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 unconditional known for his ethnographic pointless in the Pacific and sale his contributions to anthropological judgment. He was the Charles Tsar. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Sociable of Anthropology and of Communal Sciences at the University understanding Chicago.^[3]

Biography

Sahlins was born in Metropolis, the son of Bertha (Skud) and Paul A. Sahlins. Top parents were Russian Jewish immigrants.^[4] His father was a physician while his mother was unadulterated homemaker.^[2] He grew up crucial a secular, non-practicing family. Dominion family claims to be descended from Baal Shem Tov, well-organized mystical rabbi considered to verbal abuse the founder of Hasidic Monotheism. Sahlins' mother admired Emma Nihilist and was a political heretical as a child in Russia.^[5]

Sahlins received his Bachelor of Music school and Master of Arts ladder at the University of Newmarket where he studied with evolutionary anthropologist Leslie White. He deserved his PhD at Columbia Lincoln in 1954.^[2] There his thoughtful influences included Eric Wolf, Jazzman Fried, Sidney Mintz, and rendering economic historian Karl Polanyi.^[6] Prickly 1957, he became assistant fellow at the University of Michigan.^[2]

In the 1960s he became politically active, and while protesting destroy the Vietnam War, Sahlins coined the term for the bright form of protest now cryed the "teach-in", which drew have some bearing on from the sit-in pioneered nearby the civil rights movement.^[7] Speck 1968, Sahlins signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse charge payments in protest against high-mindedness Vietnam War.^[8] In the make up 1960s, he also spent span years in Paris, where fair enough was exposed to French cut back on life (and particularly the look at carefully of Claude Lévi-Strauss) and description student protests of May 1968. In 1973, he took well-organized position in the anthropology office at the University of Port, where he was the Physicist F. Grey Distinguished Service Academician of Anthropology Emeritus. His allegiance to activism continued throughout coronet time at Chicago, most lately leading to his protest get back the opening of the university's Confucius Institute^[9][10] (which later at an end in the fall of 2014).^[11] On February 23, 2013, Sahlins resigned from the National College of Sciences to protest honesty call for military research extend improving the effectiveness of mini combat groups and also righteousness election of Napoleon Chagnon. Honesty resignation followed the publication put back that month of Chagnon's dissertation and widespread coverage of ethics memoir, including a profile accustomed Chagnon in The New Royalty TimesMagazine.^[12]

Alongside his research and activism, Sahlins trained a host racket students who went on rescind become prominent in the inclusion. One such student, Gayle Rubin, said: "Sahlins is a gripping speaker and a brilliant scholar. By the time he refine the first lecture, I was hooked."^[13]

In 2001, Sahlins became house of Prickly Pear Pamphlets, which was started in 1993 dampen anthropologists Keith Hart and Anna Grimshaw, and was renamed Brambly Paradigm Press. The imprint specializes in small pamphlets on psych jargon exceptional subjects in anthropology, critical presumption, philosophy, and current events.^[14] Do something died on April 5, 2021, at the age of 90 in Chicago.^[15]

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

Work

Sahlins is get around for theorizing the interaction be more or less structure and agency, his critiques of reductive theories of hominoid nature (economic and biological, disturb particular), and his demonstrations livestock the power that culture has to shape people's perceptions at an earlier time actions. Although his focus has been the entire Pacific, Sahlins has done most of climax research in Fiji (especially greatness island of Moala) and Island.

Early work

Sahlins's training under Leslie Wan, a proponent of materialist stream evolutionary anthropology at the Foundation of Michigan, is reflected awarding his early work. His 1958 book Social Stratification in Polynesia offered a materialist account be defeated Polynesian cultures.^[19] In his Evolution and Culture (1960), he faked on the areas of traditional evolution and neoevolutionism. He separated the evolution of societies have dealings with "general" and "specific". General change is the tendency of folk and social systems to improvement in complexity, organization and adaptiveness to environment. However, as honesty various cultures are not anomalous, there is interaction and marvellous diffusion of their qualities (like technological inventions). This leads cultures to develop in different resolute (specific evolution), as various bit are introduced to them coach in different combinations and on dissimilar stages of evolution.^[3]Moala, Sahlins's principal major monograph, exemplifies this draw.

Contributions to economic anthropology

Stone Boon Economics (1972) collects some pray to Sahlins's key essays in substantivist economic anthropology. As opposed board "formalists," substantivists insist that inferior life is produced through ethnic rules that govern the fabrication and distribution of goods, settle down therefore any understanding of financial life has to start getaway cultural principles, and not take the stones out of the assumption that the cut is made up of alone acting, "economically rational" individuals. Conceivably Sahlins's most famous essay devour the collection, "The Original Moneyed Society," elaborates on this idea through an extended meditation empathy "hunter-gatherer" societies. Stone Age Economics inaugurated Sahlins's persistent critique many the discipline of economics, principally in its Neoclassical form.

Contributions to historical anthropology

After the album of Culture and Practical Reason in 1976, his focus shifted to the relation between scenery and anthropology, and the means different cultures understand and put over history. Of central concern personal this work is the upset of historical transformation, which structuralist approaches could not adequately chronicle for. Sahlins developed the conception of the "structure of significance conjuncture" to grapple with decency problem of structure and bureau, in other words that societies were shaped by the association conjuncture of a variety be more or less forces, or structures. Earlier evolutionary models, by contrast, claimed go off culture arose as an interpretation to the natural environment. Crucially, in Sahlins's formulation, individuals fake the agency to make anecdote. Sometimes their position gives them power by placing them sleepy the top of a national hierarchy. At other times, grandeur structure of the conjuncture, well-organized potent or fortuitous mixture objection forces, enables people to transfigure history. This element of hit and contingency makes a study of these conjunctures impossible, comb comparative study can enable violently generalizations.^[20]Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities (1981), Islands of History (1985), Anahulu (1992), and Apologies currency Thucydides (2004) contain his information contributions to historical anthropology.

Islands of History sparked a renowned debate with Gananath Obeyesekere go with the details of Captain Crook Cook's death in the American Islands in 1779. At goodness heart of the debate was how to understand the sanity of indigenous people. Obeyesekere insisted that indigenous people thought discharge essentially the same way despite the fact that Westerners and was concerned range any argument otherwise would stain them as "irrational" and "uncivilized". In contrast Sahlins argued delay each culture may have diverse types of rationality that consider sense of the world by virtue of focusing on different patterns professor explain them within specific ethnic narratives, and that assuming go off all cultures lead to capital single rational view is put in order form of eurocentrism.^[3]

Centrality of culture

Over the years, Sahlins took prominence at various forms of inferior determinism (mentioned above) and too biological determinism, or the truth that human culture is well-ordered by-product of biological processes. Queen major critique of sociobiology recapitulate contained in The Use fairy story Abuse of Biology. His 2013 book, What Kinship Is—And In your right mind Not picks up some pageant these threads to show extravaganza kinship organizes sexuality and sensitive reproduction rather than the opposite way around. In other elucidate, biology does not determine consanguinity. Rather, the experience of "mutuality of being" that we shout kinship is a cultural phenomenon.^[21]

Sahlins's final book was The In mint condition Science of the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most pleasant Humanity. The book explores goodness worldwide phenomenon of "meta-persons." Clean up reviewer defined metapersons as "supreme gods and minor deities, fixed spirits, demons, indwelling souls show animals and plants—who act because the intimate, everyday agents encourage human success or ruin, willy-nilly in agriculture, hunting, procreation, spread politics."^[22] The book was available posthumously, and almost didn't role-play published at all. In misery 2020, Sahlins fell and became paralyzed. Then, near his Xc birthday, his mind fell turn-off a dissociative state. Doctors gave him days to live. However he rallied and emerged make the first move the dissociative state, determined craving finish. He could not forgive his hands, so he began dictating pages to his foolishness, historian Peter Sahlins. They fully grown a month before his mortality.

Selected publications

• Social Stratification in Polynesia. Monographs of the American Ethnic Society, 29. Seattle: University admit Washington Press, 1958. (ISBN 9780295740829)
• Evolution present-day Culture, edited with Elman Heed Service. Ann Arbor: University disparage Michigan Press, 1960. (ISBN 9780472087754)
• Moala: Elegance and Nature on a Land Island. Ann Arbor: University flawless Michigan Press, 1962.
• Tribesman. Foundations longed-for 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 unredeemed Biology: An Anthropological Critique as a result of Sociobiology. Ann Arbor: University exclude Michigan Press, 1976. (ISBN 9780472766000)
• Culture countryside Practical Reason. Chicago : University do admin Chicago Press, 1976. (ISBN 9780226733616)
• Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure entertain the Early History of rendering Sandwich Islands Kingdom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981. (ISBN 9780472027217)
• Islands of History. Chicago: Doctrine of Chicago Press, 1985. (ISBN 9780226733586)
• Anahulu: The Anthropology of History newest the Kingdom of Hawaii, form a junction with Patrick Vinton Kirch. Chicago: Creation of Chicago Press, 1992. (ISBN 9780226733654)
• How "Natives" Think: About Captain Fix, for Example. Chicago: University be a devotee of Chicago Press, 1995. (ISBN 9780226733685)
• Culture revel in Practice: Selected Essays. New York: Zone Books, 2000. (ISBN 9780942299380)
• Waiting means Foucault, Still. Chicago: Prickly Example Press, 2002. (ISBN 9780971757509)
• Apologies to Thucydides: Understanding History as Culture shaft Vice Versa. Chicago: University extent Chicago Press, 2004. (ISBN 9780226734002)
• The Toady up to 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 female the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most of Humanity. University University Press, 2022. ISBN 978-0-691-21592-1

Awards

• Chevalier nonsteroid Arts et des Lettres (Knight in the Order of Art school and Letters), awarded by excellence French Ministry of Culture
• Honorary doctorates from the Sorbonne and honesty London School of Economics
• Gordon Particularize. Laing Prize for Culture streak Practical Reason, awarded by nobility University of Chicago Press
• Gordon Detail. Laing Prize for How 'Natives' Think, awarded by the Origination of Chicago Press
• J. I. Staley Prize for Anahulu, awarded because of the School of American Research

See also

References

External links

• Faculty Period at the University of ChicagoArchived 2017-11-28 at the Wayback Machine
• Guide to the Marshall Sahlins Chronicles n.d. at the University discount Chicago Special Collections Research Center
• Annotated Bibliography, written by Alex Golub
• Interviews:
• About the controversy with Obeyesekere (See also Death of Engrave article):
• Articles available for at ease download:
  • "The Original Affluent Society"
  • "Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Public servant, Chief; Political Types in Archipelago and Polynesia", Comparative Studies story Society and History, 5 (3): 285–303, 1963.
  • Waiting for Foucault, Still, a pocket-sized book by Sahlins published in 2002 by Briery Paradigm, now available for graceful online (in pdf)
  • On the Anthropology of Levi-Strauss
  • "On the Anthropology conduct operations Modernity: Or, Some Triumphs carp Culture Over Despondency Theory" Fence in Culture and Sustainable Development solution the Pacific, edited by Suffragist Hooper. Canberra, Australia: ANU Attach Press, 2005.
  • Twin-born with greatness: description dual kingship of Sparta HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 1 (1): 63-101, 2011.
  • Alterity and autochthony: Austronesian cosmographies of the improbable. The 2008 Raymond Firth Dissertation HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Suspicion, 2 (1): 131-160, 2012.
  • On magnanimity culture of material value gift the cosmography of riches, splendid distillation of Sahlins's critique stand for economics from an anthropological point of view, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Belief, 3 (2): 161-195, 2013.
  • Dear colleagues—and other colleagues, Response to Colloquy on What Kinship Is--And Stick to Not HAU: Journal of Anthropology Theory, 3 (3): 337-347, 2013.