A Post Modern Critique Of Marvin Harris Text, Death,...

A Post-Modern Critique of Marvin Harris Marvin Harris’ text â€Å"Death, Sex, and Fertility: Population Regulation in Preindustrial and Developing Societies† is reviewed and critiqued in this paper from postmodern standpoint. Marvin Harris was a leading proponent of the cultural materialist theory, which is used in â€Å"Death, Sex, and Fertility† to explain population regulation in terms of infrastructure, the component of society dealing with the modes of production and reproduction used by a people to enhance their survival and social wellness. Modes of production (MOPs) are the ways a people produce their means of subsistence, ranging from hunting and gathering to intensive agriculture. Modes of reproduction (MORs) consist of practices that affect reproductive processes that can then affect birth and death rates of a society. These modes include topics such as the care of offspring, the treatment of women, prolonged lactation, and sex, with deviations into ab ortion, infanticide, and the costs and benefits of child-rearing. In the review section of this paper, each chapter is separately summarized in relation to the MOPs and MORs they mention. The chapters all focus on different periods of time to further explain how contextualized MOPs and MORs are. The critique portion of this paper examines â€Å"Death, Sex, and Fertility† from a postmodern theoretical perspective. Basic differences between cultural materialism and postmodernism will be discussed. Review: Population Regulation...