Prolific scholar and activist remembered for academic influence and personal warmth
Marshall D. Sahlins, an eminent cultural anthropologist of the Pacific known for sparking lively academic debates, died April 5. He was 90.
Renowned for his prolific contributions to anthropology, Sahlins was the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at the University of Chicago. For decades, he studied the history and ethnography of communities in Hawaii, Fiji and other islands in the South Pacific during the period of European contact—engaging his research with indigenous political structures, modes of kinship and conceptions of nature.
For Sahlins, anthropology was both a privilege and an adventure, offering an opportunity to “reproduce within one’s mind the way the world is put together for other people,” he said during a 2014 appearance at the Chicago Humanities Festival.