front cover of Evolution and Culture
Evolution and Culture
Marshall D. Sahlins and Elman R. Service, Editors
University of Michigan Press, 1960
A unified interpretation of the evolution of species, humanity, and society
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front cover of Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities
Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities
Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom
Marshall D. Sahlins
University of Michigan Press, 1981

Hawaiian culture as it met foreign traders and settlers is the context for Sahlins's structuralist methodology of historical interpretation

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front cover of Moala
Moala
Culture and Nature on a Fijian Island
Marshall D. Sahlins
University of Michigan Press, 1962
For nearly a year Marshall D. Sahlins lived in villages on the Fijian island of Moala, learning the "way of the land," as the Moalans call their customs. From this experience he has written a book that is at once an intensive field study and a new approach to the methods of studying primitive communities. It marks an important departure from the standard trait-listing form of anthropological reports, for Sahlins does not isolate such factors as economics, kinship, and political organization. Rather he shows how closely they are interwoven in a primitive culture and why they must be interpreted with reference to the organic whole. This book, frankly evolutionary in its approach, views Moalan culture as an adaptive organization, a human means of dealing with nature so as to ensure survival. Proceeding from the smallest kinship groups, families, to the larger organization of village and island, Sahlins shows how kinship structure can organize the polity and economy. In a culture such as Moalan, kinship behavior is economics and often politics as well. By fully appreciating this fact, the author claims, we are made aware of the wide evolutionary gap between primitive societies and the impersonal structure of modern civilization.
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front cover of The Use and Abuse of Biology
The Use and Abuse of Biology
An Anthropological Critique of Sociobiology
Marshall D. Sahlins
University of Michigan Press, 1976
A criticism of sociobiology by one of the world's foremost anthropologists
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