Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom

by Marshall Sahlins

Assoc. for Social Anthropology in Oceania, Special Pubs. No. 1

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

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, History, College, Social Science, Read For School, School

84 pages, Paperback

First published May 15, 1981

About the author

Marshall David Sahlins was an American cultural anthropologist best known for his ethnographic work in the Pacific and for his contributions to anthropological theory. He was the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago.

Reviews

[Pradipa P. Rasidi · Rating 3 out of 5]

If history did repeat itself, for Marx the first would be as tragedy, the second, farce; while for Sahlins, history repeats first as myth (structure), the second, as event.

That would be the main point of Sahlin's rather short book on historical structuralism, I think. I see this book as Sahlin's response to the structuralism developed by Ferdinand de Saussure, as he begins with a discussion of Saussurian structuralism.

Saussure sees structure (or in his words, langue) as separate from event or individual (parole). Event/individual cannot change structure. A sign, according to Saussure, is understood in its relation to other signs - like how we relate the sign of "land" with other signs like "expensive" or "to be developed". The way it is related to other signs is defined by the convention of structure. No individual or event can change this except in special circumstances.

However this kind of perspective, Sahlins argues, disjoints history from structure. It underestimates the capacity of events to change the course of structure. Sahlins puts the event - or dare I say to use the term agency - into the world of structure. Through the term he calls as "structure of conjuncture", the slips and cracks of accidents in historical course, the convention of how the sign "land" is understood in relation to other signs can be modified through the power of event.

Sahlins' example on the Hawaiian situation during colonial contact seems to illustrate this best: during the contact between British seamen (led by Captain Cook) and Hawaiian locales, the Hawaiian women often offered sexual intercourse to the seamen, even if they already had husbands. The women sees the Brits as gods coming to the earthly world of men, as they sailed from the lands beyond the horizon, so they desired to copulate to have an offspring from the gods. That was their only intention. But the Brits saw the sex as unequal exchange - how come they can accept such a free service without giving back anything? - so the seamen, in return of sex, gave the women bracelets and other kind of jewelries. This particular event changes the way Hawaiian perceives their interaction with the British "gods" - it's no longer a mere attempt to produce heavenly offspring, but also an economic transaction. If the women offers sex to the gods, thought the husbands, we could enrich ourselves with precious jewelries.

There are plenty of other such stories and anecdotes in Sahlins's book. Other reviewers have said that such stories is a form of miscommunication between two different cultures; I'd say it is what can happen when intentions - agency - of various kind of actors met. In the words of Alex Gottesman, it's when ritual logic meets causal logic (an important point in seeing the way religious vs secular person interact in another setting). It reproduces the structure, while at the same time it also transforms them.

The transformation, however sophisticated it may be, never rewrite the structure completely. Indeed, Sahlins writes, the structure is not dismantled and rebuilt from the ground up; the structure undergoes "alteration of contents or a permutation of values" - a reconfiguration or reordering - while at the same time "the system otherwise remaining the same." And here we can see Sahlins' structuralist bent.

In under 75 pages, Sahlins write in a concise detail about the story and of colonial Hawaii in an attempt elaborate the theoretical debate about the role of agency in structural anthropology. Sahlins might have missed some nuance, particularly the notable absence of details on colonial dynamics on indigenous population.

The book also invokes more questions related to the history of anthropological theories. Can we firmly say that the reproduction of structure (myth) through action is similar to Eliade's concept of archetype in the Myth of Eternal Return? If the agents are substituted yet the structure (myth) remains the same, can we see the agents operating in similar way as Radcliffe-Brown's social person? Also how do we conveniently pinpoint the monumental events that change the course of structure - or should we conform to seeing events as random "historical accidents" the way Foucault did with archaeology?

Sahlins' book is a worthy to be read as a part of the tradition of structural anthropology.

[Carrie Doss · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sahlins explains some big theories with a lot of dense and convoluted writing. I felt like I never fully grasped his theoretical stance, even with the knowledge that he was in the “practice theory” group. I need a much simpler version of Sahlins’ writing before I can stomach any of it.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Felt like we were getting somewhere in my practice theory seminar with this book — at last, some examples. At last, some field work. At last, evidence that this way of thinking can be operationalized and can have explanatory power. Reading about the debate around Sahlins’ re-reading of Captain Cook’s legacy muddied the waters all over again for me. If nothing else, Sahlins appears to be literary and philosophical. These are life affirming pursuits… but to do them through the prism of another culture and another time has ethical, moral, and factual challenges.

[Semih · Rating 3 out of 5]

Her toplumsal kurum bir sözleşmeye dayanır diyor Malinowski. Mitler de toplumlar için bir sözleşme görevi görür.Kitabı okuduğum süreçte biraz dalgındım. İçinde yer yer ilgi çekici detaylar bulunmadığını söyleyemem. Özellikle adadakilerle gemidekilerin ilkel ticareti, sonraki her sefer bu ticaretin renginin değişmesi, beklentiler, güven, inanç ve çıkarlar üzerine oldukça çok şey söylüyordu ancak sosyoloji temelim olsa daha farklı detaylar da görebileceğime eminim. Cahilliğim.

[mads · Rating 2 out of 5]

interesting for critiquing structuralism and seeing the history of this school of thought in anthropology but ultimately Not A Good Read

[Wen · Rating 5 out of 5]

我很喜欢这本小册子，虽然不一定相信里面所说的这个理论吧，但是两面的故事很启发思考

[S · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is definitely a must-read for everyone interested in anthropological miscommunications between two very different, separate, distinct societies and cultures and what the results may be.

I won't give away the storyline, but let's just say this is the sophisticated version of a Grimm Brother's fairytale: a documentation of something that actually happened in times of exploration and colonization.

Very interesting read.

[Calvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A thesis that explores the misunderstandings through culture. While the structuralism discourse went over my head much of the time, the overall message of how systems and actions feed one another was useful. I would have appreciated more illustrations of what the thesis meant for the field

[Whitney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty funny in parts.

[Whitney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great overview of structuralist theory in anthropology. I really enjoyed it.

[Ying · Rating 4 out of 5]

Appealed to my English lit sensibilities. The impossibility of human relationships-- "Why can't you be more like me?"

[Anders · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some interesting and genuinely worthwhile points about structures in culture and history packed in between the kind of inscrutable, overwrought jargon that gives the humanities a bad name.