Sahlins je americký antropológ známy svojou etnografickou prácou v Pacifiku a svojím prínosom k antropológii. Jeho dielo sa sústreďuje na hlboké pochopenie ľudských kultúr a ich zmien, pričom skúma, ako sa ľudia na rôznych miestach sveta adaptujú a vyvíjajú v kontexte svojej vlastnej histórie a sociálnych štruktúr. Sahlinsov analytický prístup ponúka čitateľom prenikavý pohľad na zložitosť ľudského správania a na kultúrnu logiku, ktorá ho riadi. Jeho vplyv na antropológiu a spoločenské vedy je trvalý.
Presents Thucydides' classic work on the history of the Peloponnesian War that is the root of Western conceptions of history - including the ethnocentric idea that Thucydides' historiography was universally valid, applicable to all societies at all times.
Offers, on its surface, a simple theoretical argument, laid out in the titles of its mere two chapters: kinship is culture, not biology. But along the way to proving his point, the author engages an array of thinkers, from Aristotle to Emile Durkheim to Marilyn Strathern, as well as an array of ethnographic examples from around the globe.
Since its first publication over forty years ago Marshall Sahlins's Stone Age Economics has established itself as a classic of modern anthropology and arguably one of the founding works of anthropological economics. Ambitiously tackling the nature of economic life and how to study it comparatively, Sahlins radically revises traditional views of the hunter-gatherer and so-called primitive societies, revealing them to be the original "affluent society." Sahlins examines notions of production, distribution and exchange in early communities and examines the link between economics and cultural and social factors. A radical study of tribal economies, domestic production for livelihood, and of the submission of domestic production to the material and political demands of society at large, Stone Age Economics regards the economy as a category of culture rather than behaviour, in a class with politics and religion rather than rationality or prudence. Sahlins concludes, controversially, that the experiences of those living in subsistence economies may actually have been better, healthier and more fulfilled than the millions enjoying the affluence and luxury afforded by the economics of modern industrialisation and agriculture. This Routledge Classics edition includes a new foreword by David Graeber, London School of Economics.
The pamphlet explores the Confucius Institute's dual role in promoting Chinese language and culture while serving as a tool for the Chinese government's geopolitical influence. It highlights concerns about academic integrity, revealing how the organization's presence in educational institutions may blur the lines between genuine cultural exchange and political propaganda. Through the lens of a speech by a high-ranking Communist Party official, the text critiques the implications of this initiative on global education and the integrity of academic practices.
Reflecting the decline in college courses on Western Civilization, Marshall Sahlins aims to accelerate the trend by reducing "Western Civ" to about two hours. He cites Nietzsche to the effect that deep issues are like cold baths; one should get into and out of them as quickly as possible. The deep issue here is the ancient Western specter of a presocial and antisocial human nature: a supposedly innate self-interest that is represented in our native folklore as the basis or nemesis of cultural order. Yet these Western notions of nature and culture ignore the one truly universal character of human sociality: namely, symbolically constructed kinship relations. Kinsmen are members of one another: they live each other's lives and die each other's deaths. But where the existence of the other is thus incorporated in the being of the self, neither interest, nor agency or even experience is an individual fact, let alone an egoistic disposition. "Sorry, beg your pardon," Sahlins concludes, Western society has been built on a perverse and mistaken idea of human nature.
In anthropology as much as in popular imagination, kings are figures of fascination and intrigue, heroes or tyrants in ways presidents and prime ministers can never be. This collection of essays by two of the world’s most distinguished anthropologists—David Graeber and Marshall Sahlins—explores what kingship actually is, historically and anthropologically. As they show, kings are symbols for more than just sovereignty: indeed, the study of kingship offers a unique window into fundamental dilemmas concerning the very nature of power, meaning, and the human condition. Reflecting on issues such as temporality, alterity, and utopia—not to mention the divine, the strange, the numinous, and the bestial—Graeber and Sahlins explore the role of kings as they have existed around the world, from the BaKongo to the Aztec to the Shilluk and beyond. Richly delivered with the wit and sharp analysis characteristic of Graeber and Sahlins, this book opens up new avenues for the anthropological study of this fascinating and ubiquitous political figure.
"The vast majority of human societies known to us have been organized along "immanentist" lines. In such societies, as Marshall Sahlins argues, everything we associate with religion, gods and spirits of every sort is part of the daily, embodied (immanent) lives of people. Plants and animals have souls and the same essential attributes as other persons, and supposedly long-dead ancestors continue to live among people, communicate with them, and have sway over the course of events. In this "enchanted" type of society, there is no strict separation between economics, politics, religion, philosophy, and culture. Some 2,500 years ago, at the dawn of the so-called Axial Age, a radical transformation in human societies began when civilizations spread around the globe from their origins in Greece, the Near East, northern India, and China. These civilizations effected a cultural revolution, creating a new type of society in which the things we typically associate with religion move from immanent infrastructure to transcendent superstructure. Only in a transcendentalist society does it make sense to speak of a god or God, and of a heaven, "out there," "above us," or in a separate realm entirely. And only in such a society do we have a division of labour separating out an economic sphere from a political sphere and a sphere of culture. Transcendentalist worldviews and modes of life are, of course, pervasive today. They are so much a part of who we are that when we attempt to understand the nature and workings of immanentist societies, we often misdescribe them in transcendentalist terms. This confusion, observes Sahlins, has long bedeviled the social sciences and consequently has impeded our understanding of many Indigenous religions and worldviews past and present. Sahlins, drawing on a vast array of recent and older ethnographic and historical research, offers this book as both diagnosis of these ills and a call to correction-to develop a "new science" that would be better positioned to grasp the realities of immanentist societies, and to take seriously the cultures of others"-- Provided by publisher
This volume seeks to go far beyond specialized debates about the alleged superiority of Western traditions. The culmination of Sahlins's ethnohistorical research on Hawaii, is a reaffirmation for understanding difference.
This is the long-awaited fifth edition of Marshall Sahlins' classic series of bon mots, ruminations, and musings on the ancients, anthropology, and much else in between.
Marshall Sahlins centers these essays on islands—Hawaii, Fiji, New Zealand—whose histories have intersected with European history. But he is also concerned with the insular thinking in Western scholarship that creates false dichotomies between past and present, between structure and event, between the individual and society. Sahlins's provocative reflections form a powerful critique of Western history and anthropology.
