MALINOWSKI'S CONTRIBUTION

Critically assess Malinowski's contribution to British anthropology

Critically assess Malinowski's contribution to British anthropology

Introduction

Malinowski, Bronislaw (1884-1942), Polish-English social anthropologist. Born into an educated and aristocratic family, Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski received his Ph.D. in physics and mathematics from the Jagiellonian University of his native Cracow in 1908. Switching from the natural sciences to the human sciences, he entered the London School of Economics in 1910 and received a D.Sc. in 1916. He later traced his decision to study anthropology to his reading of James G. Frazer's The Golden Bough. The tribute was apt, for Malinowski became the leading British anthropologist of the generation following Frazer's, but also ironic, for no one did more to repudiate Frazer's method (Ardener, 2006, pp. 295).

Discussion

Malinowski's approach to anthropology was psychological, but not psychoanalytic. His most celebrated work among nonspecialists was probably Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927), in which he denies Sigmund Freud's claim that the Oedipus complex is universal. In this book Malinowski argues that among the Trobriand Islanders matrilineal descent (reinforced by ignorance of physiological paternity) diverted a boy's hostility from his father to the distant authority figure of his maternal uncle. Trobriand men repressed sexual desire for their sisters, not their mothers.

Malinowski never wrote an account of Trobriand culture as a whole; he studied individual institutions in their social settings. The attention he paid to Trobriand economics and sex was in line with the premises of functional theory. His book Argonauts of the Western Pacific describes the complex and highly ritualized interisland trade known as kula; The Sexual Life of Savages (1929) deals with sex and the family; and Coral Gardens and Their Magic(1935) discusses Trobriand agriculture. In all these works Malinowski de-emphasizes the "primitive" nature of Trobriand life by stressing the rational organization of economic life and focusing on the nuclear family rather than on the segmentary kinship system (Malinowski, 1918, pp.87).

The idea of a 'function' became relevant to Malinowski's studies of the Trobriand Islanders when he saw that in the tribe, most if not all aspects of social life were designed for achieving basic human needs. These biological needs were characterized subsequently by derivative requirements and led to action-oriented patterns such as co-operation, exchange and economic pursuits. The establishment of central groups and Kinship systems subsequently led to the formation of social institutions with the aim of settling basic human needs.

With regards to the Trobriand, this new research method has given the insight into their economy, social system and magic, all of these elements being connected with cultivation of gardens. The Trobrianders grow yam, taro, pumpkin, banana, mango, sugar cane, peas, etc. They are first and foremost gardeners, and 'neither collecting nor fishing nor domestic animals are sufficient when gardens fail' (Malinowski 1918, pp.93). Plants form the main part of their diet, and the gardening cycle structures their sense of time. Crops are used as currency, the surplus becomes a tribute to a chief and a marriage ...