For students of the human sciences, the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins is, with Clifford Geertz, one of the few Americans who has achieved the status of a name to conjure with alongside the French maîtres à penser, particularly when the conversation turns to the topics of 'Big Men' (power-brokers who aren't chiefs, masters of the games of speech and generosity), or the socially embedded economy of premodern societies, 'negative reciprocity' (exchange characterised by hard bargaining, predation or theft), the cultural apperception of colour, or why Americans don't eat dogs.

LRB 3 November 2005 | PDF Download