From Symbolic Structures to Cultural Transformation: A Critical Re-reading of Marshall Sahlins’s Anthropological Foundations in Intercultural Communication

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نوع مقاله : مقاله مروری

نویسندگان

1 Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities, Shahed University, Tehran, Iran

2 Department of Sociology, Graduate School of Humanities, Al-Mustafa International University, Qom, Iran

چکیده

Background and Aim: Marshall Sahlins, through a novel perspective, has established a new conceptual foundation for anthropology. The central question of the article is: What are Sahlins’s anthropological foundations in intercultural communication, and how has he employed these foundations to reinterpret culture and intercultural relations?
 
Data and Method: The research, employing an interpretive and critical-analytical methodology, examines Sahlins’s key concepts through primary sources and his own writings.
 
Findings: Sahlins’s intellectual achievement rests on three pillars: culture as a “symbolic system” that generates its own particular worldview, the “structure of the conjuncture” that explains how unforeseen events are absorbed and reinterpreted within the semantic frameworks of the host culture, and “cultural relativism” with the argument that each culture possesses its own specific rationality. Sahlins’s defense of relativism is also grounded in “multiple cultural rationalities,” not in the denial of any common standard.

Conclusion: Sahlins’s framework provides a tool for understanding the interpretive activity of culture and intercultural encounters, but the intense focus on the autonomy of symbolic systems has two limitations: the difficulty of transcultural ethical critique, and the paradoxical risk of its use to justify ethnocentric or nationalist ideologies.
 
Key Message: Culture, as a symbolic system, is not passive before global forces; rather, it reinterprets reality according to its internal logic. This framework illuminates how societies, when confronted with unprecedented events, maintain a dynamic equilibrium between reproducing the prior symbolic order and articulating a new one.
 

کلیدواژه‌ها

عنوان مقاله [English]

From Symbolic Structures to Cultural Transformation: A Critical Re-reading of Marshall Sahlins’s Anthropological Foundations in Intercultural Communication

نویسندگان [English]

  • Dawood Rahimi Sojasi 1
  • Mojtaba Akhoondi 2
1 Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities, Shahed University, Tehran, Iran
2 Department of Sociology, Graduate School of Humanities, Al-Mustafa International University, Qom, Iran
چکیده [English]

Background and Aim: Marshall Sahlins, through a novel perspective, has established a new conceptual foundation for anthropology. The central question of the article is: What are Sahlins’s anthropological foundations in intercultural communication, and how has he employed these foundations to reinterpret culture and intercultural relations?
 
Data and Method: The research, employing an interpretive and critical-analytical methodology, examines Sahlins’s key concepts through primary sources and his own writings.
 
Findings: Sahlins’s intellectual achievement rests on three pillars: culture as a “symbolic system” that generates its own particular worldview, the “structure of the conjuncture” that explains how unforeseen events are absorbed and reinterpreted within the semantic frameworks of the host culture, and “cultural relativism” with the argument that each culture possesses its own specific rationality. Sahlins’s defense of relativism is also grounded in “multiple cultural rationalities,” not in the denial of any common standard.

Conclusion: Sahlins’s framework provides a tool for understanding the interpretive activity of culture and intercultural encounters, but the intense focus on the autonomy of symbolic systems has two limitations: the difficulty of transcultural ethical critique, and the paradoxical risk of its use to justify ethnocentric or nationalist ideologies.
 
Key Message: Culture, as a symbolic system, is not passive before global forces; rather, it reinterprets reality according to its internal logic. This framework illuminates how societies, when confronted with unprecedented events, maintain a dynamic equilibrium between reproducing the prior symbolic order and articulating a new one.

کلیدواژه‌ها [English]

  • Marshall Sahlins
  • Intercultural Communication
  • Cultural Relativism
  • Structure of the Conjuncture
  • Indigenized Modernity

مراجع

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