In his work, he combined Karl Marx's emphasis on the forces of production with Thomas Malthus's insights on the impact of demographic factors on other parts of the sociocultural system.
After the publication of The Rise of Anthropological Theory in 1968, Harris helped focus the interest of anthropologists in cultural-ecological relationships for the rest of his career.
He became a regular fixture at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, where he would subject scholars to intense questioning from the floor, podium, or bar.
Harris was an avid reader who loved to spend hours at the race track and he eventually developed a complex mathematical betting system that was successful enough to provide support for his wife, Madelyn, and him during his years of graduate school.
[1] The book, affectionately known as "The RAT" among graduate students, is a synthesis of classical and contemporary macrosocial theory.
Since the aim of science, Harris writes: is the discovery of the maximum amount of order in its field of inquiry, priority for theory building logically settles upon those sectors under the greatest direct restraints from the givens of nature.
To endow the mental superstructure [ideas and ideologies] with strategic priority, as the cultural idealists advocate, is a bad bet.
The terms "emic" and "etic" originated in the work of missionary-linguist Kenneth Pike,[2] despite the latter's conceptual differences with Harris' constructs.
[2][3] Harris' early contributions to major theoretical issues include his revision of biological surplus theory in obesity formation.
[4] Along with Michael Harner, Harris is one of the scholars most associated with the suggestion that Aztec cannibalism was widespread and resulted from protein deficiency in their diet.
Harris' Why Nothing Works: The Anthropology of Daily Life (1981; originally titled America Now: the Anthropology of a Changing Culture) applies concepts from cultural materialism to the explanation of such social developments in late twentieth century United States as inflation, the entry of large numbers of women into the paid labor force, marital stability, and shoddy products.
The Washington Post described him as "a storm center in his field", and the Los Angeles Times accused him of "overgeneralized assumptions".