Marshall Sahlins

In his 1972 book, Sahlins challenged the Western assumption that foraging societies lived on the brink of starvation. He argued that hunter-gatherers actually worked relatively few hours per day and coined the phrase 'original affluent society' to describe them.

Sahlins used this term to argue that foraging peoples achieved affluence not by producing abundance but by desiring little, requiring only modest labor to meet their needs. The concept was partly based on field data about time spent on subsistence among groups like the Dobe Ju/'hoansi.

Sahlins taught at the University of Michigan and later at the University of Chicago. At Chicago, he became one of the most influential cultural anthropologists of the late twentieth century.

Sahlins analyzed the death of Captain James Cook in Hawaii, arguing that Hawaiians interpreted Cook through their own cultural categories, possibly as the god Lono. This work became a centerpiece of debates about how different cultures interpret the same historical events.