Critique of Harris' "Epistemology of Cultural Materialism"

Harris looks to the way in which research methods treats the relationship between what people say and think as subjects of a study and what they say, think and do as objects of scientific inquiry. Because it is a human who serves as the subject of study, the object of focus - said human - has well-developed thoughts about their own and other people's thoughts and behavior. Said human is able to express their thoughts about their thoughts (woah) and behaviors through questions and answers.

Wait.. what?

Harris' conceptualization of gaining scientific knowledge from the study of humans is trippy to say the least. He challenges the concept of "reality" by questioning if it is possible to deconstruct social life by using social science. The use of the epistemological approach was inspired by the work of Marx and Engels in identifying individuals “not as they may appear to in their own or other peoples imagination, but as they really are…;” Harris furthers the approach by challenging the scientific method we so heavily rely upon to prove theorem. Why is it, Harris would ask, that we so readily accept the reality of the thoughts shaping all theory but only question the validity of testable evidence if it is collected from human subjects? Why are thoughts and ideas considered to be any less real than matters?  

Scientific materialist hold to their beliefs that what can be measured - thoughts and events - exist separately from thoughts about thoughts and events. For materialists, the issue of what is real vs. what is unreal is overshadowed by what can be scientifically proven, a term that is problematic because it’s use here is culturally understood to mean ‘satiated by the presentation of material evidence.’ Harris’ resolve to this selective acceptance of evidence is to intentionally distinguish between mental and behavioral events and also between emic and etic events in our quest for knowledge - a practice of cultural materialism. In Harris’ approach, human social life is simply a response to practical problems, and should be subjected to the same scientific measurements and tests as matter.

By learning to acknowledge the mental and behavioral domains and the emic and etic perspectives, we can develop coherent networks of theories that may aid in recognizing the causes of sociocultural differences and similarities. In order to operationalize such sociocultural concepts as status, class, role, family, etc. one must first recognize whether their knowledge of the concept - their reality- is etic or emic. The position from which the study is posed, whether it is by the observer or the observed, shapes the knowledge that is produced. In order to be objective in human sciences, Harris orders a scientific approach toward the thoughts or behaviors of both the observed or the observers.

To better produce theories, to achieve higher levels of objectivity with respect to both the emics and etics of mental and behavioral phenomena, Harris urges the practitioners of science to recognize the distinctions of the four domain, without buying into the idealist notion that all knowledge is ‘emic.’ It is not solely the etic perspective that formulates the scientific question and the emic that answers it. Rather, depending on whose categories establish the framework of discourse, informants may provide either etic or emic descriptions of the event they have observed or participated in - it is how the question is asked that will determine its results. This is particularly true when applied cross culturally, where without a cultural understanding the question will often be misconstrued as the participant will likely answer as they understand the question, not necessarily how it is intended. Harris looks to language and the study of linguistics to disprove the idealist notion that all knowledge is ‘emic,’ and again reinforces his stance that both the emic and etic perspectives, when applied to either mental or behavioral domains seek to accomplish separate goals. The etic analysis is not a steppingstone to the emic perspective, but to the further discovery of etic structures and vice versa.

In order to operationalize social life, we must first decide if indeed we believe a scientific way of knowing is more advantageous than other ways of knowing. If we decide that it is, then Harris argues we can no longer be selective in the knowledge that the scientific method applies to. The etics of scientific observers is not merely one among an infinity of other emics, either their perspective is recognized for its authority in both material and culturally material matters..or we must admit that all knowledge produced by the scientific approach is relative.