Misplaced Pages

#285714

46-472: It highlights the imposition of colonialism not as the result of the breaking of the spirit of local communities by brute force, or as reflecting an ignorant peasantry's acquiescence in the lies of its self-interested leaders, but as a people's rational and productive acceptance of an opportunity offered. The theory was developed by Marshall Sahlins in the Pacific region and is described by David Henley using

92-553: A dissociative state . Doctors gave him days to live. But he rallied and emerged from the dissociative state, determined to finish. He could not use his hands, so he began dictating pages to his son, historian Peter Sahlins. They finished a month before his death. House of Kn%C3%BDtlinga The Danish House of Knýtlinga ( English : "House of Cnut's Descendants") was a ruling royal house in Middle Age Scandinavia and England . Its most famous king

138-579: A mystical rabbi considered to be the founder of Hasidic Judaism . Sahlins' mother admired Emma Goldman and was a political activist as a child in Russia. Sahlins received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees at the University of Michigan where he studied with evolutionary anthropologist Leslie White . He earned his PhD at Columbia University in 1954. There his intellectual influences included Eric Wolf , Morton Fried , Sidney Mintz , and

184-639: A notable debate with Gananath Obeyesekere over the details of Captain James Cook's death in the Hawaiian Islands in 1779. At the heart of the debate was how to understand the rationality of indigenous people. Obeyesekere insisted that indigenous people thought in essentially the same way as Westerners and was concerned that any argument otherwise would paint them as "irrational" and "uncivilized". In contrast Sahlins argued that each culture may have different types of rationality that make sense of

230-471: A relatively impartial mechanism for arbitration. Colonial courts, rather than solely being instruments of oppression, also provided indigenous people with an access to justice, less subject to local bribery and patronage. Without minimizing the arrogance or self-interest of colonial stakeholders, Henley states: "We will not understand the nature of those societies better if, whether out of embarrassment, disbelief, or lack of interest, we choose to ignore either

276-541: A state of 'Warre', envy, and conflict. The theory was developed by the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins in his analysis of Pacific communities, such as Fiji . He argued that indigenous societies in a state of ‘Warre’ would tend to welcome the arrival of an impartial and strong Stranger King capable of resolving conflict, since his position outside and above the community would give him a unique authority. Consistent with this theory, scholars such as Jim Fox and Leonard Andaya have emphasized parallels between (east) Indonesia and

322-548: A tributary relation." Sahlins (1972) Sahlins's training under Leslie White, a proponent of materialist and evolutionary anthropology at the University of Michigan, is reflected in his early work. His 1958 book Social Stratification in Polynesia offered a materialist account of Polynesian cultures. In his Evolution and Culture (1960), he touched on the areas of cultural evolution and neoevolutionism . He divided

368-456: Is a mesmerizing speaker and a brilliant thinker. By the time he finished the first lecture, I was hooked." In 2001, Sahlins became publisher of Prickly Pear Pamphlets, which was started in 1993 by anthropologists Keith Hart and Anna Grimshaw, and was renamed Prickly Paradigm Press . The imprint specializes in small pamphlets on unconventional subjects in anthropology, critical theory, philosophy, and current events. He died on April 5, 2021, at

414-467: Is contained in The Use and Abuse of Biology . His 2013 book, What Kinship Is—And Is Not picks up some of these threads to show how kinship organizes sexuality and human reproduction rather than the other way around. In other words, biology does not determine kinship. Rather, the experience of "mutuality of being" that we call kinship is a cultural phenomenon. Sahlins's final book was The New Science of

460-541: Is produced through cultural rules that govern the production and distribution of goods, and therefore any understanding of economic life has to start from cultural principles, and not from the assumption that the economy is made up of independently acting, "economically rational" individuals. Perhaps Sahlins's most famous essay from the collection, " The Original Affluent Society ," elaborates on this theme through an extended meditation on "hunter-gatherer" societies. Stone Age Economics inaugurated Sahlins's persistent critique of

506-640: The Kingdom of Kandy in the eighteenth century. She argues the outsider status was essential for a Kandyan king to maintain the balance of power in the small Kingdom, and sheds a light on the political process that led to the transfer of power over the Kingdom to the British in 1815. Moreover, she argues that the Stranger King strategy applies to both European and Asian foreign entities. Within three years

SECTION 10

#1732786640286

552-614: The North Sulawesi region in Indonesia as his prime case study. The Stranger King theory suggests similarities and divergences between pre-colonial and colonial processes of state-formation enabling to build with insight on the historiography of the colonial transition in the Asia-Pacific part of the world. The Stranger King theory argues that many indigenous people accepted the imposition of foreign colonial influence, i.e.

598-769: The evolution of societies into "general" and "specific". General evolution is the tendency of cultural and social systems to increase in complexity, organization and adaptiveness to environment. However, as the various cultures are not isolated, there is interaction and a diffusion of their qualities (like technological inventions ). This leads cultures to develop in different ways (specific evolution), as various elements are introduced to them in different combinations and on different stages of evolution. Moala , Sahlins's first major monograph, exemplifies this approach. Stone Age Economics (1972) collects some of Sahlins's key essays in substantivist economic anthropology . As opposed to "formalists," substantivists insist that economic life

644-523: The " Writers and Editors War Tax Protest " pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War. In the late 1960s, he also spent two years in Paris, where he was exposed to French intellectual life (and particularly the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss ) and the student protests of May 1968. In 1973, he took a position in the anthropology department at the University of Chicago , where he

690-639: The Christianization of Denmark. The ruling royal house also developed a model of royal power, which was consistent with later European kingdoms, as well as engaged in the first Scandinavian minting of coins. According to Andres Dobat, the Jelling dynasty are an example of stranger kings , as the first rulers, Harthacnut I or Gorm, were likely foreign. According to Sverre Bagge , the first signs of clear rules of succession in Denmark take place under

736-653: The Enchanted Universe: An Anthropology of Most of Humanity. The book explores the worldwide phenomenon of "meta-persons." A reviewer defined metapersons as "supreme gods and minor deities, ancestral spirits, demons, indwelling souls in animals and plants—who act as the intimate, everyday agents of human success or ruin, whether in agriculture, hunting, procreation, or politics." The book was published posthumously, and almost didn't get published at all. In fall 2020, Sahlins fell and became paralyzed . Then, near his 90th birthday, his mind fell into

782-614: The English throne, but he was betrayed and captured by Godwin, Earl of Wessex , who supported Cnut's son, Harold Harefoot . Alfred was blinded, and died soon after. Harold ruled until 1040, although his mother Ælfgifu may have ruled during part of his reign. Harold initially shared England with his half brother Harthacnut , the son of Cnut and Emma. Harold ruled in Mercia and Northumbria , and Harthacnut ruled in Wessex . However Harthacnut

828-630: The Jelling dynasty. The House of Knýtlinga ruled the Kingdom of England from 1013 to 1014 and from 1016 to 1042. In 1013 Sweyn Forkbeard , already the king of Denmark and of Norway , overthrew King Æthelred the Unready of the House of Wessex . Sweyn had first invaded England in 1003 to avenge the death of his sister Gunhilde and many other Danes in the St. Brice's Day massacre , which had been ordered by Æthelred in 1002. Sweyn died in 1014 and Æthelred

874-565: The Norwegian King in 1262. The Stranger King was also the subject of a meeting of ancient historians at the University of Exeter in 2022. Marshall Sahlins Marshall David Sahlins ( / ˈ s ɑː l ɪ n z / SAH -linz ; December 27, 1930 – April 5, 2021) was an American cultural anthropologist best known for his ethnographic work in the Pacific and for his contributions to anthropological theory. He

920-520: The Pacific world, while David Henley has applied the Stranger King concept on North Sulawesi. The Dutch East India Company and before them the Spanish provided a Stranger King solution to the central political dilemma of northern Sulawesi's fractious and litigious indigenous communities. Old Dutch narratives often depict indigenous (e.g., Minahasa ) stakeholders as grateful for intervention when their own political institutions were incapable of providing

966-479: The Stranger King, as a means of conflict resolution. In doing so, the Stranger King theory challenges binary oppositions of ‘tradition versus modernity’ and ‘nationalism versus imperialism’ paradigms and it places state formation by colonial powers within the continuum of earlier, similar but indigenous processes. The theory particularly builds on the English seventeenth-century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes ' depiction of traditional indigenous societies existing in

SECTION 20

#1732786640286

1012-493: The age of 90 in Chicago. His brother was the writer and comedian Bernard Sahlins (1922–2013). His son, Peter Sahlins , is a historian. Sahlins is known for theorizing the interaction of structure and agency, his critiques of reductive theories of human nature (economic and biological, in particular), and his demonstrations of the power that culture has to shape people's perceptions and actions. Although his focus has been

1058-522: The concept of the "structure of the conjuncture" to grapple with the problem of structure and agency, in other words that societies were shaped by the complex conjuncture of a variety of forces, or structures. Earlier evolutionary models, by contrast, claimed that culture arose as an adaptation to the natural environment. Crucially, in Sahlins's formulation, individuals have the agency to make history. Sometimes their position gives them power by placing them at

1104-430: The discipline of economics , particularly in its Neoclassical form. After the publication of Culture and Practical Reason in 1976, his focus shifted to the relation between history and anthropology , and the way different cultures understand and make history. Of central concern in this work is the problem of historical transformation, which structuralist approaches could not adequately account for. Sahlins developed

1150-536: The ease with which they were often brought under colonial control, or the evidence that 'Stranger-Kings' were perceived as fulfilling useful functions among them." David Henley in Jealousy and Justice (p. 89) In her thesis Schiller accepts the Stranger King concept as a political means to channel factions in Southeast Asian political entities in early modern times and applies it to the political situation in

1196-461: The economic historian Karl Polanyi . In 1957, he became assistant professor at the University of Michigan. In the 1960s he became politically active, and while protesting against the Vietnam War , Sahlins coined the term for the imaginative form of protest now called the " teach-in ", which drew inspiration from the sit-in pioneered during the civil rights movement. In 1968, Sahlins signed

1242-517: The effectiveness of small combat groups and also the election of Napoleon Chagnon . The resignation followed the publication in that month of Chagnon's memoir and widespread coverage of the memoir, including a profile of Chagnon in The New York Times Magazine . Alongside his research and activism, Sahlins trained a host of students who went on to become prominent in the field. One such student, Gayle Rubin , said: "Sahlins

1288-574: The entire Pacific , Sahlins has done most of his research in Fiji (especially the island of Moala ) and Hawaii . "The world's most 'primitive' people have few possessions, but they are not poor. Poverty is not a certain small amount of goods, nor is it just a relation between means and ends; above all it is a relation between people. Poverty is a social status. As such it is the invention of civilization. It has grown with civilization, at once as an invidious distinction between classes and more importantly as

1334-475: The fold of a single world civilization with a single universal history and all that is meant by Asian-centric history is a history in which the Asian, as a host in his house, should stand in the foreground…" (Smail 1961: 76, 78). The concept of the stranger king has been applied to Viking Age Scandinavia to account for the House of Knýtlinga dynasty in Denmark, as well as to account for the annexation of Iceland by

1380-632: The height of its power, in the years 1028–1030, the House reigned over Denmark , England and Norway . After the death of Cnut the Great's heirs within a decade of his own death and the Norman conquest of England in 1066, the legacy of the Knýtlinga was almost lost to history. The ruling royal house built impressive ring fortresses, as well as implementing new military organizational innovations, and oversaw

1426-616: The history of interaction between Europeans and Asians in Southeast Asia and proposes alternative frameworks of understanding colonialism. In 2007 a panel called "Re-thinking colonialism in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, 18TH to 19TH Century" chaired by the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) the concept was employed to gain insight into the dynamism of the role indigenous peoples had during

Stranger King - Misplaced Pages Continue

1472-486: The indigenous societies' strategy to embosom a Stranger King to break the status quo. Henley in fact presents abundant indigenous (e.g., Bugis and Makasarese) chronicles and accounts collected by anthropologists that explain, and legitimize, the process of pre-colonial and later colonial state formation in similar terms, and not just in the Minahassa or Southeast Asia, but worldwide. The Stranger King theory argues against

1518-493: The nobles had come to realize that they had lost too much power under the British regime, and they intended once more to install a South Indian Stranger King named Dore Swami. Their 1818 rebellion, however, was crushed by the British and led to even tighter control over the Kandyan provinces and a sharp curtailment of the Kandyan nobles’ autonomy. The Stranger King theory is used as an analytical tool to understand and re-construct

1564-406: The process of colonialisation and the complexity of the relationship between coloniser and colonised. Historical and social science are developing a new alternative discourse, where not only the old nationalistic Euro-centric scholars, but also the later Asian-centric academics and nationalistic revisionists, look at history from the perspective of mutual heritage. "Southeast Asia has come within

1610-444: The security and stability necessary for the pursuit of prosperity. While these historic accounts validate the Stranger King concept, they are obviously controversial due to their source and have always been easily dismissed as colonial propaganda. Henley's study, however, provides proof (Chapter XI, 'Patterns and Parallels') that it is not just European sources that suggest recurring uncertainty and conflict within indigenous societies and

1656-399: The territory that comprises modern-day Denmark under his rule, as well as Norway. The latter claim is more tenuous, as he most likely only had periodic and indirect power over parts of modern-day Norway. Under the House of Knýtlinga, early state formation in Denmark occurred. In 1018 AD the House of Knýtlinga brought the crowns of Denmark and England together under a personal union . At

1702-434: The theory that the centuries-long colonisation process was a non-stop process of indigenous resistance against aggressive military occupation. Notwithstanding the fact that the Stranger King's merchants, military, civil servants and missionaries had their own motives and agenda, the colonists achieved authority not just on the basis of military power, but also through political alliances, diplomatic collaboration and by providing

1748-538: The top of a political hierarchy. At other times, the structure of the conjuncture, a potent or fortuitous mixture of forces, enables people to transform history. This element of chance and contingency makes a science of these conjunctures impossible, though comparative study can enable some generalizations. Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities (1981), Islands of History (1985), Anahulu (1992), and Apologies to Thucydides (2004) contain his main contributions to historical anthropology. Islands of History sparked

1794-428: The world by focusing on different patterns and explain them within specific cultural narratives, and that assuming that all cultures lead to a single rational view is a form of eurocentrism. Over the years, Sahlins took aim at various forms of economic determinism (mentioned above) and also biological determinism , or the idea that human culture is a by-product of biological processes. His major critique of sociobiology

1840-524: Was Cnut the Great , who gave his name to this dynasty. Other notable members were Cnut's father Sweyn Forkbeard , grandfather Harald Bluetooth , and sons Harthacnut , Harold Harefoot , and Svein Knutsson . It has also been called the House of Canute , the House of Denmark , the House of Gorm , or the Jelling dynasty . Under Harald Bluetooth's rule, he is said on a Jelling rune stone to have unified

1886-458: Was also king of Denmark (as Cnut III), and spent most of his time there, so that Harold was effectively sole ruler of England. Harthacnut succeeded Harold as king of England (he is sometimes also known as Cnut II). He died two years later, and his half-brother Edward the Confessor became king. Edward was the son of Æthelred and Emma, and so with his succession to the throne the House of Wessex

Stranger King - Misplaced Pages Continue

1932-586: Was essentially Viking. In this manner, the Vikings ultimately (if indirectly) finally conquered and kept England after all. In 1085–86 King Cnut IV of Denmark planned one last Danish invasion of England, but he was assassinated by Danish rebels before he could carry it out. This was the last time the Vikings attempted to attack Western Europe, and Cnut's death is regarded as the end of the Viking Age . The parentage of Strut-Harald and Gunnhild Konungamóðir

1978-508: Was restored. Edward the Confessor ruled until 1066. His brother in law, Harold Godwinson —the son of Alfred's betrayer—became king, provoking the Norman conquest of England in the same year. Harold II was the last Anglo-Saxon king to rule over England. The Normans were descended from Vikings who had settled in Normandy, and although they had adopted the French language, their heritage

2024-688: Was restored. However, in 1015 Sweyn's son, Cnut the Great , invaded England. After Æthelred died in April 1016, his son Edmund Ironside briefly became king, but was forced to surrender half of England to Cnut. After Edmund died in November that same year, Cnut became king of all England. Scotland submitted to him in 1017, and Norway in 1028. Although Cnut was already married to Ælfgifu of Northampton , he married Æthelred's widow, Emma of Normandy . He ruled until his death in 1035. After his death another of Æthelred's sons, Alfred Aetheling , tried to retake

2070-534: Was the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and of Social Sciences at the University of Chicago . Sahlins was born in Chicago , the son of Bertha (Skud) and Paul A. Sahlins. His parents were Russian Jewish immigrants. His father was a doctor while his mother was a homemaker. He grew up in a secular, non-practicing family. His family claims to be descended from Baal Shem Tov ,

2116-492: Was the Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor of Anthropology Emeritus. His commitment to activism continued throughout his time at Chicago, most recently leading to his protest over the opening of the university's Confucius Institute (which later closed in the fall of 2014). On February 23, 2013, Sahlins resigned from the National Academy of Sciences to protest the call for military research for improving

#285714