"Poor man, rich man, big-man, chief: Political types in Melanesia and Polynesia"
by Sahlins, Marshall D (1963)
Abstract
With an eye to their own life goals, the native peoples of Pacific Islands unwittingly present to anthropologists a generous scientific gift: an extended series of experiments in cultural adaptation and evolutionary development. They have compressed their institutions within the confines of infertile coral atolls, expanded them on volcanic islands, created with the means history gave them cultures adapted to the deserts of Australia, the mountains and warm coasts of New Guinea, the rain forests of the Solomon Islands. From the Australian Aborigines, whose hunting and gathering existence duplicates in outline the cultural life of the later Paleolithic, to the great chiefdoms of Hawaii, where society approached the formative levels of the old Fertile Crescent civilizations, almost every general phase in the progress of primitive culture is exemplified.
Keywords
No KeywordsThemes
SahlinsLinks to Reference
- https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/comparative-studies-in-society-and-history/article/poor-man-rich-man-bigman-chief-political-types-in-melanesia-and-polynesia/E392602EF37440C9B50A3FDD10AE2A68
- https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0010417500001729/type/journal_article
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0010417500001729
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/177650.pdf?casa_token=TKj0wJ5b44cAAAAA:Kf6eMWJrzPQUk7E11viIMq2HO-TIz4kboQi6bHdlhK40dUZrgNo78ObpUDSXUTMTrX0I-YUesSB2PE2VDY3XdyByCr9wRqtv8Bl49X5YRMgtzmfPkSlI
Citation
Share
How to contribute.
