Marshall Sahlins is No more.
May his soul Rest in Peace
Marshall David Sahlins (/ˈsɑːlɪnz/ SAH-linz; December 27, 1930 – April 5, 2021)[1] was an
Marshall Sahlins
Born December 27, 1930 (age 90)
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died April 5, 2021 (aged 90)
Citizenship American
Alma mater University of Michigan
Columbia University
Scientific career
Fields Cultural Anthropology
Institutions University of Chicago
Doctoral students David Graeber
Influences Karl Polanyi, Claude
Lévi-Strauss, Leslie
White
Courtesy Wikipaedia
American cultural anthropologist best known for his
ethnographic work in the Pacific and for his
contributions to anthropological theory. He was Charles
F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus
of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at
the University of Chicago
"The world's most 'primitive' people have few possessions, but they
are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it
just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation
between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention
of civilization. It has grown with civilization, at once as an invidious
distinction between classes and more importantly as a tributary
relation."
Sahlins (1972)[16]
Sahlins received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts
degrees at the University of Michigan where he studied
with evolutionary anthropologist Leslie White. He earned
his PhD at Columbia University in 1954. There his
intellectual influences included Eric Wolf, Morton
Fried, Sidney Mintz, and the economic historian Karl
Polanyi.[4] After receiving his PhD, he returned to teach at
the University of Michigan. In the 1960s he became
politically active, and while protesting against the Vietnam
War, Sahlins coined the term for the imaginative form of
protest now called the "teach-in," which drew inspiration
from the sit-in pioneered during the civil rights movement
In the late 1960s, he also spent two years in Paris, where he
was exposed to French intellectual life (and particularly the
work of Claude Lévi-Strauss) and the student protests of
May 1968. In 1973, he took a position in the anthropology
department at the University of Chicago, where he is
currently the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service
Professor of Anthropology Emeritus. His commitment to
activism has continued throughout his time at Chicago -