'Cultures & Historicities' honors anthropologist's contributions

The research career of noted anthropologist Marshall Sahlins will be honored in the symposium "Cultures & Historicities" from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Friday, April 17, in Social Sciences 122.

Sahlins, the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Anthropology, is best known for his work as an ethnographer and historian of Polynesia, particularly the cultures of Fiji, New Guinea and Hawaii. He has written many books on these topics, including How "Natives" Think: About Captain Cook, For Example (1995); Anahulu: The Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii, Vols. I & II (1992), which he co-authored; Islands of History (1985); Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early History of the Sandwich Islands Kingdom (1981); Culture and Practical Reason (1976), which won the Press' Laing Award; and Stone Age Economics (1972).

The symposium's morning session, from 9:30 a.m. to noon, will open with "Sahlins and a Radical Cultural Anthropology: Sorcery, Consciousness and Historical Conjuncture," presented by Bruce Kapferer, professor of anthropology and archaeology at James Cook University. William Sewell, the Max Palevsky Professor in Political Science, will follow with "Events and Structures."

The afternoon session, from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m., will feature Pierre Vidal-Naquet, professor at Centre Louis Gernet, Centre National de Research Scientifique, who will give the lecture "Marshall Sahlins and the Cannibals," followed by a roundtable discussion moderated by John Comaroff, the Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor in Anthropology. Discussion participants will include Chicago faculty members Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, Professor in Anthropology, and Claudio Lomnitz, Professor in History, as well as Susan McKinnon, professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia.

Concluding remarks will be given by Jean-Pierre Vernant, professor emeritus at the College de France.