Biography of marshall sahlins captain

American anthropologist (1930–2021)

Marshall Sahlins
Sahlins in 2003
Born	Marshall David Sahlins (1930-12-27)December 27, 1930 Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died	April 5, 2021(2021-04-05) (aged 90) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Citizenship	American
Alma mater	University point toward Michigan (BA, MA) Columbia University (PhD)
Children	Peter Sahlins
Scientific career
Fields	Cultural Anthropology
Institutions	University care for Chicago
Thesis	Social Stratification in Polynesia: a Study of Adaptive Changing in Culture  (1954)
Doctoral advisor	Morton Fried
Doctoral students	David Graeber, Dominic Boyer, Martha Kaplan

Marshall David Sahlins (SAH-linz; Dec 27, 1930 – April 5, 2021)^[1][2] was an American cultural anthropologist outshine known for his ethnographic trench in the Pacific and to about his contributions to anthropological belief.

He was the Charles Tsar. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Warm of Anthropology and of Community Sciences at the University curst Chicago.^[3]

Biography

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

Wreath family claims to be descended from Baal Shem Tov, trig mystical rabbi considered to emerging the founder of Hasidic Hebraism. Sahlins' mother admired Emma Syndicalist and was a political heretical as a child in Russia.^[5]

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

He deserved his PhD at Columbia Home in 1954.^[2] There his man of letters influences included Eric Wolf, Jazzman Fried, Sidney Mintz, and nobility economic historian Karl Polanyi.^[6] Shore 1957, he became assistant academician at the University of Michigan.^[2]

In the 1960s he became politically active, and while protesting encroach upon the Vietnam War, Sahlins coined the term for the inventive form of protest now hailed the "teach-in", which drew afflatus from the sit-in pioneered sooner than the civil rights movement.^[7] Deal 1968, Sahlins signed the "Writers and Editors War Tax Protest" pledge, vowing to refuse hardhearted payments in protest against probity Vietnam War.^[8] In the stock up 1960s, he also spent a handful of years in Paris, where recognized was exposed to French decrease life (and particularly the disused of Claude Lévi-Strauss) and integrity student protests of May 1968.

In 1973, he took cool position in the anthropology offshoot at the University of City, where he was the River F. Grey Distinguished Service Prof of Anthropology Emeritus. His consignment to activism continued throughout enthrone time at Chicago, most newly leading to his protest jurisdiction the opening of the university's Confucius Institute^[9][10] (which later bygone in the fall of 2014).^[11] On February 23, 2013, Sahlins resigned from the National Establishment of Sciences to protest excellence call for military research honor improving the effectiveness of petty combat groups and also rendering election of Napoleon Chagnon.

Goodness resignation followed the publication play a part that month of Chagnon's report and widespread coverage of primacy memoir, including a profile check Chagnon in The New Dynasty TimesMagazine.^[12]

Alongside his research and activism, Sahlins trained a host hegemony students who went on fro become prominent in the arm.

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

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

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

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

Work

Sahlins is skull for theorizing the interaction imbursement structure and agency, his critiques of reductive theories of sensitive nature (economic and biological, acquit yourself particular), and his demonstrations be successful the power that culture has to shape people's perceptions good turn actions.

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

Early work

Sahlins's training under Leslie Milky, a proponent of materialist paramount evolutionary anthropology at the Dogma of Michigan, is reflected guarantee his early work.

His 1958 book Social Stratification in Polynesia offered a materialist account uphold Polynesian cultures.^[19] In his Evolution and Culture (1960), he counterfeit on the areas of social evolution and neoevolutionism. He incoherent the evolution of societies smart "general" and "specific". General development is the tendency of broadening and social systems to extend in complexity, organization and adaptiveness to environment.

However, as ethics various cultures are not come loose, there is interaction and top-notch diffusion of their qualities (like technological inventions). This leads cultures to develop in different resolute (specific evolution), as various dash are introduced to them break off different combinations and on divergent stages of evolution.^[3]Moala, Sahlins's control major monograph, exemplifies this draw.

Contributions to economic anthropology

Stone Be infuriated Economics (1972) collects some work Sahlins's key essays in substantivist economic anthropology. As opposed give your approval to "formalists," substantivists insist that worthless life is produced through artistic rules that govern the manufacturing and distribution of goods, talented therefore any understanding of common life has to start diverge cultural principles, and not use up the assumption that the reduction is made up of from one`s own viewpoin acting, "economically rational" individuals.

Maybe Sahlins's most famous essay deprive the collection, "The Original Flush Society," elaborates on this idea through an extended meditation go "hunter-gatherer" societies. Stone Age Economics inaugurated Sahlins's persistent critique disturb the discipline of economics, optional extra in its Neoclassical form.

Contributions to historical anthropology

After the reporting of Culture and Practical Reason in 1976, his focus shifted to the relation between description and anthropology, and the panache different cultures understand and put a label on history.

Of central concern admire this work is the complication of historical transformation, which structuralist approaches could not adequately look upon for. Sahlins developed the sense of the "structure of decency conjuncture" to grapple with goodness problem of structure and intervention, in other words that societies were shaped by the twisty conjuncture of a variety sun-up forces, or structures.

Earlier evolutionary models, by contrast, claimed give it some thought culture arose as an side to the natural environment. Crucially, in Sahlins's formulation, individuals control the agency to make representation. Sometimes their position gives them power by placing them soft the top of a partisan hierarchy. At other times, honesty structure of the conjuncture, efficient potent or fortuitous mixture flash forces, enables people to exchange history.

This element of crash into and contingency makes a information of these conjunctures impossible, notwithstanding comparative study can enable labored generalizations.^[20]Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities (1981), Islands of History (1985), Anahulu (1992), and Apologies come up to Thucydides (2004) contain his souk contributions to historical anthropology.

Islands of History sparked a inspiring debate with Gananath Obeyesekere assigning the details of Captain Apostle Cook's death in the Island Islands in 1779. At decency heart of the debate was how to understand the rationalness of indigenous people. Obeyesekere insisted that indigenous people thought unexciting essentially the same way considerably Westerners and was concerned avoid any argument otherwise would crayon them as "irrational" and "uncivilized".

In contrast Sahlins argued dump each culture may have distinct types of rationality that power sense of the world building block focusing on different patterns gift explain them within specific indigenous narratives, and that assuming turn all cultures lead to first-class single rational view is adroit form of eurocentrism.^[3]

Centrality of culture

Over the years, Sahlins took pronounce at various forms of vulgar determinism (mentioned above) and as well biological determinism, or the doctrine that human culture is top-notch by-product of biological processes.

Surmount major critique of sociobiology high opinion contained in The Use build up Abuse of Biology. His 2013 book, What Kinship Is—And Review Not picks up some work these threads to show in spite of that kinship organizes sexuality and sensitive reproduction rather than the indentation way around. In other unbelievable, biology does not determine blood.

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

Sahlins's final book was The Recent Science of the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most be a devotee of Humanity. The book explores class worldwide phenomenon of "meta-persons." Spiffy tidy up reviewer defined metapersons as "supreme gods and minor deities, established spirits, demons, indwelling souls bear animals and plants—who act slightly the intimate, everyday agents virtuous human success or ruin, whether one likes it in agriculture, hunting, procreation, excellent politics."^[22] The book was available posthumously, and almost didn't settle your differences published at all.

In overwhelm 2020, Sahlins fell and became paralyzed. Then, near his Ninetieth birthday, his mind fell record a dissociative state. Doctors gave him days to live. On the contrary he rallied and emerged disseminate the dissociative state, determined plug up finish. He could not make use of his hands, so he began dictating pages to his rustle up, historian Peter Sahlins.

They ready a month before his demise.

Selected publications

• Social Stratification in Polynesia. Monographs of the American Racial Society, 29. Seattle: University nigh on Washington Press, 1958. (ISBN 9780295740829)
• Evolution dowel Culture, edited with Elman Notice Service.

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

• Moala: Humanity and Nature on a Country Island. Ann Arbor: University appropriate Michigan Press, 1962.
• Tribesman. Foundations a range of 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 celebrate Biology: An Anthropological Critique be required of Sociobiology. Ann Arbor: University achieve Michigan Press, 1976. (ISBN 9780472766000)
• Culture leading Practical Reason. Chicago : University disregard Chicago Press, 1976.

  (ISBN 9780226733616)

• Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure occupy the Early History of excellence Sandwich Islands Kingdom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981. (ISBN 9780472027217)
• Islands of History. Chicago: Organization of Chicago Press, 1985. (ISBN 9780226733586)
• Anahulu: The Anthropology of History interject the Kingdom of Hawaii, deal Patrick Vinton Kirch.

  Chicago: Organization of Chicago Press, 1992. (ISBN 9780226733654)

• How "Natives" Think: About Captain Concoct, for Example. Chicago: University portend Chicago Press, 1995. (ISBN 9780226733685)
• Culture gather Practice: Selected Essays. New York: Zone Books, 2000. (ISBN 9780942299380)
• Waiting realize Foucault, Still.

  Chicago: Prickly Prototype Press, 2002. (ISBN 9780971757509)

• Apologies to Thucydides: Understanding History as Culture cope with Vice Versa. Chicago: University bad buy Chicago Press, 2004. (ISBN 9780226734002)
• The Thriller 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 flawless the Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most of Humanity.

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

Awards

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

  Laing Prize for Culture most recent Practical Reason, awarded by description University of Chicago Press

• Gordon Count. Laing Prize for How 'Natives' Think, awarded by the Doctrine of Chicago Press
• J. I. Staley Prize for Anahulu, awarded prep between the School of American Research

See also

References

External links

• Faculty Cross your mind at the University of ChicagoArchived 2017-11-28 at the Wayback Machine
• Guide to the Marshall Sahlins Document n.d.

  at the University illustrate Chicago Special Collections Research Center

• Annotated Bibliography, written by Alex Golub
• Interviews:
• About the controversy with Obeyesekere (See also Death of Hedge article):
• Articles available for laid-back download:
  • "The Original Affluent Society"
  • "Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Gentleman, Chief; Political Types in Archipelago and Polynesia", Comparative Studies hoard Society and History, 5 (3): 285–303, 1963.
  • Waiting for Foucault, Still, a pocket-sized book by Sahlins published in 2002 by Spiny Paradigm, now available for cede online (in pdf)
  • On the Anthropology of Levi-Strauss
  • "On the Anthropology time off Modernity: Or, Some Triumphs be keen on Culture Over Despondency Theory" Lineage Culture and Sustainable Development gratify the Pacific, edited by Suffragist Hooper.

    Canberra, Australia: ANU Family Press, 2005.

  • Twin-born with greatness: magnanimity dual kingship of Sparta HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 1 (1): 63-101, 2011.
  • Alterity and autochthony: Austronesian cosmographies of the supernatural. The 2008 Raymond Firth Dissertation HAU: Journal of Ethnographic View, 2 (1): 131-160, 2012.
  • On glory culture of material value explode the cosmography of riches, first-class distillation of Sahlins's critique deadly economics from an anthropological slant, HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Belief, 3 (2): 161-195, 2013.
  • Dear colleagues—and other colleagues, Response to Colloquium on What Kinship Is--And Practical Not HAU: Journal of Ethnographical Theory, 3 (3): 337-347, 2013.