Marshall Sahlins

When Western scholars write about non-Western societies, do they inevitably perpetuate the myths of European imperialism? Can they ever articulate the meanings and logics of non-Western peoples? Who has the right to speak for whom? Questions such as these are debated in this text. Marshall Sahlins addresses these issues head on, while building a case for the ability of anthropologists working in the Western tradition to understand other cultures. In recent years, these questions have arisen in debates over the death and deification of Captain James Cook on Hawaii Island in 1779. Did the Hawaiians truly receive Cook as a manifestation of their own god Lono? Or were they too pragmatic, too worldly-wise to accept the foreigner as a god? Moreover, can a "non-native" scholar give voice to a "native" point of view? 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.

From the late 1700's, Hawaiian society began to change rapidly as it responded to the growing world system of capital whose trade routs and markets criss-crossed the islands. Reflecting many years of collaboration between Marshall Sahlins, a prominent social anthropologist, and Patrick V. Kirch, a leading archaeologist of Oceania, "Anahulu" seeks out the traces of this transformation in a typical local center of the kingdom founded by Kamehameha: the Anahulu river valley of Northwestern Oahu. Volume I shows the suprising effects of the encounter with the imperial forces of commerce and Christianity - the distinctive ways the Hawaiian people culturally organized the experience, from the structure of the kingdom to the daily life of ordinary people. Voulme II examines the material record of changes in local social organizations, economy and production, population, and domestic settlement arrangements.

From the late 1700s, Hawaiian society began to change rapidly as it responded to the growing world system of capital whose trade routes and markets criss-crossed the islands. Reflecting many years of collaboration between Marshall Sahlins, a prominent social anthropologist, and Patrick V. Kirch, a leading archaeologist of Oceania, "Anahulu" seeks out the traces of this transformation in a typical local centre of the kingdom founded by Kamehameha: the Anahulu river valley of northwestern Oahu. Volume I shows the surprising effects of the encounter with the imperial forces of commerce and Christianity - the distinctive ways the Hawaiian people culturally organized the experience, from the structure of the kingdom to the daily life of ordinary people. Volume II examines the material record of changes in local social organization, economy and production, population, and domestic settlement arrangements.

An exploration of cosmology, connecting the Western philosophical tradition with the cosmological traditions of non-Western societies. Using the mythology and philosophy of the Maori as a counterpoint, it finds a philosophical common denominator in the thought of Zeno of Elea.

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.

"The main thrust of this book is to deliver a major critique of materialist and rationalist explanations of social and cultural forms, but the in the process Sahlins has given us a much stronger statement of the centrality of symbols in human affairs than have many of our 'practicing' symbolic anthropologists. He demonstrates that symbols enter all phases of social life: those which we tend to regard as strictly pragmatic, or based on concerns with material need or advantage, as well as those which we tend to view as purely symbolic, such as ideology, ritual, myth, moral codes, and the like. . . ."--Robert McKinley, Reviews in Anthropology