Biography
Marshall Sahlins was born in Chicago, the son of Bertha (Skud) and Paul A. Sahlins. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants. His father was a doctor while his mother was a homemaker. He grew up in a secular, non-practicing family. His family claims to be descended from Baal Shem Tov, a mystical rabbi considered to be the founder of Hasidic Judaism. Sahlins' mother admiredWork
Sahlins is known for theorizing the interaction of structure and agency, his critiques of reductive theories of human nature (economic and biological, in particular), and his demonstrations of the power that culture has to shape people's perceptions and actions. Although his focus has been the entire Pacific, Sahlins has done most of his research in Fiji and Hawaii.Early work
Sahlins's training under Leslie White, a proponent of materialist and evolutionary anthropology at the University of Michigan, is reflected in his early work. His 1958 book ''Social Stratification in Polynesia'' offered a materialist account of Polynesian cultures. In his ''Evolution and Culture'' (1960), he touched on the areas of cultural evolution and neoevolutionism. He divided the evolution of societies into "general" and "specific". General evolution is the tendency of cultural and social systems to increase in complexity, organization and adaptiveness to environment. However, as the various cultures are not isolated, there is interaction and a Diffusionism, diffusion of their qualities (like technological inventions). This leads cultures to develop in different ways (specific evolution), as various elements are introduced to them in different combinations and on different stages of evolution. ''Moala'', Sahlins's first major monograph, exemplifies this approach.Contributions to economic anthropology
''Stone Age Economics'' (1972) collects some of Sahlins's key essays in Formalist–substantivist debate, substantivist economic anthropology. As opposed to "formalists," substantivists insist that economic life is produced through cultural rules that govern the production and distribution of goods, and therefore any understanding of economic life has to start from cultural principles, and not from the assumption that the economy is made up of independently acting, "economically rational" individuals. Perhaps Sahlins's most famous essay from the collection, "Original affluent society, The Original Affluent Society," elaborates on this theme through an extended meditation on "hunter-gatherer" societies. ''Stone Age Economics'' inaugurated Sahlins's persistent critique of the discipline of economics, particularly in its Neoclassical economics, Neoclassical form.Contributions to historical anthropology
After the publication of ''Culture and Practical Reason'' in 1976, his focus shifted to the relation between Historical anthropology, history and anthropology, and the way different cultures understand and make history. Of central concern in this work is the problem of historical transformation, which Structuralism, structuralist approaches could not adequately account for. Sahlins developed the concept of the "structure of the conjuncture" to grapple with the problem of structure and agency, in other words that societies were shaped by the complex conjuncture of a variety of forces, or structures. Earlier evolutionary models, by contrast, claimed that culture arose as an adaptation to the natural environment. Crucially, in Sahlins's formulation, individuals have the agency to make history. Sometimes their position gives them power by placing them at the top of a political hierarchy. At other times, the structure of the conjuncture, a potent or fortuitous mixture of forces, enables people to transform history. This element of chance and contingency makes a science of these conjunctures impossible, though comparative study can enable some generalizations. ''Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities'' (1981), ''Islands of History'' (1985), ''Anahulu'' (1992), and ''Apologies to Thucydides'' (2004) contain his main contributions to historical anthropology. ''Islands of History'' sparked Sahlins–Obeyesekere debate, a notable debate with Gananath Obeyesekere over the details of Captain Cook, Captain James Cook's death in the Hawaiian Islands in 1779. At the heart of the debate was how to understand the rationality of indigenous people. Obeyesekere insisted that indigenous people thought in essentially the same way as Westerners and was concerned that any argument otherwise would paint them as "irrational" and "uncivilized". In contrast Sahlins argued that each culture may have different types of rationality that make sense of the world by focusing on different patterns and explain them within specific cultural narratives, and that assuming that all cultures lead to a single rational view is a form of eurocentrism.Centrality of culture
Over the years, Sahlins took aim at various forms of economic determinism (mentioned above) and also biological determinism, or the idea that human culture is a by-product of biological processes. His major critique of sociobiology is contained in ''The Use and Abuse of Biology''. His 2013 book, ''What Kinship Is—And Is Not'' picks up some of these threads to show how kinship organizes sexuality and human reproduction rather than the other way around. In other words, biology does not determine kinship. Rather, the experience of "mutuality of being" that we call kinship is a cultural phenomenon.Selected publications
* ''Social Stratification in Polynesia''. Monographs of the American Ethnological Society, 29. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1958. () * ''Evolution and Culture'', edited with Elman R Service. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960. () * ''Moala: Culture and Nature on a Fijian Island''. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962. * ''Tribesman''. Foundations of American Anthropology Series. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968. * '. New York: de Gruyter, 1972. () * ''The Use and Abuse of Biology: An Anthropological Critique of Sociobiology''. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1976. () * ''Culture and Practical Reason''. Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1976. () * ''Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom''. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981. () * ''Islands of History''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. () * ''Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii'', with Patrick Vinton Kirch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. () * ''How "Natives" Think: About Captain Cook, for Example''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. () * ''Culture in Practice: Selected Essays''. New York: Zone Books, 2000. () * ''Waiting for Foucault, Still''. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2002. () * ''Apologies to Thucydides: Understanding History as Culture and Vice Versa''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. () * ''The Western Illusion of Human Nature''. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2008. () * ''What Kinship Is–and Is Not''. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. () * ''Confucius Institute: Academic Malware''. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2015. () * ''On Kings'', with David Graeber, HAU, 2017 () * ''The New Science of the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most of Humanity''. Princeton University Press, 2022.Awards
*Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres (Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters), awarded by the French Ministry of Culture *Honorary doctorates from the Sorbonne and the London School of Economics *Gordon J. Laing Prize for ''Culture and Practical Reason'', awarded by the University of Chicago Press *Gordon J. Laing Prize for ''How 'Natives' Think'', awarded by the University of Chicago Press *J. I. Staley Prize for ''Anahulu'', awarded by the School of American ResearchSee also
* Stranger King * Economic anthropology * Gift economy * Hunter-gatherer * Original affluent societyReferences
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