Marvin Harris was born August 18, 1927, in Brooklyn, New York. He was the primary force behind the development of the theoretical perspective cultural materialism. Harris was trained as an anthropologist, completing his Ph.D. at Columbia University during the early 1950s. Harris continued to teach at Columbia until 1980, serving as Chair of the Anthropology Department for a period of time. Since 1981 he has held the position of Graduate Research Professor of Anthropology at University of Florida.

Although Harris's scholarly activities lie within the field of anthropology, his work in cultural anthropology has been a great resource for various sociologists conducting cross-cultural and comparative research. Utilizing a historical and global perspective, Harris has investigated ways in which material conditions give rise to numerous cultural forms. This approach, dubbed cultural materialism, arose as a synthesis of three other theoretical perspectives: historical materialism, cultural ecology, and evolutionary theory. Historical materialism examines historical...