticideachieved the low rates of population growth.

Warfare provided the motive for parents tokill their girls, for the survival of the groupbecame contingent on rearing combat-readymales. It prepared males for combat by glori-fying masculinity. It devalued daughters

because they did not fight. 'Male supremacistinstitutions rose as by-products of warfare, ofthe male monopoly over weapons, and of theuse of sex for the nurturance of aggressivemale personalities" (p. 56). Males dominatedpolitical institutions in band and villagesocieties, and in almost all of them, the divi-sion of labor illustrated male dominance.The assignment of drudge work to womenand their ritual subordination and devalua-tion follows automatically from the need toreward males at the expense of females andto provide supernatural justifications for thewhole male supremacist complex. (p. 60)Pristine states followed band and village

society as the next level of social organizationand were a consequence of intensifying theagricultural mode of production. Agricul-turists encouraged intensification by "conspic-uously rewarding those who work harder thanothers" (p. 70). By degrees, food managers"gradually set themselves above their followersand became the original nucleus of the rulingclasses of the first states" (p. 71). Redis-tributive chieftainships evolved to feudalsystems in the six regions of pristine statedevelopment: ancient Egypt, ancient China,Mesopotamia, India, central highland Mex-ico, and the Peruvian coast. These pristinestates evolved without conscious planning, andincurred a common, insidious outcome.The participants in this enormous transfor-mation seem not to have known what theywere creating. By imperceptible shifts in theredistributive balance from one generationto the next, the human species bound itselfover into a form of social life in which themany debased themselves on behalf of theexaltation of the few. (p. 81)

The rise of state societies engendered furtherwidespread cultural practices in response todifferent regional patterns of intensification,depletion, and ecological crises. Harris firstaddresses the link between animal proteinavailability, human sacrifice, cannibalism,and, finally, despotism, democracy, andcapitalism.

Between 200 AD and 1200 AD, the popula-

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tion of the valley of Mexico grew from a fewtens of thousands to over two million. In-creased agricultural production made thatgrowth possible. When the Spaniards encoun-tered the Aztec empire, it was a thriving stateengaged in grisly practices. Harris labels it 'thecannibal kingdom." Other American Indians,both north and south, sacrificed human beingsand had done so for some time, but only theAztecs practiced it on a mass scale. On-the-spot observers counted thousands of skulls.The usual explanation has been that the Aztecsconducted their wars and slaughtered theirprisoners for religious reasons. But as Harrissays, 'Holy wars among states are a dime adozen," and only the Aztecs warred "to supplyvast numbers of human sacrifices" (p. 107).The early Greeks and Romans, the Celts,

Scythians, and the ancient Brahmans, Chi-nese, and Israelites ritually sacrificed humanbeings, but across Old World state societies inEurasia and North Africa redistributive feast-ing took a different turn. These cultures didnot link sacrificing humans with eating them.Instead, "it was animal not human flesh thatwas brought to the altars, ritually sacrificed,dismembered, redistributed, and consumed incommunal feasts" (p.116). But these practicesevolved differently from those of the Aztecs notbecause of superior morals: Old World statesocieties slaughtered thousands in warfarewithout regard to combat status. The dif-ference resulted from the availability of largeanimals, easily maintained because they con-sumed mainly stubble, grasses, and othervegetable matter that humans could not eat.The economies of these state societies facil-itated their use of captured enemies for labor,"as producers of food rather than as meals inthemselves" (p. 121).As is well known, these ancient empires dif-

fered, often radically, in all aspects of theirculture- from the small details of everyday lifesuch as cookery and dress to the enduring andmonumental such as literature and architec-ture. "And yet for all their differences, ancientChina, India, Mesopotamia, and Egypt pos-sessed fundamentally similar systems ofpolitical economy" (p. 156): a centralized classof bureaucrats; networks of roadways,

rivers, and canals connecting the smallestpolitical and economic units such as villages;top to bottom political and economic lines offorce; private property regarded as a gift of thestate; production priorities set by the state taxpolicies; the right of the state to collect taxes,confiscate materials, and conscript labor; lawand order maintained by intimidation, force,and terror; internal security agencies con-sisting primarily of a system of spies; andsevere punishment for infractions, rangingfrom beatings to death by torture. "These an-cient empires shared one other feature: eachwas . . . a hydraulic society" (p. 157).

Hydraulic societies developed "amid arid orsemiarid plains and valleys fed by great rivers.Through dams, canals, flood control, anddrainage projects, officials diverted water fromthese rivers and delivered it to the peasants'fields" (pp. 157-158). Such endeavors requiredgreat masses of workers, detailed planning,and effective coordination, accomplishable onlythrough a sophisticated, centralized bureau-cratic apparatus:

Preindustrial hydraulic agriculture recur-rently led to the evolution of extremelydespotic agro-managerial bureaucracies be-cause the expansion and intensification ofhydraulic agriculture-itself a consequenceof reproductive pressures-was uniquelydependent on massive construction pro-jects. (p. 158)These Old World societies provided meager

fare to their common folk while strenuouslyexploiting them. The idea that the exploitedinevitably rise to throw off the exploiters is anillusion, as is the equivalent, almost romantic,notion that cultures in which one group sys-tematically exploits another are inherentlyunstable.The fact that societies providing suchmeager rewards endured thousands of years... stands as a grim reminder that there isnothing inherent in human affairs to ensurematerial and moral progress. (p. 156)

After a society has made its commitmentto a particular technological and ecologicalstrategy for solving the problem of decliningefficiency, it may not be possible to do

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anything about the consequences . . . for along time to come. (p. 163)

Perhaps never, as Harris implies elsewhere.Harris's hydraulic theory not only bears on

the remarkable convergences among thesocial institutions of Egypt, Mesopotamia,India, China, and Inca Peru; it also opensup promising avenues of inquiry relevant tothe question of why capitalism and parli-mentary democracy evolved in Europe be-fore they appeared anywhere else in theworld. (p. 167)

Systems of control based on restricting orgranting access to water supplies were inap-plicable to the scattered operations of rainfallfarming. Out of these conditions evolved therainfall-farming manorial estate, the basic unitof production on the European continent dur-ing medieval times. The feudal period saw thequasi-independent nobility successfully resistmost attempts by kings to restrict their rights.The feudal system collapsed due primarily

to a shift in economic relations, and subse-quently in political ones, related to an increasein population. The end of feudalism camewhen the manorial mode of production reachedits ecological limits. Thus, combined withpolitical-economic factors, such as the activitiesof the rising mercantile classes, ecological cir-cumstances finished feudalism and gave rise toa new mode of production-capitalism.

Capitalism, as such, constitutes only oneaspect of the cultural system that replacedfeudalism. But capitalism, as the productionmode by which standards of living reachednew heights for greater numbers of people,emerges along with science and technology asthe critical catalyst in the new culture mix.

Technological innovation . . . soonbecomes the key to the accumulation ofcapital and business success. Science, inturn, provides the key to technological in-novation. Hence capitalism, science, andscientific technologies form a distinctivemutually reinforcing complex. (p. 173)

The complex included the counter control ex-erted against political and economic cen-tralization by wealthy merchants, entre-

preneurs, and big property owners, who effec-tively thwarted attempts to restrict theirautonomy. Eventually political forms arosethat not only directly represented the interestsof these groups, but also asserted them as thedominant concern of the state.

Harris, however, demurs with respect to thevirtues of the capitalistic mode of production.

It is ... dangerous to suppose thatcapitalism represents the end point ofcultural evolution. (p. 175)

Capitalism . . . is committed to an un-bounded increase in production in the nameof an unbounded increase in profits. Pro-duction, however, cannot be increased inan unbounded way. Freed from the re-straints of despots and paupers, capitalistentrepreneurs still have to confront therestraints of nature. (p. 176)

Environmental depletions lead to declining ef-ficiencies and profits. To compensate, entrepre-neurs must lower costs through new technol-ogies that produce more per unit of labor effort.

Thus a system . . . committed toperpetual intensification can survive only if[it] is equally committed to perpetualtechnological change. Its ability to maintainliving standards depends on the outcome ofa race between technological advance andthe relentless deterioration of the conditionsof production. Under the present circum-stances, technology is about to lose thatrace. (p. 177)The industrial revolution created a new

relation between production and reproduc-tion. Unlike all previous major shifts in modesof production, a decrease in rate of populationgrowth accompanied an enormous upsurge inlabor efficiency. This occurred neither at firstnor quickly. From the early sixteenth centuryto the later eighteenth, the population grewfaster than resources available for a comfort-able or even reasonable standard of living formost people. For many, infanticide, as usual,solved the problem of feeding their families.By the end of the eighteenth century, however,children became valuable as a source of cheaplabor. Nevertheless, the population rate began

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to fall while subsistence and conveniencegoods increased rapidly.The usual demographic transition denoted

by the inverse ratio of population to resourcestook place because "three extraordinary cul-tural events" came together: the contraceptiverevolution, the job revolution, and the fuelrevolution (p. 186). Cheap, safe, and widelyavailable contraceptive devices dropped thebirth rate, and infanticide dropped concom-itantly. In the job revolution, mass productionand coordination of specialized expertise, com-bined with technical innovation, increased pro-ductivity but moved work outside the familyunit, and the new economic relation betweenchildren and parents motivated restrictingbirths. The fuel revolution replaced musclepower with far greater engine power, whichwas largely fueled on nonrenewable organicsources of energy, primarily coal and oil. Thevast energy suddenly released at low costbrought a vast number of inexpensive goods,most importantly food, within the reach ofmost people.Cheap energy now runs out, presenting the

greatest danger and yet the most far-reachingopportunity. The danger is despotism. Themassive amounts of energy needed simply tomaintain an increasing population opens thepossibility of a despotism based on a drifttoward centralized energy sources. Bigger pro-jects are needed to recover what remains.With more claimants and few resources,greater political control evolves to enforcepriorities of use. Nuclear energy represents atechnology that is usable only under tight statecontrol. The opportunity is political freedom.As Harris argues, 'Only by decentralizing ourbasic mode of energy production . . . can werestore the ecological and cultural configura-tion that led to the emergence of politicaldemocracy in Europe" (p. 194).

HARRIS'S MATERIALISTIC ANALYSISAND BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

All behavioral scientists examine behavioraltopographies and relate their variety and formto a causal nexus, thus giving those topog-raphies meaning within some scheme of anal-

ysis. The sharp differences between behavioralscientists center on the explanatory schemes,or what at bottom seems most responsible forwhat organisms do. With respect to human ac-tivity, two modes of explanation have beenfavored. The first- that the ideas and inten-tions that people have initiate their actions-eventually ends in physiology or religion. Thesecond- that the conditions they encounterdictate how they act- poses problems for tra-ditionally held ethical and political beliefs.

Anthropologists prove to be no exception intending to use one or the other of these ex-planatory schemes. Take, for example, theseexcerpts from leading anthropologists who em-phasize the first approach:

Studies in psychological anthropology (alsocalled culture-personality studies) are rele-vant to the analysis of a culture both as amaintained system and as a changing, evolv-ing life-tool. Culture institutions are main-tained by people; that maintenance is shapedby the cognitive perceptions and the person-ality dimensions common to those people.(Mandelbaum, 1968, p. 317)We may need to get away from the naturalscience analogy and place stress on the factthat all customs and rules of behavior arehuman inventions. It is true that we do notordinarily observe an individual inventing acustom, but customs can be described byindividuals, and in this form they representmental configurations of which all humanminds are capable. . . . We can comparecultures just as we can compare spoken lan-guages, but if we do so, the similaritieswhich emerge result from the fact that allhuman brains operate the same way.(Leach, 1968, p. 341)Kinship systems, political systems, andmythological systems are systems of class-ifications invented by men. The structuresthey embody are logical structures whichcorrespond to ordinary human faculties.The regularities which we may expect tofind in them are not a part of nature outsideman but a part of nature inside man.(Leach, 1968, p. 344)Harris eschews that approach. He excludes

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cognitive states as primarily responsible for theparticular forms that social institutions take.For example, in discussing the origin of agri-culture in the New World, he rejects the diffu-sionist proposal that the "idea of crops" camefrom the Middle East. Instead he insists thatthe shift from hunting and collecting to agri-culture for New World people must be sought"outside their heads" (p. 13). As he putsit, "The idea of agriculture is useless whenyou can get all the meat and vegetables youwant from a few hours of hunting and col-lecting per week" (p. 26). He argues thatsuch a shift occurred in the cost/benefit ratioof agricultural activity compared to huntingand collecting as a result of depletion of animallife.

Similarly, in discussing warfare Harrisspecifically considers and rejects alternativetheories dependent on either cognitive or bio-logic explanations. Theories of war as sol-idarity, as play, as human nature, and aspolitics fail to provide for alternative behaviorthat would satisfy the drives implied by thosetheories. His comments on "war as play" and"war as human nature" are representative. Heobjects to the "war as play" theory as follows:"So if warlike values cause wars, the crucialproblem becomes that of specifying the condi-tions under which people are taught to value warrather than to abhor it. And this the 'war asplay' theory cannot do" (p. 37, italics added).The other side of the coin is the theory of waras a biological drive, a killer instinct inhumankind. Harris simply points to the sharpreversals of aggressive actions within the sameculture within a few generations, too short forgenetic action. He sums up his position bypointing to the advantages to the group orsociety that followed from engaging in warfareunder certain ecological conditions. His rejec-tion of alternative accounts of why the Aztecsate their prisoners differs only in form fromwhat a behavior analyst would say:

. . . to rest the explanation of all social lifeultimately on what people arbitrarily thinkor imagine - a strategy doomed to nullify allintelligent inquiry since it will always comedown to one useless refrain: People think or

imagine what they think or imagine." (p.120)

And he gets downright sarcastic when discuss-ing explanations based on 'spiritual impulses"and 'voluntary submission to a benevolenttheocracy" as responsible for the origins of theOlmec and Maya states, basing his analysis ofthe rise and fall of those states on the peculiargeology and forest conditions of the Yucatanpeninsula (pp. 85 ff.). In short, repeatedly heunderlines the interaction of societies with en-vironmental conditions that dictate their in-stitutional patterns -that is, the persistent col-lective behavior of its members.

Interestingly, the state of the individual, "in-dividual stress," provides a critical feedbacklink in his model of cultural evolution. In-dividual stress, or its equivalent "reproductivepressure," triggers the effort to intensify pro-duction. Without this stress, the cycle of inten-sification and depletion would not start. Peo-ple would just kill their children and be donewith it; the group would be thinned and thegood life preserved. But individual stressengenders other cost/benefit solutions that,although immediately useful, eventually endin disastrous outcomes.

Harris does not define "individual stress" asa physiological state; in fact, he implies other-wise with his equivalent phrase "reproductivepressure." Nor is it a cognitive process; it is nothow people perceive infanticide that predis-poses them to condemn it. The phrases "indi-vidual stress" or "reproductive pressure"substitute for what could have been a contin-gency analysis at the level of the individual.Harris does not examine "individual stress" butthe subsumed processes easily translate intothe vocabulary of behavior analysis. The sizeof the group combined with the availability ofresources sets the occasion for the killing of in-fants and children. Such action is aversive.Escape from it reinforces alternative activitiesdetermined by historical and current environ-ments. The three-term contingency frames theanalysis of the behavior of the individual.

Harris's mode of explanation differs in nosignificant way from that of behavior analystsexcept in level of analysis. Behavior analysts

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favor analyzing contingencies at the level ofthe individual organism. Harris favors thelevel of the group. Although the effects of theenvironment in changing cultures may occurthrough the individual person just as changesin species occur through the individual orga-nism, they may be best characterized in termsof the group. (Wilson, 1975, argues that selec-tion can operate at the group level; see espe-cially chap. 5 and pp. 309-311. For purposesof this discussion, either 'channel" will do. Asecond issue, overlapping with whether selec-tion operates solely through the individual orcan operate through the group, relates to whatconstitutes the "individual" as a unit ofanalysis. Wilson comments on this problem,and Gould [1984] also discusses it, from aperspective with evolutionary implications, asthe question, "When is an organism a person;when is it a colony?") In any case, individ-uality is irrelevant when a set of individualsbehaves the same way due to some shared func-tional relation to their environment. Groupshunt and collect, bands and villages war, hy-draulic societies collectivize, capitalists pursueprofit, and so on.

Harris analyzes such collective behavior,and he details how contingent events affect incommon the actions of all members of agroup. He examines the effect of what mightinfelicitously be phrased as "megacontingen-cies." The history a collectivity brings to asituation tempers the effect of current con-tingencies, but a group's actions can be under-stood only within the context of its circum-stances. The structures of social institutions,the topographic descriptions of what collec-tivities persistently do, make sense only in thecontext of the biological and material eventsthat lead to them and the consequences thatflow from them. The extensive human sacri-fices of the Aztecs are best understood not asexpressing religious piety or as placating angrygods but as a way of meeting protein needs inan economy without large livestock. (Thus theAztec battle strategy was to capture enemywarriors who as prisoners were often fattenedbefore being sacrificed. Their bodies werecredited to their captors who took chunkshome- arms, legs, and so on- to prepare into

a stew eaten at a banquet.) Harris's preferredunit of analysis happens to be a collectivity buthis preferred mode of explanation is the inter-action of that collectivity with its environment.

Although Harris appears to explain in partsome of the actions of a collectivity by those ofthe individual, he does not simply reduce col-lective action to a sum of individual actions.Neither does he restrict his analysis to thedimensional level at which anthropologists andsociologists typically specialize -that of socialbehavior. Instead he describes events thatreciprocally affect each other in a variety ofcomplex feedback relations across differentdimensional levels of analysis. These includephysical levels (properties of the environment),biological levels (genetic contributions tobehavior), social levels (cultural practices),and psychological levels (individual variablessuch as stress).

Actions could be explained at one dimen-sional level by what occurs at another; how-ever, such explanations tell only part of thestory. More important, there is no one basiclevel at which all phenomena can be ex-plained. A discipline operating at a particulardimensional level of analysis does not nec-essarily provide a more general, more power-ful system of explanation for a disciplineoperating at another level. Understanding andexplaining human behavior can take placewithin its own level of analysis or by referringto other disciplines. But this is also true forother phenomena as well. For example, ananalysis of social behavior might clarify andexplain the physical phenomenon of deser-tification that follows from improper farmingpractices. In any case, explanatory modes ap-plied at any level cannot simply end in cog-nitive entities. These entities must eventuallytie back to events outside of them, to the en-vironment in some way. Otherwise theywould default to brain function or god func-tion as the final explanatory word.

HARRIS'S ETHICAL CONCERNSAND BEHAVIOR ANALYSIS

Cannibals and Kings as much promotes anethical argument as it makes a scientific one on

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how cultures evolve. Harris uses his science tomake the point: Unless we take into accountthe circumstances that shape cultures, we mayend with a culture that for most will consist ofa life of misery and of endless, joyless toil, andfor a few, indulgence. The aims and concernsof the book resemble those of B. F. Skinner'sBeyond Freedom and Dignity. Both attempt toforce a new look at some old problems. Bothcast their analyses in terms of what behavioralscience now tells us about ourselves. Both re-ject the traditional and unproven claims pre-viously and currently asserted about our"nature." The two books should be readtogether in courses that examine ethical prob-lems, especially those relating to the futuredirection of American society, and, if any, ofthe human species.

Demonstrating how human behavior andinstitutions directly evolve from environmentalcircumstances poses problems for the prescrip-tions and justifications for, and interpretationsof, individual behavior. The traditional for-mulation of individual responsibility maintainsthe correctness of a system of law and moralityin which the individual is punished or re-warded for willful actions, and the necessity ofthose political systems in which people choosetheir leaders and forms of government. Unlessthe individual freely chooses, his behaviorundetermined by outside circumstances, howcan he or she be held responsible and how canwe argue for political systems based onfreedom? On a more subtle level, how can in-dividuals decide their future if their past andpresent are determined? On these questions,Harris throws up his hands. At the level of theindividual, he claims free will although heargues that cultural institutions are deter-mined. As he says, "I have no difficulty inbelieving both that history is determined andthat human beings have the capacity to exer-cise moral choice and free will" (p. xii).Harris's position reflects his professional exper-tise on how ecological conditions determinecultural forms, but stops short of acknowledg-ing how such conditions may actually deter-mine individual forms of behavior.

So how then do we choose when there is nofreedom? More to the point, how do we deter-

mine the future if the present dictates our cur-rent behavior? From one viewpoint, the ques-tion poses no problem. The activities of allorganisms, whether due to instinct or to cul-ture, determine what the future will be. A birdgoing its preordained way in building a nestdetermines, within the range of chance anddestiny, a particular kind of future. But theusual answer is that the bird arranges itsfuture without knowing it is arranging it. Ob-viously we do what we must do, and that bearson what happens, but how do we arrangewhat we must do? We want and require adetermination of the future in which we areaware of what might happen. In practicalterms this means simply that we can tellourselves the possible consequences of our ac-tions prior to their occurring. In this way wecome under current control of what could besaid to be verbal surrogates of the future.

Skinner's answer to deciding the future,dealt with at length in Beyond Freedom and Dig-nity: verbalize contingencies and their effects.Interestingly enough, Karl Marx, in positinghis scientific theory of history, promoted theequivalent as a precondition for the classstruggle that would result in a better future forall. A social class needs to become conscious ofits situation if it is to take effective action andbe motivated towards that action. To be con-scious of a situation is to be aware of the con-trolling contingencies-that is, to be able tostate what those controlling contingencies are.That is why intellectuals were so important toMarx. They verbalized to others what washappening to them and what their optionsreally were. Harris, too, believes in the poten-tial importance of verbal behavior: "To changethe world in a conscious way one must firsthave a conscious understanding of what theworld is like (p. 194)." If we know the priorconditions for the collapse of a society, then wemay avoid them or alter them. As he ferventlyexpresses it,

I urge those who feel that my explanation ofthe evolution of culture is too deterministicand too mechanical to consider the possi-bility that at this very moment we are againpassing by slow degrees through a series of

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... changes which will transform social lifein ways that few alive today would con-sciously wish to inflict upon future genera-tions. Clearly, the remedy for that situationcannot lie in the denial of a deterministiccomponent in social processes; rather, itmust lie in bringing that component into thearena of popular comprehension. (p. 82)

In short, we can design our future if we knowhow the past has shaped our behavior and thepresent controls it.

This brings us immediately against theproblem, and to many people the horror, ofdesigning a culture. To them-and it is alegitimate concern-a planned society impliesa static society and an exploitative one, aforethought version of despotism rather thanan unfortunate accident. But a planned societydoes not necessarily mean an unchanging oneor one in which an imbalance of power existsbetween groups. Clearly, if planners valuesocial change and effective countercontrols,those conditions become part of their design. Itis more likely that institutional arrangementswill be achieved if explicitly designed than ifleft for a circumstantial future to implement byhappenstance. At a philosophical level, thosewho object to the planned society argue that itdehumanizes people: It robs them of freedom,of free will, of the possibility of choice- inshort of all the traits considered particularlyhuman. Aside from presuming traits unprovenand unprovable, which if existent would pre-

vent by their very nature the sort of societyfeared, there is a special irony in the position ofthese critics. It is their rejection of any effort toplan the future and to plan how life should beled that dehumanizes. For what is charac-teristically and perhaps exclusively human isour verbal behavior; we guide and plan futureconduct by generating rules from contingen-cies. Simply surrendering to whatever con-tingencies may occur and presuming that theaccidental culture will be the best one is to sur-render to the equivalent of the evolutionaryforces that drive other species and to whichthey are blind. It is exactly this positionagainst which Harris directs his book.

REFERENCESCalhoun, J. B. (1962, February). Population density

and social pathology. Scientific American, 206(2),139-148.

Gould, S. J. (1984). A most ingenious paradox.Natural History, 93, 20-30.

Hale, J. R. (1966). Age of exploration. New York:Time Inc.

Harris, M. (1977). Cannibals and kings: The origins ofcultures. New York: Random House. (Reprinted1978 as First Vintage Books edition)

Leach, E. R. (1968). 4nthropology: Comparativemethod. In D. L. Sills (Ed.), International encyclopediaof the social sciences (Vol. 1, pp. 339-345). Macmillanand The Free Press.

Mandelbaum, D. G. (1968). Anthropology: Cul-tural. In D. L. Sills (Ed.), International encyclopedia ofthe social sciences (Vol. 1, pp. 313-319). Macmillanand The Free Press.

Skinner, B. F. (1971). Beyond freedom and dignity.New York: Knopf.

Wilson, E. 0. (1975). Sociobiology: The new synthesis.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Marvin Harris Review