Encyclopedia, Difference between revisions of "Bronisław Malinowski" - New World
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==Biography== | ==Biography== | ||
| − | Malinowski was born in [[Kraków]], [[Austria-Hungary]] (in present day [[Poland]]) as | + | Malinowski was born on April 7, 1884 in [[Kraków]], [[Austria-Hungary]] (in present day [[Poland]]) as the only child to to Lucyan and Jozefa Malinowskian. They were and upper-middle class family. His father was a professor and his mother the daughter of a land-owning family. As a child he was frail, often suffering from ill-health, yet he excelled scholastically. He received a doctorate from [[Jagiellonian University]] in 1908, where he focused on mathematics and physical sciences. He spent the next two years at Leipzig University, where he was influenced by [[Wilhelm Wundt]] and his theories of folk psychology. These then led Malinowski on to develop an interest in anthropology. At the time, [[James Frazer]] and other British authors were amongst the best-known anthropologists, and so Malinowski traveled to [[England]] to study at the [[London School of Economics]] in 1910. |
In 1914 he traveled to [[Papua (Australian territory)|Papua]] (in what would later become [[Papua New Guinea]]) where he conducted fieldwork at Mailu and then, more famously, in the [[Trobriand Islands]]. He made several field trips to this area, some of which were extended to avoid the difficulties of emigrating from an Australian colony during the [[World War I|First World War]]. It was during this period that he conducted his fieldwork on [[Kula ring|Kula]]. | In 1914 he traveled to [[Papua (Australian territory)|Papua]] (in what would later become [[Papua New Guinea]]) where he conducted fieldwork at Mailu and then, more famously, in the [[Trobriand Islands]]. He made several field trips to this area, some of which were extended to avoid the difficulties of emigrating from an Australian colony during the [[World War I|First World War]]. It was during this period that he conducted his fieldwork on [[Kula ring|Kula]]. | ||
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Malinowski taught intermittently in the [[United States]], and when [[World War II]] broke out during one of these trips he remained in the country, taking up a position at [[Yale University]], although he remained actively identified with the Polish partisan cause during the war. His career at Yale was less spectacular than previously, but it gave him the chance to study peasant markets in Mexico in 1940 and 1941. He met Anna Valetta Hayman-Joyce, who was an artist who painting under the name Valetta Swann. She assisted him in his Mexican studies and they married in 1940. He had plans for a study of social change in Mexican-Indian communities, but his death prevented this study. Anna was primarily responsible for the publication of his Scientific Theory of Culture (1944) and other posthumous works. | Malinowski taught intermittently in the [[United States]], and when [[World War II]] broke out during one of these trips he remained in the country, taking up a position at [[Yale University]], although he remained actively identified with the Polish partisan cause during the war. His career at Yale was less spectacular than previously, but it gave him the chance to study peasant markets in Mexico in 1940 and 1941. He met Anna Valetta Hayman-Joyce, who was an artist who painting under the name Valetta Swann. She assisted him in his Mexican studies and they married in 1940. He had plans for a study of social change in Mexican-Indian communities, but his death prevented this study. Anna was primarily responsible for the publication of his Scientific Theory of Culture (1944) and other posthumous works. | ||
| − | == Ideas | + | Malinowski died on May 14, 1942 in New Haven, Connecticut. |
| − | Malinowski is | + | |
| + | == Ideas == | ||
| + | Malinowski, together with [[Radcliffe-Brown]] is considered the father of modern [[social anthropology]]. Malinowski christened modern field work, and Radcliffe-Brown was a theoretician. Both are functionalists, but Malinowski saw the function of [[culture]] as serving the needs of the individual whereas Radcliffe-Brown regarded the individual as supporting society as a whole. [[Functionalism (sociology)|functionalism]] was founded by Malinowski, but Radcliffe-Brown desinated himself a [[structural functionalist/structural fundctionalism]] in order to designate himself separate from Malinowski. Together, their work established the methodological foundations of anthropological fieldwork. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Malinowski reasoned that when the needs of the individuals who comprise society are met, then the needs of society are met. To Malinowski, the feelings of people, their motives, were crucial knowledge to understand the way their society [[functionalism|functioned]]: | ||
| + | |||
| + | :Besides the firm outline of tribal constitution and crystallized cultural items which form the skeleton, besides the data of daily life and ordinary behavior, which are, so to speak, its flesh and blood, there is still to be recorded the spirit—the natives' views and opinions and utterances. [''Argonauts,'' p. 25.] | ||
| + | |||
| + | He found the annual Kula Ring Exchange to be associated with magic, religion, kinship as well as having the normal economic aspects of trade. He viewed culture as a system of collective habits but that these were instrumental to the purposes of the individual. "The functional view of culture lays down the principle that in every type of civilization, every cutom, material object, idea and belief fulfills some vital function, has some task to accomplish, represents an indispensable part with a working whole" (Kardiner 1961). | ||
| + | |||
| + | He contributed to a cross-cultural study of psychology through his observations of the relationships of kinship. He found that with the Trobriand Islanders,the indicidual psychology depended upon the cultural context. This discredited the universality claimed by Sigmund Freud’s theory of the Oedipus Complex. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Previous anthropologists had conducted fieldwork through structured interviews and did not mix with their research subjects in day-to-day life. Malinowski emphasized the importance of detailed [[participant observation]] and argued that anthropologists must have daily contact with their informants if they were to adequately record the "imponderabilia of everyday life" that were so important to understanding a different culture. | ||
| + | |||
| + | He could speak numerous languages including Polish, Russian, German, French, English, Italian and Spanish. He felt fluency in speaking the languages of the Native tribes he studied was important to him and his studies. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==Legacy== | ||
| + | Malinowski developed anthropology away from an evolutionary focus into a science that embraced a sociological and psychological field of enquiry. His influential writings and charismatic,warm character made him a very popular lecturer and inspired many of his students to pursue various occupations, mainly in the field of social anthropology. | ||
| + | |||
| + | He showed that so-called primitive peoples are capable of the same types and levels of cognitive reasoning as those from more "advanced" societies. | ||
| + | |||
| + | One of Malinowski's major achievements was a satisfactory integration of cultural theory with psychological science. | ||
| + | |||
| + | His New York Times obituary named him an "integrator of ten thousand cultural characteristics." (Parker, p. 118) | ||
He stated that the goal of the cultural anthropologist, or ethnographer, is: | He stated that the goal of the cultural anthropologist, or ethnographer, is: | ||
| − | :to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to | + | :to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realize ''his'' vision of ''his'' world. [''Argonauts of the Western Pacific,'' Dutton 1961 edition, p. 25.] |
However, in reference to the [[Kula ring|Kula]], Malinowski also stated, in the same edition, pp.83-84: | However, in reference to the [[Kula ring|Kula]], Malinowski also stated, in the same edition, pp.83-84: | ||
| − | :Yet it must be remembered that what appears to us an extensive, complicated, and yet well ordered institution is the outcome of so many doings and pursuits, carried on by savages, who have no laws or aims or charters definitively laid down. They have no knowledge of the ''total outline'' of any of their social structure. They know their own motives, know the purpose of individual actions and the rules which apply to them, but how, out of these, the whole collective institution shapes, this is beyond their mental range. Not even the most intelligent native has any clear idea of the Kula as a big, | + | :Yet it must be remembered that what appears to us an extensive, complicated, and yet well ordered institution is the outcome of so many doings and pursuits, carried on by savages, who have no laws or aims or charters definitively laid down. They have no knowledge of the ''total outline'' of any of their social structure. They know their own motives, know the purpose of individual actions and the rules which apply to them, but how, out of these, the whole collective institution shapes, this is beyond their mental range. Not even the most intelligent native has any clear idea of the Kula as a big, organized social construction, still less of its sociological function and implications....The integration of all the details observed, the achievement of a sociological synthesis of all the various, relevant symptoms, is the task of the Ethnographer....the Ethnographer has to ''construct'' the picture of the big institution, very much as the physicist constructs his theory from the experimental data, which always have been within reach of everybody, but needed a consistent interpretation. |
In these two passages, Malinowski anticipated the distinction between description and analysis and between the views of actors and analysts. This distinction continues to inform anthropological method and theory. | In these two passages, Malinowski anticipated the distinction between description and analysis and between the views of actors and analysts. This distinction continues to inform anthropological method and theory. | ||
| − | His study of [[Kula ring|Kula]] was also vital to the development of an anthropological theory of [[reciprocity]], and his material from the Trobriands was extensively discussed in [[Marcel Mauss]]'s seminal essay [[The Gift (book)|The Gift]]. | + | His study of [[Kula ring|Kula]] was also vital to the development of an anthropological theory of [[reciprocity]], and his material from the Trobriands was extensively discussed in [[Marcel Mauss]]'s seminal essay [[The Gift (book)|The Gift]]. |
| + | |||
| + | Malinowski’s ideas and methodologies were embraced by the American Boas school of Anthropology, making him one of the most influential anthropologists of the 20th century. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ==References== | ||
| + | *Parker, Franklin. The McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography. The McGraw Hill Company Inc.: United States, 1973,Vol 7, pp 117, 118. | ||
| − | : | + | *http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/klmno/malinowski_bronislaw.html |
| − | + | *Kardiner and Preble, They Studied Man, 1961. | |
| − | * | ||
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==Bibliography== | ==Bibliography== | ||
Revision as of 08:54, 8 December 2006
Bronisław Kasper Malinowski (April 7, 1884 – May 16, 1942) was a Polish anthropologist widely considered to be one of the most important anthropologists of the twentieth century because of his pioneering work on ethnographic fieldwork, the study of reciprocity, and his detailed contribution to the study of Melanesia.
Biography
Malinowski was born on April 7, 1884 in Kraków, Austria-Hungary (in present day Poland) as the only child to to Lucyan and Jozefa Malinowskian. They were and upper-middle class family. His father was a professor and his mother the daughter of a land-owning family. As a child he was frail, often suffering from ill-health, yet he excelled scholastically. He received a doctorate from Jagiellonian University in 1908, where he focused on mathematics and physical sciences. He spent the next two years at Leipzig University, where he was influenced by Wilhelm Wundt and his theories of folk psychology. These then led Malinowski on to develop an interest in anthropology. At the time, James Frazer and other British authors were amongst the best-known anthropologists, and so Malinowski traveled to England to study at the London School of Economics in 1910.
In 1914 he traveled to Papua (in what would later become Papua New Guinea) where he conducted fieldwork at Mailu and then, more famously, in the Trobriand Islands. He made several field trips to this area, some of which were extended to avoid the difficulties of emigrating from an Australian colony during the First World War. It was during this period that he conducted his fieldwork on Kula.
It was also during this period he met his wife, Elsie Rosalind Masson. She was the daughter to David Orme Masson, an English born scientist who emigrated to Australia to become the first Professor of Chemistry at the University of Melbourne. When they met, Elsie was working as a nurses aid and had already published "An Untamed Territory" in 1915. She was interested to see some of his photographs of his field work. Her parents were against the marriage, but six years later they married in Melbourne when she finished her nurses training. She learned Polish and became a Polish citizen, as he was. They began a fourteen year marriage that ended when she died in 1935. They had three daughters they raised all over the world.
By 1922 Malinowski had earned a doctorate of science in anthropology and was teaching at the London School of Economics/LSE. In that year his book Argonauts of the Western Pacific was published. The book was universally regarded as a masterpiece and Malinowski became one of the best known anthropologists in the world. For the next three decades Malinowski would establish the LSE as one of Britain's greatest centers of anthropology. He would train many students, including students from Britain's colonies who would go on to become important figures in their home countries.
Malinowski taught intermittently in the United States, and when World War II broke out during one of these trips he remained in the country, taking up a position at Yale University, although he remained actively identified with the Polish partisan cause during the war. His career at Yale was less spectacular than previously, but it gave him the chance to study peasant markets in Mexico in 1940 and 1941. He met Anna Valetta Hayman-Joyce, who was an artist who painting under the name Valetta Swann. She assisted him in his Mexican studies and they married in 1940. He had plans for a study of social change in Mexican-Indian communities, but his death prevented this study. Anna was primarily responsible for the publication of his Scientific Theory of Culture (1944) and other posthumous works.
Malinowski died on May 14, 1942 in New Haven, Connecticut.
Ideas
Malinowski, together with Radcliffe-Brown is considered the father of modern social anthropology. Malinowski christened modern field work, and Radcliffe-Brown was a theoretician. Both are functionalists, but Malinowski saw the function of culture as serving the needs of the individual whereas Radcliffe-Brown regarded the individual as supporting society as a whole. functionalism was founded by Malinowski, but Radcliffe-Brown desinated himself a structural functionalist/structural fundctionalism in order to designate himself separate from Malinowski. Together, their work established the methodological foundations of anthropological fieldwork.
Malinowski reasoned that when the needs of the individuals who comprise society are met, then the needs of society are met. To Malinowski, the feelings of people, their motives, were crucial knowledge to understand the way their society functioned:
- Besides the firm outline of tribal constitution and crystallized cultural items which form the skeleton, besides the data of daily life and ordinary behavior, which are, so to speak, its flesh and blood, there is still to be recorded the spirit—the natives' views and opinions and utterances. [Argonauts, p. 25.]
He found the annual Kula Ring Exchange to be associated with magic, religion, kinship as well as having the normal economic aspects of trade. He viewed culture as a system of collective habits but that these were instrumental to the purposes of the individual. "The functional view of culture lays down the principle that in every type of civilization, every cutom, material object, idea and belief fulfills some vital function, has some task to accomplish, represents an indispensable part with a working whole" (Kardiner 1961).
He contributed to a cross-cultural study of psychology through his observations of the relationships of kinship. He found that with the Trobriand Islanders,the indicidual psychology depended upon the cultural context. This discredited the universality claimed by Sigmund Freud’s theory of the Oedipus Complex.
Previous anthropologists had conducted fieldwork through structured interviews and did not mix with their research subjects in day-to-day life. Malinowski emphasized the importance of detailed participant observation and argued that anthropologists must have daily contact with their informants if they were to adequately record the "imponderabilia of everyday life" that were so important to understanding a different culture.
He could speak numerous languages including Polish, Russian, German, French, English, Italian and Spanish. He felt fluency in speaking the languages of the Native tribes he studied was important to him and his studies.
Legacy
Malinowski developed anthropology away from an evolutionary focus into a science that embraced a sociological and psychological field of enquiry. His influential writings and charismatic,warm character made him a very popular lecturer and inspired many of his students to pursue various occupations, mainly in the field of social anthropology.
He showed that so-called primitive peoples are capable of the same types and levels of cognitive reasoning as those from more "advanced" societies.
One of Malinowski's major achievements was a satisfactory integration of cultural theory with psychological science.
His New York Times obituary named him an "integrator of ten thousand cultural characteristics." (Parker, p. 118)
He stated that the goal of the cultural anthropologist, or ethnographer, is:
- to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world. [Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Dutton 1961 edition, p. 25.]
However, in reference to the Kula, Malinowski also stated, in the same edition, pp.83-84:
- Yet it must be remembered that what appears to us an extensive, complicated, and yet well ordered institution is the outcome of so many doings and pursuits, carried on by savages, who have no laws or aims or charters definitively laid down. They have no knowledge of the total outline of any of their social structure. They know their own motives, know the purpose of individual actions and the rules which apply to them, but how, out of these, the whole collective institution shapes, this is beyond their mental range. Not even the most intelligent native has any clear idea of the Kula as a big, organized social construction, still less of its sociological function and implications....The integration of all the details observed, the achievement of a sociological synthesis of all the various, relevant symptoms, is the task of the Ethnographer....the Ethnographer has to construct the picture of the big institution, very much as the physicist constructs his theory from the experimental data, which always have been within reach of everybody, but needed a consistent interpretation.
In these two passages, Malinowski anticipated the distinction between description and analysis and between the views of actors and analysts. This distinction continues to inform anthropological method and theory.
His study of Kula was also vital to the development of an anthropological theory of reciprocity, and his material from the Trobriands was extensively discussed in Marcel Mauss's seminal essay The Gift.
Malinowski’s ideas and methodologies were embraced by the American Boas school of Anthropology, making him one of the most influential anthropologists of the 20th century.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Parker, Franklin. The McGraw Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography. The McGraw Hill Company Inc.: United States, 1973,Vol 7, pp 117, 118.
- Kardiner and Preble, They Studied Man, 1961.
Bibliography
- The Trobriand Islands (1915)
- Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922)
- The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia (1929)
- Coral Gardens and Their Magic: A Study of the Methods of Tilling the Soil and of Agricultural Rites in the Trobriand Islands (1935)
- The Scientific Theory of Culture (1944)
- Magic, Science, and Religion (1948)
- The Dynamics of Culture Change (1945)
- A Diary In the Strict Sense of the Term(1967)
Sources and further reading
- Malinowski : Odyssey of an Anthropologist, 1884-1920. By Michael Young. Yale University Press, 2004.
External links
- Malinowski; Archive (Real audio stream) of BBC Radio 4 edition of 'Thinking allowed' on Malinowski
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