For nearly a year Marshall D. Sahlins lived in villages on the
Fijian island of Moala, learning the ""way of the land,"" as the
Moalans call their customs. From this experience he has written a
book that is at once an intensive field study and a new approach to
the methods of studying primitive communities. It marks an
important departure from the standard trait-listing form of
anthropological reports, for Sahlins does not isolate such factors
as economics, kinship, and political organization. Rather he shows
how closely they are interwoven in a primitive culture and why they
must be interpreted with reference to the organic whole. This book,
frankly evolutionary in its approach, views Moalan culture as an
adaptive organization, a human means of dealing with nature so as
to ensure survival. Proceeding from the smallest kinship groups,
families, to the larger organization of village and island, Sahlins
shows how kinship structure can organize the polity and economy. In
a culture such as Moalan, kinship behavior is economics and often
politics as well. By fully appreciating this fact, the author
claims, we are made aware of the wide evolutionary gap between
primitive societies and the impersonal structure of modern
civilization.
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