Bronisław Malinowski

Bronisław Malinowski was a Polish-British anthropologist whose Trobriand Islands fieldwork helped establish modern social anthropology and shaped functionalist theory.

Participant observation: A research method in which investigators take part in everyday life while observing a community. Malinowski made prolonged participation in local life central to ethnographic research.
Argonauts of the Western Pacific: Malinowski’s 1922 ethnography of exchange, sailing, and social life in the Trobriand Islands. This landmark book presents his account of the kula exchange system.
Functionalism (anthropology): An anthropological approach that explains cultural practices by the roles they play in social life. Malinowski’s version linked institutions to the satisfaction of human needs.
A. R. Radcliffe-Brown: An English social anthropologist who developed structural functionalism through comparative study of social systems. His emphasis on social structure contrasts with Malinowski’s focus on individual needs.
Malinowski’s diary: A private journal kept during Malinowski’s Trobriand fieldwork, published posthumously in 1967. Its candid language unsettled the image of detached, culturally empathetic fieldwork.
Ethnography: The systematic description and analysis of a culture, commonly based on sustained field research. His Trobriand studies helped make field-based ethnography a standard of anthropology.
Kula ring: A ceremonial exchange network linking island communities in the Massim region of Papua New Guinea. Malinowski analyzed its circulation of shell valuables as a system of social relations.
A Scientific Theory of Culture: Malinowski’s posthumously published account of culture as an organized means of meeting human needs. It gives his mature theoretical statement of functionalism.
E. E. Evans-Pritchard: A British social anthropologist known for ethnographies of African societies and historical approaches to anthropology. He inherited the British fieldwork tradition while later questioning universal functional explanations.
Writing Culture: A 1986 collection that examined how ethnographic writing constructs its accounts of other cultures. The book renewed scrutiny of authority and representation in Malinowski’s ethnographic style.

Linked from 37 pages