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- Convenor:
-
Alessandro Testa
(Charles University)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Location:
- Gamma room
- Sessions:
- Monday 4 September, -
Time zone: Europe/Vilnius
Short Abstract:
This panel invites contributions that explore, discuss, feed on, criticise, or exalt the scholarship of Marshal Sahlins, with a focus on how his scholarship has influenced the study of Religion, religions, and religious forms, in particular mythologies, ritualities, and cosmologies.
Long Abstract:
This panel invites contributions that explore, discuss, feed on, criticise, or exalt the scholarship of Marshal Sahlins, with a focus – given the event in which it will take place – on how his scholarship has influenced the study of Religion, religions, and religious forms, in particular mythologies, ritualities, and cosmologies.
Intellectually active until the very end of his life and widely (and rightly) considered “the greatest living anthropologist” for decades, Sahlins returned to genuinely religious interests in his late years, although some of his earlier, groundbreaking works also mark a turning point in the study of things cultural and religious. His departure has deprived social and historical anthropology of a great mind and a great voice, and this panel intends to make that voice resonate again, through his scholarship and the scholarship of those who have been influenced by him.
The panel originally had three papers, but one, Malgorzata Rygielska's "Copernical Revolution within Anthropological Perspective: Sahlins' Research on Religion" was withdrawn shortly before the beginning of the conference.
The panel will also have a discussant that will join in remotely. The name is to be confirmed.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 4 September, 2023, -Paper short abstract:
The paper will pay tribute to a giant of social and historical anthropology, Marshall Sahlins, by discussing the previous or potential importance of his scholarship in the study of religion. An emphasis will be given on his theoretico-methodological turns and twists over the past 70 years.
Paper long abstract:
Two years after his death, this paper will pay tribute to a giant of social and historical anthropology, Marshall Sahlins, by discussing the previous or potential importance of his scholarship in the study of religion. An emphasis will be given on his theoretico-methodological turns and twists over the past 70 years.
Intellectually active until the very end of his life and widely (and rightly) considered "the greatest living anthropologist" until his death, Sahlins returned to genuinely religious interests in his later years, although some of his earlier, groundbreaking works also mark a turning point in the study of things cultural and religious.
Paper short abstract:
Are culture and religion biological traits of the human organisms, arisen through natural selection, or are they systems that surpass the boundaries of biology? Marshall Sahlins, sociobiologists, and more recent scholars have attempted to answer the question, as the present work will illustrate.
Paper long abstract:
A consistent part of the anthropological thought of the 20th century has been based on the discussion about the concept of culture, often portrayed as a crucial element of the humankind. Discourses about religion, as a subset of human culture, have been incorporated into the larger debate regarding the definition of culture. The central question of the debate is the following: are culture and religion biological traits of the human organisms, arisen through natural selection and genetic inheritance, or are they entities and systems that surpass the boundaries of biology?
The scientific paradigm of sociobiology, become popular through E.O. Wilson’s eponymous book "Sociobiology" (1975), supported the view of culture and human behaviour as products of natural selection. This view was criticized by other scholars, within and outside of biology, such as in Marshall Sahlins’ book "The Use and Abuse of Biology" (1976). In his work, Sahlins has discussed the evolutionary approach held by sociobiologists and offered a view on culture that exceeded the explanatory boundaries of natural selection.
After the 1970s, the debate around the biological interpretations of culture was pursued by further specialists, such as evolutionary psychologists, ethologists, and neuroscientists, alongside biologists and anthropologists. Many have also addressed the concept of religion, often seen as a cognitive trait of the human mind that needed to be explained through evolution and natural selection.
The present work will discuss the relationship among culture, religion, and biology, trying to illustrate the debate surrounding these concepts and their interrelations. In this regard, both Marshall Sahlins’ and sociobiological arguments will be discussed critically and confronted with more recent stances on the debate.