A Reflection on Marshall Sahlins

Marshall Sahlins was an American anthropologist heavily influenced by Levi-Strauss’s French structuralism. His excerpt from his book Islands of History, published in 1985, show transformations to its base of structuralism, one such influence being that of Marxism and another being Saussure’s linguistic work involving signs. Like Levi-Strauss, Sahlins was concerned with structuralism, but also with history. In this reading, he argues that structure as “the symbolic relations of cultural order” is in fact something rooted in history (Sahlins 170). Culture is in fact shaped by history, and any new experiences had by those people are filtered through this culture in which history has had a significant impact.

Sahlins was also influenced by Saussure, who described how the meaning of a sign is determined by its relationships to other signs in a system. The system is essential, because the signs only make sense when they are a part of this whole. Sahlins uses this idea to postulate that when a person uses a sign, they can only engage a part of its meaning and sense. He uses the example that a “fluttering bird” to him is a “diseased sparrow hawk” to an ornithologist (Sahlins 171). These differences in what people say about a subject shows that they only make sense of it in terms of what they know. Sahlins goes on to say that Captain James Cook, who was murdered upon encountering the Native Hawaiians, was interpreted differently based on different people of that Hawaiian community. He was an incarnation of an ancient god to the priests, a divine warrior to the chiefs, and something else to the common people. This difference in interpretation and meaning shows that societies form different conclusions based on what they know. Ultimately, “social communication is as much an empirical risk as worldly reference” (Sahlins 172).

Taking the Saussurean idea of signs into account, Sahlins incorporates history and culture. He notes that different cultures have different histories, which implies that their histories shape how they read signs and how their culture is shaped. In fact, Sahlins continues to say that, when events occur that have not been experienced before, the Native Hawaiians project their existing order and rules onto this new event, and try to change the circumstances to themselves and their ideas. This way of dealing with events is identified with the prescriptive order. In contrast, a performative order that would do the opposite, and instead change themselves to the circumstances (Sahlins 173).

One of the key ideas presented in this reading was the “structure of conjuncture” which is the space of interaction and intersection between different cultures which results in cultural change. Here, the Marxist idea of praxis comes into play, as two cultures come together in actions and change to both is a result. This phenomenon unfortunately resulted in the death of Captain Cook, who was thought by the priests to be an ancient god reincarnated, while to the king this return of a god was a threat. The clash of these two cultures and their own separate interpretations of the world based on their different histories makes sense of Captain Cook's death. Without taking these separate histories as well as the structure of conjuncture into account, it is hard to understand how the event occurred. Ultimately, Sahlins argues that the binary contrast between culture and history must be broken down, and both must be considered as one in order to fully understand the actions of different societies (Sahlins 175).

In my opinion, the strength of Sahlins’ work is that he is able to incorporate different ideas into that of structuralism. Islands of History, having been written twenty years after the inception of structuralism, is able to incorporate and transform Levi-Strauss’ ideas into something more of a synthesis between Levi-Strauss, Saussure, and Marx. Also, Sahlins’ concern with specific histories of cultures reflects Boasian ideals of historical particularism as well as a more diachronic perspective. Another strength is that in his final paragraphs of the reading, Sahlins notes that history should not be ignored because a culture has no written or recorded one, and that histories of distant civilizations are just as rich and deserve equal attention as that of western cultures (Sahlins 176). Overall, I think these ideas of combining and synthesizing different theories is especially important today, as we have plentiful theories from which to choose and to analyze. 

Sahlins, Marshall. "Islands of History [1985]." Readings for A History of Anthropological Theory. By Paul A. Erickson and Liam D. Murphy. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2013. 170-176. Print.