Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942)

born in Cracow
1908 PhD (Sub auspiciis Imperatoris)
Leipzig, study with Wilhelm Wundt (Völkerpsychologie)
1910 to the London School of Economics (with Westermark, Seligman)
1916 PhD from LSE on people of Mailu (off the coast of New Guinea)

1914-1920: research in Australia, New Guinea, and the Trobriand Islands
2 years in the Trobriands, 1915-1916 and 1917-1918
read more about the Trobrianders

compelled anthropology out of the armchair
advocated participant observation, learning the language--the modern methods of ethnography
societies are integrated wholes; one must study the interrelationships
stressed need to document the native's perspective
focus on 3 main types of data:
    1. institutions and customs
    2. the imponderablia of everyday life
    3. narratives, folklore, myths

Themes:
    1. cultural aspects must be understood in their context (like Boas)
    2. "primitive" man just as reasonable as western man, given the cultural context
    3. have to look at behavior and beliefs: the two do not always mesh
    4. individual needs-functionalism

Functionalism
synchronic (rejection of history)
basic and derived needs

Examples:
magic and gardens and canoe building
the family: functions and revision of oedipal conflict hypothesis
kula trading: read more on the kula
    a circuit of gift exchanges with armbands traveling counter-clockwise and necklaces travelling clockwise

Selected bibliography of Bronislaw Malinowski
1922 Argonauts of the western Pacific; an account of native enterprise and adventure in the archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea.
1926 Crime and custom in savage society.
1926 Myth in primitive psychology.
1927 Sex and repression in savage society.
1927 The father in primitive psychology.
1929 The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia; an ethnographic account of courtship, marriage and family life among the natives of the Trobriand Islands.
1935 Coral gardens and their magic; a study of the methods of tilling the soil and of agricultural rites in the Trobriand Islands (2 volumes).

posthumously published:
1944 A scientific theory of culture and other essays.
1948 Magic, science and religion and other essays.
1967 A diary in the strict sense of the term. Pref. by Valetta Malinowski. Introd. by Raymond Firth. Translated by Norbert Guterman. Index of native terms by Mario Bick.