Holistic Cultural Materialism

= an update, proposed by Andrea Farias, to Marvin Harris's Cultural Materialism theory

(Andrea's updates are in bold)

Characteristics

Andrea Farias:

"I propose an expanded theory I'll call Holistic Cultural Materialism, in which the development and characteristics of civilizations are understood as emerging from the complex interactions between six interconnected elements:

• Infrastructure: The material base of a society, including its technologies, economic systems, and modes of production and reproduction.

• Structure: The social, political, and economic institutions that organize and regulate human activities and relationships.

• Superstructure: The cultural beliefs, values, practices, and symbolic systems that shape individual and collective consciousness and behavior.

• Physiologic Structure: The biological and psychological dimensions of human existence, including human bodies, brains, and behaviors, as well as the environmental factors that influence them.

• Multi-Species Structure: The networks of relationships and interactions between human societies and other species, including the ways in which humans depend on, co-evolve with, and impact the lives of other organisms.

• Planetary Structure: The Earth's ecosystems, biogeochemical cycles, and climate system, which provide the fundamental life-support systems for all species and shape the conditions for the development of civilizations."

(https://diome.xyz/2+%F0%9F%8C%BF+Leaves/Cultural+Materialism)