Sex and Repression in Savage Society

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 the emerging discipline of anthropology.

In Sex and Repression in Savage Society, Malinowski applied his experiences on the Trobriand Islands to the study of sexuality, and the attendant issues of eroticism, obscenity, incest, oppression, power, and parenthood. In so doing, he both utilized and challenged the psychoanalytical methods being popularised at the time in Europe by Freud and others.

The result is a unique and brilliant book that, though revolutionary when first published, has since become a standard work on the psychology of sex.