Respondent

Bidochko Lesia Yaroslavivna

Theme

Cultural materialism as a methodology for politics research (the case of Ukrainian left parties)

Defence Date

21.05.2019

Annotation

This thesis is an attempt to critically review the theoretical and methodological foundations of cultural materialism. The formation of this current of scientific thought is considered against the backdrop of the post-war transformations of American cultural anthropology, theoretical debates between materialistic and idealistic approaches to the sociological and humanistic disciplines, and the politicization of the academic community. The thesis has showcased that, in the framework of T. Kuhn’s development of science, the theory of M. Harris should be addressed as an attempt to establish a new scientific paradigm. Crisis of American cultural anthropology in the 1960s and 1970s has been marked by different schools’ imposing conceptual discrepancies on the political stance.

The thesis suggests that the peculiarities of the theoretical and methodological apparatus of cultural materialism have emerged under the influence of both internal and external factors of the development of science. When elaborating his own model of the social system stratification, M. Harris has modified the Marxist model of “base” and “superstructure” in order to give the causal priority to the deterministic and measurable infrastructural indicators. From the one hand, the principle of infrastructural determinism has served a means of scientification of the sociological and humanitarian knowledge, and from the other hand, it was an expression of the social reformist “left center” of the American academic community. Exporting of the cost-benefit analysis methodology and system theories from biology, cybernetics, and economics, which have formed the basis of the cultural-materialistic model of social transformations, enabled to partially solve the conceptual objections of functionalism and refine social sciences through cooptation the achievements of the natural sciences.

The thesis considers arguments of the challengers of cultural materialistic methodology, voiced by various schools of humanities and social sciences. It is argued that the remarks, proposed by the representatives of the materialistic critics, are mostly consistent with the tasks of correlating the defensive belt of the cultural materialism’s research program. Sociobiologists have highlighted the need to engage the rational analysis models, structural Marxists have identified a number of conceptual shortcomings in M. Harris’s doctrine in terms of social stratification and ideology analysis, while representatives of the school of world-system analysis have pointed to the determining significance of the place in the world division of labor. To a large extent, materialistic criticism has been appropriated by M. Harris’s followers during their further theoretical developments and scientific researches thus increasing the heuristic potential of cultural materialism.

The thesis proposes a periodization of cultural materialism, based on the degree of development of the theoretical premises and methodology. Harris’s analysis of social transformations, which took place in the U.S. during the 1950-1980s, has triggered rejecting the neo-Malthusian understanding of the historical process and has led to a detailed study of the structural factors that predetermined these processes. Attention is focused on the constructive nature of the cultural and materialist identification of the socio-economic prerequisites of the cultural innovations, as well as on overcoming social conflicts in the postindustrial system transition era. Improvement of the cultural materialistic conceptual foundations have been facilitated by developing the principle of “flexible infrastructural determinism” and rethinking superstructural feedback idea. At the same time, cultural-materialistic studies of the social lower strata of the urban population of the U.S. have convincingly demonstrated the economic roots of marginalization and lumpenization. This thesis also deals with the political context of the cultural materialists’ investigations of the 1980s and 1990s, which have revealed social destructive results of the neoliberal reforms, dismantling of the social state by the Republicans’ administrations, and have created prerequisites for the support of the socially oriented “extreme centrism” of the Democrats by the academic community.

Analysis of the case of Ukraine’s left-wing parties’ development has allowed tracing peculiarities of applying cultural materialism in exploring political processes. Identification of causal relationships that determine political processes during democratic transition requires transferring causal priority from infrastructural factors to the structural elements that relate to the conceptual foundations of the late stage of the cultural-materialistic doctrine. The comparison of the results of the electoral struggle in Ukraine during the 1990s with similar processes within the countries from the former “socialist camp” allows us to assert the determinative role of the electoral model and nationalist ideologies as well as the unevenness of regional development and the specifics of inclusion in the world market. Influence of structural factors on the political processes is explained by the involvement of the theoretical concepts of Gramscianism. The modeling of electoral behavior based on the cost-benefit analysis allows us to explain the shift in the political preferences of the Ukrainian voters in the context of the economic recovery of the 2000s. The main causes of the marginalization of the “old left” after the Orange Revolution have been identified. The thesis is establishing the context of the dialectical interaction between infrastructural, structural, and superstructural levels of the social life, enabling elaborating recommendations on the socio-political sphere reforming, oriented towards the European approaches.

Key words: cultural materialism, cultural anthropology, scientific paradigm, infrastructural determinism, etic, emic, cost-benefit analysis, left-wing parties.

Contact Information

Phone: +38 964211100Email: bidochko.lesia@gmail.com

Dissertation File

Autosummary File