ABSTRACT
Marshall Sahlins is one of the most influential living anthropologists. Of the handful of those whose prominence might be said to be similar to his, he is the only one who has made the theorization of cultural change central to his/her work. During a period when disciplinary interest is increasingly focused on issues of change – be it under the rubric of globalization, postcolonial transformation, postsoviet transitology or what have you – the importance of his work in this area shows no sign of diminishing. The contributors to this volume take up Sahlins’ work on cultural change, delineating and extending it by applying it to cultures in Melanesia, one of the areas from which Sahlins commonly takes his own examples and one whose literature has clearly shaped his own vision. The result is a set of essays that exemplifies the power of Sahlins’ approach while also opening up new questions about it and putting it in dialogue with other important theoretical trends.
