Metaphors and Mythical Realities Marshall

¶ … Metaphors and Mythical Realities

Marshall Sahlins explores, in his "Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities," the complex anthropological realities of the Hawaiian peoples, placing them both against a historical reality (the killing of Captain Cook) and against the factors that had influenced the respective reality. On this latter aspect, the evolution of Sahlins's analysis ranges from the social and cultural background that influences the Hawaiian society to the economic variables and considerations that begin to take a more important role in determining the structure of the society, especially after the interaction with European countries.

Sahlins also creates the idea of a "structure of conjuncture," as the "where history is produced," "located between cultural expectations of what an event should look like, what, and how, it should mean, and how individuals exploit it for their own, historically meaningful, purposes"

. With this concept, Sahlins explains historical events (in this particular case, Cook's death) through a series of perceptions and variables that all come together in a confluence to influence the final turn of event. From this perspective of process (or development) influenced by, this paper will also aim to analyze the phrase "[w]hen sacrifice turned into trade, the haole 'foreigners' turned into men."

As mentioned, the phrase presents how the structure of the society was affected by a change in the underlying element that influenced it. At the same time, it also shows how the relationship between the natives and the Europeans shifted as the trade and economic component became the most preeminent. The former idea is based on the relationship between chiefs and commoners, between the upper and lower levels of the societal structures in Hawaii. The role of the native chiefs was not solely a political and military one, but, in many cases, also a strongly religious one. In these societies, the religious role was generally defined through the sacrifices that were performed in the society. From this perspective, there was a simple relationship developed between the performer of the sacrifice, on one hand, and the neutral observant of the act, on the other side. As Sahlins points out quoting Valeri, "commoners were at best spectators of the state cult, at worst its victims"

The way religious practices and, notably, sacrifices determined the structure of the society is obvious not only through the relationship between chiefs and commoners, but also through the relationship, within a family unit, between man and woman. As the performer of the sacrificial acts within the family, the man was better positioned in the family unit than the woman, even if out side this unit, he would take a place towards the bottom of the pyramid societal structure.

Because of the emphasis on the religious practices and sacrificial acts, the relationship with the incoming foreigners and Europeans was determined by this particular variable as well. Several tacit taboos with religious explanations included the fact that women were not allowed to eat with men at the same table and that they were not allowed to eat certain types of food, reserved for the gods only. Breaking these taboos affects the relationships that develop between the natives and the Europeans, but also produces cleavages between men and women in the native society. The European lack of such taboos has a definite impact on the structure of Hawaiian society.

At this point, trade enters the picture as a new variable that needs to be factored in when analyzing both the structure of the Hawaiian society and the relationship with the Europeans. All relationships, both intra and extra the Hawaiian society are revised. The native Hawaiians were better able to identify and structure the different types of Europeans they were coming into contact with and this was based both on the type of trade that was done with certain Europeans (both in terms of trade ethics and the products that were part of the trade) and on the customs and habits that were associated with particular European peoples.

In this sense, the phrase that was mentioned in the introduction to this paper is very eloquent, because it shows the Europeans shifting from simple 'foreigners' to individuals, with every characteristic that comes with that, including the cultural background associated to them. In the initial phase, when sacrifice dictated relationships between the Hawaiians and Europeans, the latter were seen as an unidentified mass of individuals, with no particularities to differentiate them. With trade as the most important variable to define relations, they became individualities and had a background of different characteristics.