ABSTRACT
This chapter examines three approaches in mid-to late-twentieth-century anthropology that adopt an idealist perspective. The common feature of all materialist theories is the analytical priority they assign to the material conditions that members of a given culture confront. Idealists would not dispute the fact that culture must solve the problems of survival. What they would disagree with is that culture is merely a way of solving those problems, or that it can be explained in terms of the material conditions facing its members. In anthropology, idealism refers to any theory that suggests that behavior is governed by beliefs, meanings, and values that are to a greater or lesser degree independent of the material conditions of life. Indeed, many idealists would hold that these material conditions themselves are influenced or determined by belief.1 Culture from these perspectives cannot be explained in terms of the biological needs of people or the manner in which they satisfy those needs.
