Marshall Sahlins
American anthropologist who critiqued economic rationality in 'Stone Age Economics' and studied cultural history.
Most quoted
"The original affluent society is not one in which all the people's material wants are easily satisfied, but rather one in which they are few."
— from Stone Age Economics, 1972
"Economics is not about the production and distribution of goods and services, but about the production and distribution of meanings."
— from Culture and Practical Reason, 1976
"The structure of the conjuncture is the way in which historical events are given meaning by cultural categories."
— from Islands of History, 1985
All quotes by Marshall Sahlins (102)
The state is a cultural category.
Capitalism is a mode of production, but also a mode of destruction.
We live in a world made by culture.
The hunter's leisure is not idleness.
Myth is the charter of society.
Anthropologists study the other to understand the self.
The economy is embedded in society.
Polynesian kings were not tyrants but symbolic figures.
Science is a cultural practice.
The Enlightenment was a myth of its own making.
Life is a cultural invention.
In anthropology, the field is the laboratory.
Westerners project their categories onto the world.
Humor in anthropology: sometimes the natives laugh at us.
The affluent society of the Stone Age teaches us humility.
Structure is the canvas, history the paint.
Anthropology critiques the taken-for-granted.
Meaning is made, not found.
The Pacific islands are laboratories of culture.
Economics without culture is blind.
Contemporaries of Marshall Sahlins
Other Anthropologys born within 50 years of Marshall Sahlins (1930–2021).