ABSTRACT
Reprinted from American Anthropologist, 63 (1961): 322–43. Marshall D. Sahlins is Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan. His principal research interests are cultural ecology, primitive economics, and peoples of the Pacific. He is the author of Social Stratification in Polynesia, Evolution and Culture (with Elman R. Service and others), Moala: Culture and Nature of a Fijian Island, Tribesmen, and Stone Age Economics.
