Islands of History

by Marshall Sahlins

Book Overview

Marshall Sahlins centers these essays on islands-Hawaii, Fiji, New Zealand-whose histories have intersected with European history. But he is also concerned with the insular thinking in Western scholarship that creates false dichotomies between past and present, between structure and event, between the individual and society. Sahlins's provocative reflections form a powerful critique of Western history and anthropology.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226733580
• ISBN13: 9780226733586
• Release Date: April 1987
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Excellent story of culture

Highly recommend this book, especially cultural historians. It is amazing to read the blend of Island and British culture.

Well written book

Marshall Sahlins, a renowned expert in Polynesian archaeology, has produced an excellent, well-written book that focuses on synchrony and diachrony in archaeology, as reflected in the early encounters between Captain Cook and the early Polynesians. This book is essential reading for scholars interested in the concepts of cyclical and linear time. The text also demonstrates that the early Polynesians, like many other non-western societies, in fact had a dynamic, recursive history before European contact; a history not based on written records but rather on a rich array of oral traditions. Essentially, this book can be used as an important frame of reference for scholars of other early oceanic societies, for example pre-Columbian societies in the Caribbean, particularly with respect to issues of European contact and indigenous time reckoning and time conception.

Open Systems and the Rejeuvenation of Structuralism

This book is thoroughly researched, and intelligent. It is simultaneously an account of the history of Hawai'i's integration into the world economy, a reminder of the complexity of social change in colonial contexts, and a rekindling of the beauty of structuralism