Bronislaw Malinowski

Bronislaw Malinowski’s pathbreaking Argonauts of the Western Pacific is at once a detailed account of exchange in the Melanesian islands and a manifesto of a modernist anthropology. Malinowski argued that the goal of which the ethnographer should never lose sight is to ‘grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world.’ Through...

Bronislaw Malinowski’s pathbreaking Argonauts of the Western Pacific is at once a detailed account of exchange in the Melanesian islands and a manifesto of a modernist anthropology. Malinowski argued that the goal of which the ethnographer should never lose sight is to 'grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world'. Through...

During the First World War, the pioneer anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski found himself stranded on the Trobriand Islands, off the eastern coast of New Guinea. By living among the people he studied there, speaking their language and participating in their activities, he invented what became known as participant-observation. This new type of ethnographic study was to have a huge impact on...