How "Natives" Think: About Captain Cook, For Example
Language: English
Published by University of Chicago Press, 1996
- First Edition
- Softcover
- Used
Seller: Mad Dog & Kevin, Lake Monticello, VA, U.S.A.Mad Dog & Kevin
AbeBooks seller since May 11, 2026
Condition: Used - Near fine
£ 15.43
Quantity: 1 available
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Near Fine. University of Chicago Press Paperback Edition (Second Impression, 2000; print line: 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 2 3 4 5 6). Octavo (approx. 9 x 6 inches); x, 318 pp. Bound in publisher's original pictorial card wrappers featuring an 18th-century portrait of Captain James Cook paired with indigenous Hawaiian petroglyph motifs, designed by Julia Robling Griest. Illustrated with historical route maps, ethnographic charts, documentary appendices, extensive footnotes, comprehensive bibliography, and index. A clean, firm copy with sharp corners, an uncreased spine, tight binding, and unmarked pages throughout. Written by renowned cultural anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, How "Natives" Think is a landmark intellectual tour de force in historical anthropology and postcolonial historiography. The book represents Sahlins’ definitive polemical response to Gananath Obeyesekere’s The Apotheosis of Captain Cook, re-examining the fateful 1779 encounter at Kealakekua Bay that resulted in Captain James Cook's death. Sahlins refutes accusations of Eurocentric projection, presenting a meticulous, archive-based analysis of 18th-century Hawaiian cosmological traditions, calendrical cycles, and ritual systems to demonstrate how indigenous religious structures interpreted Cook as the god Lono. A cornerstone theoretical text for collections in Pacific history, Hawaiian anthropology, and the philosophy of cultural relativism.…
Seller Inventory # 1010200318
- Title
- How "Natives" Think: About Captain Cook, For Example
- Author
- Sahlins, Marshall
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Publication year
- 1996
- Condition
- Near fine
- Binding
- Soft cover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0226733696
- ISBN 13
- 9780226733692
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- Item weight
- 0.95 pounds
- Dimensions
- 5.88 inches width by 9.09 inches height by 0.73 inches depth
- Seller catalogs
- Anthropology
When Western scholars write about non-Western societies, do they inevitably perpetuate the myths of European imperialism? Can they ever articulate the meanings and logics of non-Western peoples? Who has the right to speak for whom? Questions such as these are among the most hotly debated in contemporary intellectual life. In How "Natives" Think, Marshall Sahlins addresses these issues head on, while building a powerful case for the ability of anthropologists working in the Western tradition to understand other cultures.
In recent years, these questions have arisen in debates over the death and deification of Captain James Cook on Hawai'i Island in 1779. Did the Hawaiians truly receive Cook as a manifestation of their own god Lono? Or were they too pragmatic, too worldly-wise to accept the foreigner as a god? Moreover, can a "non-native" scholar give voice to a "native" point of view? In his 1992 book The Apotheosis of Captain Cook, Gananath Obeyesekere used this very issue to attack Sahlins's decades of scholarship on Hawaii. Accusing Sahlins of elementary mistakes of fact and logic, even of intentional distortion, Obeyesekere portrayed Sahlins as accepting a naive, enthnocentric idea of superiority of the white man over "natives"—Hawaiian and otherwise. Claiming that his own Sri Lankan heritage gave him privileged access to the Polynesian native perspective, Obeyesekere contended that Hawaiians were actually pragmatists too rational and sensible to mistake Cook for a god.
Curiously then, as Sahlins shows, Obeyesekere turns eighteenth-century Hawaiians into twentieth-century modern Europeans, living up to the highest Western standards of "practical rationality." By contrast, Western scholars are turned into classic custom-bound "natives", endlessly repeating their ancestral traditions of the White man's superiority by insisting Cook was taken for a god. But this inverted ethnocentrism can only be supported, as Sahlins demonstrates, through wholesale fabrications of Hawaiian ethnography and history—not to mention Obeyesekere's sustained misrepresentations of Sahlins's own work. And in the end, although he claims to be speaking on behalf of the "natives," Obeyesekere, by substituting a home-made "rationality" for Hawaiian culture, systematically eliminates the voices of Hawaiian people from their own history.
How "Natives" Think goes far beyond specialized debates about the alleged superiority of Western traditions. The culmination of Sahlins's ethnohistorical research on Hawaii, it is a reaffirmation for understanding difference.
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Mad Dog & Kevin
Lake Monticello, VA, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since May 11, 2026
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Mad Dog & Kevin is a partnership built on thirty years of family history and a simple, shared appreciation for the rare and the interesting. Combining Richard Astle’s deep expertise from his decades at the Garret Gallery with a fresh perspective from his nephew, Kevin, we curate a small, intentional collection of books and prints that carry real weight. We are a quiet shop focused on provenance, character, and the belief that the best stories are the ones you can hold in your hands. Whether you are a lifelong collector or just looking for something with a bit of soul, we are glad you found us.…
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