Islands of History by Marshall Sahlins

Warning: a bit theoretical

I am not too big of a fan of structuralism a la Levi-Strauss (it is probably because I am misreading him), but I like Marshall Sahlins' brand of structuralism, which he elaborates in this collection of essays. He focuses his attention on the histories of the peoples of three islands on the Pacific: Hawaii, Fiji, and New Zealand.

First essay is an addendum on Sahlins' famous analysis of Captain Cook's encounter of and subsequent death by the Hawaiians. Sahlins' analyzes their "Aphrodisian" culture, in which beauty and the aesthetic are intertwined with the political and moral (I cannot repeat all of Sahlins' analyses here). In either case, Sahlins' describes a "political economy of love" in which "the structure of the kingdom is the subliminated form of its forces of sexual attraction" (p. 19).

I must admit that this is a bit hard to wrap my head around (although Sahlins' point about the base and superstructure in this culture was duly noted), but Sahlins' attempts to use this as an example of a "performative" system (or statistical model) where the cultural order is created through individual "interests" (interests being another key word in Sahlins' structuralism) as opposed to a "prescriptive" system (or mechanical model). This is a very potent theoretical dichotomy. However, performative structures are not completely 'free;' there is a symbolic system that guides these actions--the Bourdivine "habitus."

The second essay is an "anthropology of history" where Sahlins' general point is that "different cultural orders have their own modes of historical action, consciousness, and determination--their own historical practice" (p. 34). Sahlins first explores heroic histories in hierarchical cultures where kings literally (in a figurative way) stand-in for the community, giving them a greater power to shape history--this is opposed to Occidental notions of history, where history is made by people (although people have mostly been white and male).

Additionally, Sahlins describes the Maori version of history: for the Maori, the past, which extends to the mythic past, structures "life-possibilities" (p. 57), history is not made by the present, it is the maker of the present.

Third essay is about the "stranger-king," a figure in the Polynesian cultural structure. This figure is opposed to our notions of political authority: the stranger-king comes from beyond and imposes himself upon society, so political authority comes from without, not within (so not democratically elected). 

The stranger-king is eventually incorporated into the culture through marriage or other forms. Sahlins uses this figure to comment on the diachronic and processual nature of structure (contra strictly synchronic conceptions of structure). As he writes: "...this diachrony is structural and repetitive, it enters into a dialogue with historical time, as a cosmological project of encompassing the contingent event" (p. 77). Structure and event are not oppositional terms.

Final essay repeats his famous analyses of the synbolic misreadings between Cook and the Hawaiians which led to the former's death. This collision of the two cultures led to a transformation of both cultures while they acted on established symbolic structures--Sahlins' famous "structure of the conjuncture." Plus c'est la même chose, plus ça change, to repeat Sahlins' witty inversion of the French bon mots.

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