Similar technologies in similar environments do not force similar cultural systems.

Evidence

As for the cultural materialists, Marvin Harris (1979) is very clear about what primarily drives the development of social-cultural systems: technologies applied to ecosystems. Harris claims that, “similar technologies applied to similar environments tend to produce similar arrangements of labor in production and distribution, and that these in turn call forth similar kinds of social groupings, which justify and coordinate their activities by means of similar systems of values and beliefs” (Harris 1968: 4). In later work this becomes the “principle of infrastructural determinism” (Harris 1979: 55–56). Harris maintains that the interface between the economies and ecologies is the primary force in the evolution of human societies and, thus, the differences among human societies. — Joe Henrich and Robert Boyd, The Evolution of Conformist…, 106

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the principle of infrastructural determinism as the claim that technology-environment interface drives social-cultural system development.
• XREF: Establishes the theoretical foil (cultural materialism / environmental determinism) that the paper’s conformist-transmission model aims to critique — relevant to the reader investigating how Henrich starts from these debates. — connects to: Similar environments and technologies produce divergent cultural systems. — Joe Henrich and Robert Boyd, The Evolution of Conformist…, 9; Culture does not divide into one coherent culture per community — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2: Identity…, 369; Cultural homogeneity has a material basis, not an essentialist one. — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 405 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Several non-Western societies modernized without adopting Western culture #exemplifies (0.88)
• Technology’s cultural effects are mediated by late capitalism not deterministically #corroborates (0.82) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 410
• Immediacy across culture is overdetermined by economic conditions, not endogenous to theory #corroborates (0.78) — Anna Kornbluh, Immediacy, or The Style of Too Late…, 257
• Culture is a field of mutually and unevenly determining forces, not base and superstructure #corroborates (0.78) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 187
• Cultural homogeneity has a material basis, not an essentialist one. #qualifies (0.76) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 405
• Culture does not divide into one coherent culture per community #expands (0.74) — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 369
• Reintroducing context does not necessarily align a network with physical place. #corroborates (0.74) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 582