Alex Golub

Alex Golub is associate professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawai'i at Mānoa. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago. His dissertation focused on mining in the highlands of Papua New Guinea. He is also one of the founders of the acclaimed blog AnthroDendum (formerly Savage Minds) and a former president of the Association for the Social Anthropology of Oceania (ASAO). In addition to his interest in the history and culture of Papua New Guinea, he has also studied the history of anthropology and the video game World of Warcraft.

The project

Title: Biography of anthropologist Marshall Sahlins (1930-2021)

"Marshall Sahlins is widely regarded (along with Clifford Geertz) as the most influential American anthropologist of the post-war period. The aim of this project is to conduct research for a biographical book on Sahlins. His life is not just worth telling for its own sake. He is a particularly important figure because of his longevity and influence. Because he lived from 1930 to 2021, the story of his life is also, in a way, the story of anthropology in the 20th century. Sahlins is particularly important because of his long history linking American and French anthropological traditions. Sahlins lived in Paris between 1967 and 1969. There he was affiliated with Lévi-Strauss's Laboratoire d'anthropologie sociale. He also taught at Nanterre and witnessed the events of May 1968. For half a century, he introduced American anthropologists to the thinking of Claude Lévi-Strauss, Pierre Clastres, Philippe Descola, Bruno Latour and others. For this work, the French Ministry of Culture honoured him by making him a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. He also received an honorary doctorate from the Sorbonne. That's why it's essential that I conduct research in Paris on the two crucial years of his life in Paris."

Hosting institution: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)

Selective Bibliography

• Papua New Guinea, Melanesia and the Pacific; History of Anthropology; Anthropology of Mining and Political Anthropology; Virtual worlds and online culture; Public Anthropology and Open Access;.
• 2024. Golub, Alex and Courtney Handman. Rethinking Decolonisation in Papua New Guinea. Special issue of Oceania. 
• 2020. Golub, Alex and Lise Dobrin. The Legacy of Bernard Narokobi and the Melanesian Way. Special issue of The Journal of Pacific History
• 2018. From Allegiance to Connection: Structural Injustice, Scholarly Norms, and the Anthropological Ethics of Mining Encounters. In Mining Encounters: Extractive Industries in an Overheated World. Edited by Robert Pijpers and Thomas Hylland Eriksen.
• 2018. The Politics of Order in Contemporary Papua New Guinea. Special Issue of Anthropological Forum
• 2016. Golub, Alex, John Kelly, Daniel Rosenblatt, ed. A Practice of Anthropology: Essays In Honor of Marshall Sahlins. McGill-Queens Press.