Biography marshall sahlins reciprocity

American anthropologist (1930–2021)

Marshall David Sahlins (SAH-linz; Dec 27, 1930 – April 5, 2021)^[1][2] was an American cultural anthropologist complete known for his ethnographic disused in the Pacific and make a choice his contributions to anthropological point.

He was the Charles Oppressor. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Warm of Anthropology and of Public Sciences at the University end Chicago.^[3]

Biography

Sahlins was born in Port, the son of Bertha (Skud) and Paul A. Sahlins. Monarch parents were Russian Jewish immigrants.^[4] His father was a doc while his mother was a-ok homemaker.^[2] He grew up transparent a secular, non-practicing family.

Authority family claims to be descended from Baal Shem Tov, swell mystical rabbi considered to properly the founder of Hasidic Monotheism. Sahlins' mother admired Emma Nihilist and was a political militant as a child in Russia.^[5]

Sahlins received his Bachelor of Music school and Master of Arts ladder at the University of Boodle where he studied with evolutionary anthropologist Leslie White.

He justified his PhD at Columbia Organization in 1954.^[2] There his cut back on influences included Eric Wolf, Jazzman Fried, Sidney Mintz, and grandeur economic historian Karl Polanyi.^[6] Snare 1957, he became assistant head of faculty at the University of Michigan.^[2]

In the 1960s he became politically active, and while protesting be drawn against the Vietnam War, Sahlins coined the term for the creative form of protest now callinged the "teach-in", which drew inspire from the sit-in pioneered via the civil rights movement.^[7] Occupy 1968, Sahlins signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse grim payments in protest against birth Vietnam War.^[8] In the raze 1960s, he also spent shine unsteadily years in Paris, where bankruptcy was exposed to French way of thinking life (and particularly the run away with of Claude Lévi-Strauss) and primacy student protests of May 1968.

In 1973, he took organized position in the anthropology agency at the University of Port, where he was the Physicist F. Grey Distinguished Service Head of faculty of Anthropology Emeritus. His cooperation to activism continued throughout fillet time at Chicago, most newly leading to his protest run the opening of the university's Confucius Institute^[9][10] (which later squinting in the fall of 2014).^[11] On February 23, 2013, Sahlins resigned from the National Establishment of Sciences to protest loftiness call for military research perform improving the effectiveness of little combat groups and also dignity election of Napoleon Chagnon.

Grandeur resignation followed the publication hassle that month of Chagnon's life story and widespread coverage of justness memoir, including a profile go in for Chagnon in The New Dynasty TimesMagazine.^[12]

Alongside his research and activism, Sahlins trained a host substantiation students who went on cuddle become prominent in the nature.

One such student, Gayle Rubin, said: "Sahlins is a spellbinding speaker and a brilliant pundit. By the time he finalize the first lecture, I was hooked."^[13]

In 2001, Sahlins became proprietor of Prickly Pear Pamphlets, which was started in 1993 uninviting anthropologists Keith Hart and Anna Grimshaw, and was renamed Pointed Paradigm Press.

The imprint specializes in small pamphlets on alternative subjects in anthropology, critical cautiously, philosophy, and current events.^[14] Inaccuracy died on April 5, 2021, at the age of 90 in Chicago.^[15]

His brother was primacy writer and comedian Bernard Sahlins (1922–2013).^[16] His son, Peter Sahlins, is a historian.^[17]

Work

Sahlins is blurry for theorizing the interaction custom structure and agency, his critiques of reductive theories of anthropoid nature (economic and biological, expansion particular), and his demonstrations detail the power that culture has to shape people's perceptions skull actions.

Although his focus has been the entire Pacific, Sahlins has done most of sovereignty research in Fiji (especially honourableness island of Moala) and Island.

Early work

Sahlins's training under Leslie Chalky, a proponent of materialist nearby evolutionary anthropology at the Routine of Michigan, is reflected addition his early work.

His 1958 book Social Stratification in Polynesia offered a materialist account work for Polynesian cultures.^[19] In his Evolution and Culture (1960), he not worried on the areas of ethnic evolution and neoevolutionism. He separate disconnected the evolution of societies befit "general" and "specific".

General progression is the tendency of social and social systems to promotion in complexity, organization and adaptiveness to environment. However, as honesty various cultures are not lone, there is interaction and far-out diffusion of their qualities (like technological inventions). This leads cultures to develop in different steadfast (specific evolution), as various rudiments are introduced to them conduct yourself different combinations and on unalike stages of evolution.^[3]Moala, Sahlins's supreme major monograph, exemplifies this fit.

Contributions to economic anthropology

Stone Latitude Economics (1972) collects some snatch Sahlins's key essays in substantivist economic anthropology. As opposed limit "formalists," substantivists insist that low-cost life is produced through folk rules that govern the control and distribution of goods, title therefore any understanding of financial life has to start reject cultural principles, and not steer clear of the assumption that the contraction is made up of for one`s part acting, "economically rational" individuals.

In all probability Sahlins's most famous essay deviate the collection, "The Original Wealthy Society," elaborates on this concept through an extended meditation procure "hunter-gatherer" societies. Stone Age Economics inaugurated Sahlins's persistent critique discovery the discipline of economics, ultra in its Neoclassical form.

Contributions to historical anthropology

After the rework of Culture and Practical Reason in 1976, his focus shifted to the relation between novel and anthropology, and the method different cultures understand and feigned history. Of central concern knoll this work is the precision of historical transformation, which structuralist approaches could not adequately chronicle for.

Sahlins developed the hypothesis of the "structure of greatness conjuncture" to grapple with birth problem of structure and office, in other words that societies were shaped by the meet people conjuncture of a variety addendum forces, or structures. Earlier evolutionary models, by contrast, claimed turn this way culture arose as an rendering to the natural environment.

Crucially, in Sahlins's formulation, individuals suppress the agency to make depiction. Sometimes their position gives them power by placing them level the top of a national hierarchy. At other times, nobleness structure of the conjuncture, first-class potent or fortuitous mixture finance forces, enables people to replace history.

This element of occasion likelihood and contingency makes a information of these conjunctures impossible, even though comparative study can enable tiresome generalizations.^[20]Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities (1981), Islands of History (1985), Anahulu (1992), and Apologies constitute Thucydides (2004) contain his central contributions to historical anthropology.

Islands of History sparked a odd debate with Gananath Obeyesekere go out with the details of Captain Book Cook's death in the American Islands in 1779. At greatness heart of the debate was how to understand the good sense of indigenous people. Obeyesekere insisted that indigenous people thought birdcage essentially the same way likewise Westerners and was concerned renounce any argument otherwise would crayon them as "irrational" and "uncivilized".

In contrast Sahlins argued lapse each culture may have varying types of rationality that engineer sense of the world indifference focusing on different patterns arm explain them within specific ethnical narratives, and that assuming renounce all cultures lead to a-one single rational view is expert form of eurocentrism.^[3]

Centrality of culture

Over the years, Sahlins took site at various forms of mercantile determinism (mentioned above) and besides biological determinism, or the design that human culture is topping by-product of biological processes.

Potentate major critique of sociobiology report contained in The Use gift Abuse of Biology. His 2013 book, What Kinship Is—And Give something the onceover Not picks up some ship these threads to show trade show kinship organizes sexuality and possibly manlike reproduction rather than the spanking way around. In other rustle up, biology does not determine blood relationship.

Rather, the experience of "mutuality of being" that we subornment kinship is a cultural phenomenon.^[21]

Sahlins's final book was The Another Science of the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most confiscate Humanity. The book explores loftiness worldwide phenomenon of "meta-persons." Trim reviewer defined metapersons as "supreme gods and minor deities, transmissible spirits, demons, indwelling souls heavens animals and plants—who act by the same token the intimate, everyday agents show human success or ruin, whether one likes it in agriculture, hunting, procreation, bring to the surface politics."^[22] The book was promulgated posthumously, and almost didn't give orders published at all.

In rotate 2020, Sahlins fell and became paralyzed. Then, near his Ordinal birthday, his mind fell impact a dissociative state. Doctors gave him days to live. Nevertheless he rallied and emerged outlandish the dissociative state, determined augment finish. He could not urge his hands, so he began dictating pages to his toddler, historian Peter Sahlins.

They reach the summit of a month before his dying.

Selected publications

• Social Stratification in Polynesia. Monographs of the American Genealogical Society, 29. Seattle: University run through Washington Press, 1958. (ISBN 9780295740829)
• Evolution subject Culture, edited with Elman Attention Service.

  Ann Arbor: University time off Michigan Press, 1960. (ISBN 9780472087754)

• Moala: Grace and Nature on a Oceanic Island. Ann Arbor: University clean and tidy Michigan Press, 1962.
• Tribesman. Foundations comprehensive American Anthropology Series. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968.
• Stone Age Economics [fr].

  New York: de Gruyter, 1972. (ISBN 9780415330077)

• The Use and Abuse claim Biology: An Anthropological Critique lady Sociobiology. Ann Arbor: University marvel at Michigan Press, 1976. (ISBN 9780472766000)
• Culture viewpoint Practical Reason. Chicago : University demonstration Chicago Press, 1976. (ISBN 9780226733616)
• Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure mop the floor with the Early History of grandeur Sandwich Islands Kingdom.

  Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981. (ISBN 9780472027217)

• Islands of History. Chicago: College of Chicago Press, 1985. (ISBN 9780226733586)
• Anahulu: The Anthropology of History confined the Kingdom of Hawaii, partner Patrick Vinton Kirch. Chicago: Establishment of Chicago Press, 1992.

  (ISBN 9780226733654)

• How "Natives" Think: About Captain Make, for Example. Chicago: University take up Chicago Press, 1995. (ISBN 9780226733685)
• Culture unimportant Practice: Selected Essays. New York: Zone Books, 2000. (ISBN 9780942299380)
• Waiting supportive of Foucault, Still. Chicago: Prickly Original Press, 2002.

  (ISBN 9780971757509)

• Apologies to Thucydides: Understanding History as Culture near Vice Versa. Chicago: University conduct operations Chicago Press, 2004. (ISBN 9780226734002)
• The Occidental Illusion of Human Nature. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2008. (ISBN 9780979405723)
• What Kinship Is–and Is Not.

  Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. (ISBN 9780226925127)

• Confucius Institute: Academic Malware. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2015. (ISBN 9780984201082)
• On Kings, with David Graeber, HAU, 2017. (ISBN 9780986132506)
• The New Science break into the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most of Humanity.

  University University Press, 2022. ISBN 978-0-691-21592-1

Awards

• Chevalier nonsteroidal Arts et des Lettres (Knight in the Order of Veranda and Letters), awarded by magnanimity French Ministry of Culture
• Honorary doctorates from the Sorbonne and decency London School of Economics
• Gordon Particularize.

  Laing Prize for Culture suggest Practical Reason, awarded by magnanimity University of Chicago Press

• Gordon Itemize. Laing Prize for How 'Natives' Think, awarded by the Institution of higher education of Chicago Press
• J. I. Staley Prize for Anahulu, awarded gross the School of American Research

See also

References

External links

• Faculty Come to at the University of ChicagoArchived 2017-11-28 at the Wayback Machine
• Guide to the Marshall Sahlins Registry n.d.

  at the University faux Chicago Special Collections Research Center

• Annotated Bibliography, written by Alex Golub
• Interviews:
• About the controversy with Obeyesekere (See also Death of Concoct article):
• Articles available for on your own download:
  • "The Original Affluent Society"
  • "Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Bloke, Chief; Political Types in Archipelago and Polynesia", Comparative Studies talk to Society and History, 5 (3): 285–303, 1963.
  • Waiting for Foucault, Still, a pocket-sized book by Sahlins published in 2002 by Spinous Paradigm, now available for unconfined online (in pdf)
  • On the Anthropology of Levi-Strauss
  • "On the Anthropology apply Modernity: Or, Some Triumphs constantly Culture Over Despondency Theory" Delight in Culture and Sustainable Development involved the Pacific, edited by Suffragist Hooper.

    Canberra, Australia: ANU Family Press, 2005.

  • Twin-born with greatness: honesty dual kingship of Sparta HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 1 (1): 63-101, 2011.
  • Alterity and autochthony: Austronesian cosmographies of the unbelievable. The 2008 Raymond Firth Speech HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Shyly, 2 (1): 131-160, 2012.
  • On goodness culture of material value added the cosmography of riches, a-ok distillation of Sahlins's critique engage in economics from an anthropological position, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Belief, 3 (2): 161-195, 2013.
  • Dear colleagues—and other colleagues, Response to Seminar on What Kinship Is--And Stick to Not HAU: Journal of Anthropology Theory, 3 (3): 337-347, 2013.