Marshall Sahlins

1930 -

Marshall Sahlins is one of the most prominent American anthropologists of our time. He holds the title of Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago, where he currently teaches.

Sahlins grew up in Chicago and did his undergraduate work at the University of Michigan, and his graduate work both there and also at Columbia University. He then taught anthropology at both schools before returning home and joining the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1973.

Sahlins first drew attention to himself as an ethnographer and historian of Polynesia. His theories about the history of European contact in Polynesia sparked major anthropological debates, and even landed in the pages of several national news magazines. Sahlins is also well-known for his work with the peoples of Hawaii, and he continues his work on Native peoples and culture to this day, giving many lectures to students and faculty across the U.S. and in Europe and Asia. His field research has taken him to such exotic places as Turkey, Fiji, and New Guinea, and he has been a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1976.

In recent lectures at Cornell University and other colleges, Sahlins has been speaking about our collective interpretations of culture. Entitled "Sentimental Pessimism and Ethnographic Experience: Why Culture Is Not A Disappearing Object," his lectures pertain to common misconceptions of threats to the idea of culture, what is really happening and what it means to anthropology as a discipline. Sahlins resolves that culture will always exist, even if it is in different and innovative forms. He thinks that because culture has historically been used to segregate, dominate and repress, people are morally suspicious of it and this leads to a stereotypical view of a culture as a "politic of distinction." Instead of the common thought that individual cultures will be swallowed up in the new global order, Sahlins argues that instead there will a novel process of cultural recuperation, and culture will live, in new terms, which is exciting for anthropology. He says that the view that Western civilization has devastated the cultures of indigenous populations does not take into account cultural resistance.

"Homogeneity and heterogeneity, modernity and tradition are no longer opposed terms," said Sahlins, "...and anthropology must seize this opportunity of renewing itself through these new patterns of human life."

In Sahlins' new book, How 'Natives' Think: About Captain Cook, For Example, the esteemed anthropologist addresses interesting questions such as whether or not Western scholars can ever really speak for the voices of non-Western peoples, and if the Hawaiians really did mistake Captain Cook for a god in 1779. This is really the culmination of Sahlins' extremely extensive ethnohistorical research on the Hawaiian peoples, and is a "reaffirmation for understanding difference."

How Natives Think has impressed many people. Brian Fagan of the Washington Post even said this: "This analytical masterpiece makes a mockery of the wilder excesses of political correctness and what often passes today for revisionist history in scholarly circles. Anyone seriously interested in anthropology and history should read this timely book."

Also, this book has sparked a major debate about this issue between Sahlins and another anthropologist, Gananath Obeyesekere.

Books and Articles by Marshall Sahlins
An Affluent Society
Social Stratification in Polynesia
Moala: Culture and Nation on a Fijian Island
Evolution and Culture
The Use and Abuse of Biology
Culture and Practical Reason
Stone Age Economics
Waiting For Foucault
Islands of History
Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Sahlins

Written by students in an Introduction to Anthropology course at MSU-Mankato

Edited by Amy Landin, 2007