Books by Marshall Sahlins

Reflecting the decline in college courses on Western Civilization, this book aims to accelerate the trend by reducing "Western Civ" to about two hours. It cites Nietzsche to the effect that deep issues are like cold baths; one should get into and out of them as quickly as possible.

One of the world's preeminent cultural anthropologists leaves a last work that fundamentally reconfigures how we study most other culturesFrom the perspective of Western modernity, humanity inhabits a disenchanted cosmos. Gods, spirits, and ancestors have left us for a transcendent beyond, no longer living in our midst and being involved in all matters of everyday life from the trivial to the dire. Yet the vast majority of cultures throughout human history treat spirits as very real persons, members of a cosmic society who interact with humans and control their fate. In most cultures, even today, people are but a small part of an enchanted universe misconstrued by the transcendent categories of "e;religion"e; and the "e;supernatural."e; The New Science of the Enchanted Universe shows how anthropologists and other social scientists must rethink these cultures of immanence and study them by their own lights.In this, his last, revelatory book, Marshall Sahlins announces a new method and sets an exciting agenda for the field. He takes readers around the world, from Inuit of the Arctic Circle to pastoral Dinka of East Africa, from Arawete swidden gardeners of Amazonia to Trobriand Island horticulturalists. In the process, Sahlins sheds new light on classical and contemporary ethnographies that describe these cultures of immanence and reveals how even the apparently mundane, all-too-human spheres of "e;economics"e; and "e;politics"e; emerge as people negotiate with, and ultimately usurp, the powers of the gods.The New Science of the Enchanted Universe offers a road map for a new practice of anthropology that takes seriously the enchanted universe and its transformations from ancient Mesopotamia to contemporary America.

A classic study of anthropological economics, which tackles the nature of economic life and how to study it comparatively.

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.

Drawing on reports in the media and conversations, the author shows that the Confucius Institutes are a threat to the principles of academic freedom and integrity at the foundation of our system of higher education.

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.

In this pithy two-part essay, the author reinvigorates the debates on what constitutes kinship, building on some of the best scholarship in the field to produce an original outlook on the deepest bond humans can have. He also shows that mutuality of being is a symbolic notion of belonging, not a biological connection by 'blood'.

Essays that span the career of a prominent anthropologist and address the fundamental questions of the field.