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August of 2023 was a milestone for my biographical research. I spent two weeks in New York conducting archival research. First, I spend a week and a half at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia, on the top floor of the Butler. Second, I was able to spend two days at the Rockefeller Archives in the woods above Sleepy Hollow in Westchester country. These visits were very fruitful and I learned a tremendous amount.

I enjoyed my time on the upper west side tremendously. The staff at Columbia were very helpful and I learned a huge amount, despite some setbacks. Most of the Morton Fried papers were not available because the building they were in was being renovated. The archive also kept most of its material off-site, which made getting the resources I needed tricky, since once I was done with a box it was sent off-island and I wouldn’t have access to it again. Finally, Sahlins was at Columbia for a very short time, from 1952 to 1957, and I was not optimistic that there would be strong traces of him in the archives. Despite these facts, however, I had a fruitful trip.

I used materials at Columbia to create a roster of the anthropology department faculty from 1945 to 1957, tracked changes in degree requirements over time, and collated a list of courses and who taught what. This helped me understand not only Sahlins’s time in the program, but the careers of his friends and mentors, most of whom were students at Columbia just before he arrived. I also did some work into the 1960s, tracing the transformation of the department as Fried, Murphy, Harris, and others became central faculty members. The department files on the 1940s and 1950s are pretty light. I understand that the Boasian period is well documented (I didn’t look at it), and the 1960s is well documented. There are huge files on 1968 which someone should turn into a few articles or a book. The MUS crowd had incredible stories and were very lively, and they merit a lot more attention than they have gotten.

Another part of my research at Columbia was Karl Polanyi’s time there and his various projects. Sahlins was involved somehow in these projects — but how? Some of Polanyi’s personal papers are at Columbia as well, and I fell into that rabbit hole as well. I also did a bit of research on the 1920s, when Leslie White was at Columbia. The commencement records are rich and present a vivid picture of graduation ceremonies, and often feature charming small bits of ephemera, such as tickets and ribbons.

There were several highlights to my Columbia trip. In the commencement records, I found a xeroxed copy of a newspaper article which documented (with pictures) the fact that a klan meeting was staged at the graduation ceremonies Leslie White would have attended (I don’t know if he actually attended them)! It was a sobering reminder of what Boas was fighting against, as well as the power of the archives — if someone hadn’t snuck that article in there, the fact would probably have been lost to history. The other major highlight was finding a copy of a report Sahlins prepared for Polanyi’s seminar, probably the only copy in existence. It featured handwritten noted by Polanyi, a man whose handwriting I can now identify but still largely can’t read. That was very exciting and valuable. I also found a list of students in the immediate post-war period, which helps flesh out how big the GI Bill boom was at Columbia — participants remember between 100 and 200 graduate students in one year. Both those numbers seem impossible, but it is appears at its peak it was about 120.

I spent far less time at the Rockefeller Archives, but I could have spent more — they are an incredible resource and contain the papers of all the groups and projects the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations funded. These archives too had their challenges: They have a unique catalog which is unusual and takes some time to learn to use. However, the staff were very helpful and, as you might expect, the reading rooms were very well appointed. I will probably not use a microfilm reader that fine again in my lifetime. The archive is in an enormous mansion full of period furniture and art, so after using the storage lockers, kitchen, and bathrooms in that building I can see why they call it the ‘gilded age’.

The very first file I opened at Rockefeller was Sahlins’s — the finding aid listed ‘miscellaneous awards SAHL-SAR’ and I thought: Who else could be at the beginning of that file but Sahlins? It was a treasure trove of information, and I was able to find the files of several other people in Sahlins’s life, such as Service and Fried. After that it was all gravy. Most of my time was spent on contextual information, as well as some hit-or-miss requests just to see what would come out of obscurely labeled boxes. I found on microfilm Malinowski’s original 1926 talk at the first Hannover conference, complete with a record of the discussion afterwards. This was Malinowski’s debut in the United Sates. It was important for this project as Sahlins was raised in a social anthropological tradition whose genealogy doesn’t conform to the usual dichotomy that exists in disciplinary history between ‘American cultural’ and ‘British social’ anthropology. I worked through the files on the 1962 (iirc) ‘History of Anthropology’ conference, which are very detailed. I want to write an article on “the history of ‘the history of anthropology'”. I also came across long correspondence regarding Rockefeller’s funding of projects of ‘race hybridity’ in Honolulu, as well as their funding of the Bishop museum. This was the topic of a recent exhibit at the Bishop museum as well as the ground for my own history as a settler in Hawai‘i, as well as Sahlins’s own research. Very interesting to read. I went through the records of David Schneider’s Matrilineal Kinship grant as well as the conferences where Sahlins served as secretary and his wife Barbara typed up the (700+ page) manuscript. The first and last time she did something like that, I believe — a decision I respect! Perhaps the greatest challenge of this research was driving on the 287. Not a lot of aloha on that expressway. Also, driving conditions are darker and rainier than I’m used to in Honolulu.

Of course, no research project is ever truly complete. There are still many sources in New York I would like to consult. There is still a tremendous amount of work to be done at the Rockefeller Archives. I am also trying to get access to Guggenheim records regarding Sahlins’s fellowship, as well as the fellowships of several of his colleagues. I would like to return to Columbia and do work in the anthropology department’s own archives, which I hope will have syllabi and other more intellectual-historical records of Columbia in the 1950s. There is a lot to do and I look forward to a return trip some day.

Finally I want to say thank you to my research hosts, who haven’t asked to be identified on the Internet. Thanks also to the Wenner-Gren foundation and everyone there. I had a chance to visit that Storied Institution in Manhattan and soak up the monumental portraits of Wenner-Gren and his associates, as well as story with people there. It was much appreciated, as was the grant which funded this research. I hope I produce something you like.

I will be in Hawai‘i in September, then in early October I will do research in Michigan and Chicago. I will spend most of November in Australia and Fiji. That is the plan, anyway. We’ll see what happens!

I’m renaming these posts so that they are less confusing. This update was written in August, published in September, but is about work I did in July, so I am just calling it “work in July 2023” to be less confusing.

July was a good month for my Sahlins research. The biggest news that I spent a few days pounding out copy, and the manuscript is now over 10,000 words. Some of this was from Sahlins’s early life, but a lot of it was just drafting introductory sections like ‘What Hawai‘I was like in the 1980s’ or ‘who Karl Polanyi was’.

I also did some background reading. I decided to take the high road when it came to researching the Vietnam war era of Sahlins’s life, and began reading Karnow’s book “Vietnam”, which many consider to be the best one volume history of the war. It is well-written, based on years of journalistic work in the field, and very impressive. I am over 100 pages in and the Vietnamese have just repulsed the Tang empire, so I will certainly come to the study of the war briefed on the longue durée.

I then transitioned to reading to prepare for my trip to New York, which will occur next week, with a focus on the Steward grad students who influences Sahlins. I’ve long been interested in Fried, and am now more interested. Kirchhoff is especially interesting and there is now work done on him — he corresponded with Trotsky! Service, who I long knew as a ridiculously hard-core person, has been revealed to me as even more hard-core. Julie Lewis’s dissertation is good and is a valuable source, as she interviewed many of them.

I also worked through Sahlins’s dissertation, Social Stratification in Polynesia, and the scholarly response to it. Experts on the Pacific — Firth, Hogbin, (Felix) Keesing, and Guiart — thought Sahlins was totally wrong but impressed by the ambition of the effort and the ethnographic synthesis. Kaberry and (Cora) Du Boi wrote penetrating, insightful, and skeptical reviews. You could hear the eyebrows raising archly. Guiart’s review is absolutely amazing for its passion, verve, unfairness, and insight. Sahlins’s task is impossible. Or it is impossible, but the work of a lifetime. The sources are inadequate for the task. Or they are adequate, but Sahlins did not consult the right ones. That sort of thing.

I’m really looking forward to working in New York. I’m sure I’ll have more to say in September.

After third months of research for my biography of Marshall Sahlins, I have finally arrived at an important milestone: Sahlins’s birth! I’ve done a lot of work on his family, especially his father, as well as the broader history of the west side of Chicago. I’ve now begun writing about his life from birth to his matriculation at the University of Michigan. I’ll be doing archival work at Columbia, where he earned his Ph.D., in August and then I’ll be at Michigan in September (iirc) so those are the next big chunks of career to consider.

I’ve spent a lot of time on Sahlins’s father, who left a paper trace because of his career as a doctor. He also has a great story, preserved in family lore, about his escape from Russia during WWI — a story which appear to be largely true! I regret that I haven’t focused so much on his mother. I can’t tell whether this is some sort of unconscious sexism on my part, or the fact that the records of the time privilege male experiences, or that she had a relatively uneventful life after coming to the US. She as Latvian, and there is less in English (afaik) about Latvia than there is about Russia. But I will keep looking, even if my main focus shifts elsewhere.

One potential area of research is to begin boning up now on what might be called ‘contextual biographies’ from the period, such as Hortense Powdermaker’s Stranger and Friend. I’d also like to read some of the background literature on Robert Redfield — he was so central to American Anthropology but seems to me more like an eminence grise whose impact is under appreciated. Another area of weakness for me right now is the rise of the New Left and the anti-Vietnam side of Sahlins’s years at Michigan. More background reading will prepare me for forthcoming research in this regard.

Many people don’t believe me when I tell them ‘religion’ is not a cross-cultural phenomenon and that it was mostly in the 19th century when white people (i.e. protestants) began classifying things in other people’s cultures in religion. So I’ve decided to keep track of some books on this topic here.