Bronislaw Malinowski (Anthropology)

Introduction

Bronisław Malinowski (b. 1884–d. 1942) is arguably the most influential anthropologist of the 20th century, certainly for British social anthropology. The list of his students is a who’s who of the most important British anthropologists of the 1930s through to the 1970s and includes, among others, Raymond Firth, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Audrey Richards, Edmund Leach, Ashley Montagu, Meyer Fortes, and Isaac Schapera. Malinowski saw himself as effecting a revolution in anthropology by rejecting the evolutionary paradigm of his predecessors and introducing functionalism, whereby institutions satisfied human biological needs, as the way to understand other cultures. His lasting legacy, however, is methodological rather than theoretical. It was by exhorting anthropologists to give up their comfortable position on the veranda of the missionary compound or government station and to go and live and work with the people they studied that he effected his real innovation. Although not the first to conduct fieldwork, his lengthy stay among the Trobriand Islanders during World War I established, as Edmund Leach (in Singer 2011, cited under Documentaries) has remarked, how to “do” anthropology. Living with the people he studied, getting to know them personally, participating in their activities, and conducting his research in the vernacular has since become known as participant observation. His collection of monographs and numerous articles on the Trobriand Islanders is perhaps the most extensive ethnography of any people written to date. His magnum opus, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, published in 1922, in which he describes the Kula ring (a complex interisland exchange of arm shell bracelets and necklaces), is one of the first modern ethnographies. Unlike earlier monographs, which were dry catalogs of facts, Malinowski’s ethnographies painted a romantic picture of native life, had an institutional focus, and provided a vivid narrative where the ethnographer is seen to interact with real people. A prolific writer, Malinowski tackled some of the most important and controversial topics of his day: economics, religion, family, sex, psychology, colonialism, and war. He insisted that a proper understanding of culture required viewing these various aspects in context. Malinowski was instrumental in transforming British social anthropology from an ethnocentric discipline concerned with historical origins and based on the writings of travelers, missionaries, and colonial administrators to one concerned with understanding the interconnections between various institutions and based on fieldwork, where the goal was to “grasp the native’s point of view” (Malinowski 1984, p. 25, cited under Fieldwork and Ethnography).

Biographies and Bibliographies

Born in Kraków, Poland to an aristocratic family, Malinowski attended Jagiellonian University, receiving a PhD in philosophy, mathematics, and physics in 1908. In 1910 he pursued an interest in anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE) under the guidance of Charles Seligman and Edward Westermarck. In 1914, while attending anthropological meetings in Australia, World War I broke out and, although technically an enemy alien and under some restrictions, he received financial assistance from the Australian government to conduct research among the people of Mailu, a small island off the southeast coast of New Guinea. Through this early work he realized his inability to speak their language and failure to live among them limited his understanding of their culture, and so, in June 1915 he made a new beginning in the Trobriand Islands off the northeast coast of New Guinea. During an eighteenth-month hiatus in Australia, he met his future wife, Elsie Masson. Malinowski left the field in 1918. After lecturing in ethnology at the LSE between 1921 and 1923 he was appointed to a readership in 1924, and in 1927 to the Chair of Social Anthropology, which he held until 1942. In 1934 he conducted research on change in cultures under colonialism and visited several of his students in South and East Africa. In September 1939, shortly after Germany invaded Poland, he was a visiting professor at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, he was advised by the director of the LSE to stay in the United States, continuing as a lecturer and conducting fieldwork in Oaxaca, Mexico. He had accepted a permanent post at Yale for the fall of 1942, when he died suddenly of a heart attack, on 16 May 1942. The best biography is Young 2004, although it ends in 1920. A more complete yet far less detailed biography is Urry 2004. Murdock 1943 is a good obituary by a contemporary. Discussion of his early influences and life by Polish scholars can be found in Thornton and Skalník 1993 and Ellen, et al. 1988. Assessments of his intellectual development and contributions to anthropology are Stocking 1995, which focuses on his Trobriand Island experiences and the development of functionalism; Kuper 1996, which assess Malinowski’s position in British social anthropology; and Firth 1957, a compilation of essays each assessing his contribution in different areas of anthropology. Bibliographies can be found in Murdock 1943; Firth 1957; and Ellen, et al. 1988.

Ellen, Roy, Ernest Gellner, Grażyna Kubica, and Janusz Mucha. 1988. Malinowski between two worlds: The Polish roots of an anthropological tradition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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A collection of eight papers (originally published in Polish) by Polish and English authors presented at Jagiellonian University in 1984 to celebrate the centenary of Malinowski’s birth. The papers focus on the Polish roots of his personal and intellectual development and his impact on modern anthropology. Also contains the most comprehensive bibliography of Malinowski’s works to date.
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Firth, Raymond, ed. 1957. Man and culture: An evaluation of the work of Bronisław Malinowski. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
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A book of essays by former students and colleagues of Malinowski evaluating his contributions to functionalist theory, fieldwork methods, religion, and economic anthropology. Contains an extensive bibliography, including works published posthumously and about Malinowski. Essential for those interested in Malinowski.
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Kuper, Adam. 1996. Malinowski. In Anthropology and anthropologists: The modern British school. 3d ed. By Adam Kuper, 1–34. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
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The first chapter of this revised third edition is an accessible introduction to Malinowski’s role in the development of British social anthropology.
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Murdock, George Peter. 1943. Bronisław Malinowski. American Anthropologist 45.3: 441–451.
DOI: 10.1525/aa.1943.45.3.02a00090Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
One of the better obituaries of Malinowski outlining his contribution to anthropology. Contains a bibliography of his writings.
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Stocking, George W., Jr. 1995. From fieldwork to functionalism: Malinowski and the emergence of British social anthropology. In After Tylor: British social anthropology 1888–1951. By George W. Stocking Jr., 233–297. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.
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Chapter 6 follows Malinowski’s intellectual development from his early years in England and the influence of Émile Durkheim, through his fieldwork experience in the Trobriands and the development of the functionalist school of British social anthropology at LSE. The chapter contextualizes Malinowski’s more important writings.
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Thornton, Robert J., and Peter Skalník, eds. 1993. The early writings of Bronisław Malinowski. Translated by Ludwik Krzyzanowski. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511598364Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An essential text for Malinowski scholars, the book contains translations from the Polish and German of Malinowski’s writings, both published and unpublished, prior to 1915. It includes a translation of his doctoral thesis.
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Urry, James. 2004. “Malinowski, Bronisław Kasper (1884–1942), anthropologist.” In Oxford dictionary of national biography. Vol. 36. Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
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A concise biography outlining Malinowski’s career, his concept of culture, and the personal influences on the development of his ideas. Available online by subscription.
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Young, Michael W. 2004. Malinowski: Odyssey of an anthropologist, 1884–1920. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
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At nearly seven hundred pages, Young’s book is a richly detailed biography of Malinowski’s early life until his departure from Australia in 1920. Based on personal diaries, correspondence, field notes, and unpublished manuscripts, it is not so much an intellectual account of Malinowski’s life as a recounting of his personal journey—the odyssey—of why and how he became an anthropologist.
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Documentaries

Three documentaries of Malinowski’s life have been made; each focuses on a different aspect of his life and work. Singer 2011 is an intellectual biography with the major emphasis on his time in the Trobriand Islands, while Austin and Seaman 2007 begins with his diary and focuses on his persona. Zachary and Thomson 2012 examines Malinowski’s legacy on his descendants and on the Trobriand Islanders.

Austin, Naomi, and Helen Seaman, dirs. 2007. Malinowski and the Trobriand Islanders. London: BBC Four.
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The third episode in BBC Four’s Tales from the Jungle series, the documentary traces Malinowski’s career but with an emphasis on his personal life and personality. Malinowski is played by an actor who quotes from his diary and other writings. Includes archival film clips and photographs as well as interviews with contemporary anthropologists, including his biographer Michael Young (see Young 2004, cited under Biographies and Bibliographies. Available online.
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Singer, André, dir. 2011. Off the verandah: Bronisław Malinowski (1884–1942), 1986. DVD. London: Royal Anthropological Institute.
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Fourth in the “Strangers Abroad: Pioneers of Social Anthropology” series, the 1986 film traces Malinowski’s life from his early studies to his death in 1942 but with a focus on his fieldwork among the Trobriand Islanders and his methodological and theoretical contributions. Includes interviews with some of Malinowski’s students.
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Zachary, Stuart, and Kelly Thomson, dirs. 2012. Savage memory, 2011. DVD. Jamaica Plain, MA: Sly Productions.
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Directed and narrated by Malinowski’s great grandson, the film examines the legacy of Malinowski in the lives of his descendants as well as those of the Trobriand Islanders. Contains archival footage.
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Archives

Malinowski made carbon copies of many of the letters he sent and kept most of the ones he received. Malinowski’s archival material continues to be a source of new publications. Along with his diaries, manuscripts, and other documents pertaining to his life and work, they are scattered in archives in Australia, England, the United States, and Europe. The two most important collections of Malinowski’s papers, however, are located at the London School of Economics and Yale University Library. The LSE archives are more extensive (184 boxes) and focus more on the early part of Malinowski’s life. More recent additions to the collection, contributed by Malinowski’s daughter Helena Wayne, include additional papers as well as her correspondence with many of Malinowski’s old colleagues and students and her research notes for a planned biography. The material at Yale was deposited by Malinowski’s second wife, Valetta Swann, after his death and contains various manuscripts and correspondence from the 1930s with the occasional early piece.

Bronisław Malinowski papers. 184 boxes. British Library of Political and Economic Science, London School of Economics.
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The papers contain material related to his Trobriand Islands fieldwork including notebooks and diaries, notes for various articles and books, seminar and lecture notes, and correspondence. Over one thousand of Malinowski’s field photographs can be viewed online. For more detail see the online Hierarchy Browser.
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Bronisław Malinowski papers (MS 19). 40 boxes. Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
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The bulk of the collection consists of personal correspondence with anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, and students. The papers also include manuscripts of books, lectures, articles and reviews, his fieldwork notebooks, some photographs, and other papers and memorabilia. With the exception of personal correspondence to his first wife and mother, all the material is available on microfilm. For more information see the online archive.
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Fieldwork and Ethnography

Malinowski’s greatest contribution is to fieldwork methodology. The first chapter of Argonauts of the Western Pacific (Malinowski 1984) is a methodological introduction in which he sets out, in broad terms, the fieldwork agenda for the future. Malinowski believed a true understanding of “native” life could be achieved only through conducting fieldwork in the vernacular and living with and participating in the daily lives of the “natives.” One of the insights Malinowski gained from this experience was the realization that what the natives say they do and what they actually do may be two different things. His overall approach and goal, and in many ways still the goal of the ethnographer, was “to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world” (1984, p. 25, emphasis in original). Controversy arose when his personal fieldwork diaries were published (Malinowski 1967, cited under Diary); his fieldwork was not as participatory as his published writings portrayed, and they also revealed his true feelings toward the islanders. Part of Malinowski’s fame is due to his writing style. His vivid and detailed accounts of Trobriand life were a new genre of ethnography and presented a romanticized view of the “exotic savage,” which drew a wide readership. Malinowski was also an active photographer, developing many of his photographs while in the field. They are some of the earliest ethnographic photos taken, and many are published in Young 1998 and analyzed in Wright 1991. A great deal has been written about Malinowski’s entry into the field and the development of his fieldwork methods. The best discussions are Malinowski 1979, Malinowski 1988, and Stocking 1992, Young 1984. To read what Malinowski himself had to say about his methods see Young 1998, Malinowski 1954, and Malinowski 1984.

Malinowski, Bronisław. 1954. Baloma: Spirits of the dead in the Trobriand Islands. In Magic, science and religion and other essays. By Bronisław Malinowski, 149–274. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor.
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Essay originally published in 1916. Rarely read these days, this extended essay, the first of Malinowski’s ethnographies on the Trobriand Islanders, is a vivid description of how a particular belief is embodied in and integrated with native life. It is perhaps, as Michael Young remarked, “the first truly modern ethnological monograph” (see Young 2004, p. 428, cited under Biographies and Bibliographies).
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1979. The ethnography of Malinowski: The Trobriand Islands 1915–18. Edited by Michael W. Young. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
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Designed for undergraduates who need to read Malinowski’s classics, this book condenses Argonauts of the Western Pacific (Malinowski 1984), The Sexual Life of Savages (Malinowski 1987 cited under Psychoanalysis), and Coral Gardens and Their Magic (Malinowski 1978 cited under Magic, Science, and Religion). Young’s introduction reviews Malinowski’s life and evaluates his fieldwork methods.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1984. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An account of native enterprise and adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. Long Grove, IL: Waveland.
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Originally published in 1922. A must read, especially the first chapter on method, for anyone interested in Malinowski, economic anthropology, the history of fieldwork, or the ethnography. It is the book that established his career as an anthropologist and gained him an international reputation.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1988. Malinowski among the Magi: The natives of Mailu. Edited by Michael W. Young. London: Routledge.
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Originally published in 1915 in the Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of South Australia, The Natives of Mailu was virtually unobtainable until this annotated reissue. Young’s introduction contextualizes its production and gives a critical appraisal. Of interest primarily to those concerned with the history of anthropology, it describes Malinowski’s first entry into the field.
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Stocking, George W., Jr. 1992. The ethnographer’s magic: Fieldwork in British anthropology from Tylor to Malinowski. In The ethnographer’s magic and other essays in the history of Anthropology. By George W. Stocking, Jr., 12–59. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.
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Originally published in 1983 in Stocking’s Observer’s Observed: Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, pp. 70–120), this article is important in the history of anthropological methods as it traces the development of fieldwork methods from the 1880s and 1890s to Malinowski.
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Wright, Terrence. 1991. The fieldwork photographs of Jenness and Malinowski and the beginnings of modern anthropology. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 22.1: 41–58.
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A comparison of Malinowski’s photographs with Diamond Jenness, another early fieldworker, highlights paradigmatic differences and reveals Malinowski’s relative intimacy with the Trobrianders. Entire issue available online.
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Young, Michael W. 1984. The intensive study of a restricted area, or, why did Malinowski go to the Trobriand Islands? Oceania 55.1: 1–26.
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Using Malinowski’s diaries and field notes, this article describes Malinowski’s first foray into the field and the lessons that he learned. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Young, Michael W. 1998. Malinowski’s Kiriwina: Fieldwork photography 1915–1918. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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In his diary (see Malinowski 1967, cited under Diary) Malinowski wrote: “Thought of publishing my photographs in an album with explanatory notes.” Young completed this task for him. The volume contains nearly two hundred of Malinowski’s unpublished photographs taken on Kiriwina, the largest island in the Trobriands. Young uses many of Malinowski’s own captions.
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Diary

Much of Malinowski’s reputation rested on the self-generated myth that he was the consummate fieldworker until, that is, the publication of his diary (Malinowski 1967). Controversial from the beginning, many former students disapproved of its publication perceiving it as a betrayal because it portrays Malinowski, not as the diligent, empathetic fieldworker he made himself out to be, but as consumed by bouts of lechery, self-doubt, lethargy, and escapism into trashy novels. Geertz 1967 (p. 12) claims that the diary reveals Malinowski to be “a crabbed, self-preoccupied, hypochrondriacal narcissist,” while Hsu 1979 accuses him of being ethnocentric and a racist. Malinowski did, however, have his defenders. Leach 1980, for example, argues that many of the terms Malinowski used have been misinterpreted by his critics, especially Hsu and that they should first consider the reality of their own fieldwork experience before criticizing Malinowski. More recently, and perhaps more significantly, postmodernists have turned to the diary and Malinowski’s ethnographies as a source of insight in their critique of ethnographic fieldwork and representation. Payne 1981, for instance, compares Malinowski’s style in the diary with that of his published ethnographies and finds the authoritative narrator absent in the diary. A discussion of the relation between his field notes and the final ethnography (Malinowski 1984, cited under Fieldwork and Ethnography) is also provided in Roldán 2002. Clifford 1988 argues that through his writing Malinowski created not only the image or persona of the fieldworker but also the Trobrianders and that his ethnography is thus a work of fiction. Geertz 1989 shows how Malinowski’s account of his fieldwork experiences (of “being there”) persuades readers of the ethnography’s authenticity.

Clifford, James. 1988. On ethnographic self-fashioning: Conrad and Malinowski. In The predicament of culture: Twentieth-century ethnography, literature, and art. By James Clifford, 92–113. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
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Clifford argues that Malinowski, as an ethnographer, is an intrusive observer and compares the inner struggles Malinowski’s recounts in his diary (Malinowski 1967) with the struggles of Joseph Conrad’s protagonist in The Heart of Darkness. The comparison is apropos since Malinowski styled himself as the Conrad of anthropology. The article is the third in Clifford’s book that questions the authority of ethnographic representation.
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Geertz, Clifford. 1967. Under the mosquito net. New York Review of Books 9.4: 12–13.
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A review of Malinowski’s diary (Malinowski 1967) with several lengthy quotations. Geertz casts Malinowski in a negative light and suggests that he never really got to know the Trobriand Islanders. Contains rebuttals by Malinowski’s former students Hortense Powdermaker and Ashley Montagu. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Geertz, Clifford. 1989. Works and lives: The anthropologist as author. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
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Geertz examines the ethnographic writings of Malinowski as well as those of Claude Levi-Strauss, E. E. Evans-Pritchard, and Ruth Benedict arguing that the essence of the ethnography is the recounting of their experiences of native life, which persuades readers that they have the authority to represent those about whom they write.
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Hsu, Francis L. K. 1979. The cultural problem of the cultural anthropologist. American Anthropologist 81.3: 517–532.
DOI: 10.1525/aa.1979.81.3.02a00010Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A scathing critique of Malinowski’s diary (Malinowski 1967) in which Hsu claims the diary reveals Malinowski to be an ethnocentric racist, preoccupied with sex. The article also contains a discussion on racism and Hsu’s personal experience as a student of Malinowski in 1937–1938. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Leach, Edmund. 1980. Malinowskiana: On reading a diary in the strict sense of the term: Or the self mutilation of Professor Hsu. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 36:2–3.
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A short defense of both Malinowski and his diary (Malinowski 1967) in which Leach argues that Hsu 1979 misunderstands Malinowski’s phraseology because the author fails to understand the historical and cultural context in which Malinowski wrote. Available online with registration.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1967. A diary in the strict sense of the term. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
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In addition to his ethnographic field notes, Malinowski kept a personal diary. It provides a fascinating insight into his fieldwork experience, revealing his true thoughts about the Trobriand Islanders, his emotional relation to fieldwork, and also the extent to which he actually participated in the lives of the natives.
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Payne, Harry C. 1981. Malinowski’s style. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 125.6: 416–440.
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Based on an analysis of the word choices and rhetorical devices Malinowski uses in his ethnographies, articles, and diary, Payne shows how Malinowski’s writing style, rather than being a scientific account of Trobriand life, is a romantic narrative in which Malinowski, as an ever-present arbiter of the truth, is at the center of the ethnographic narrative as the hero. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Roldán, Arturo Álvarez. 2002. Writing ethnography: Malinowski’s fieldnotes on Baloma. Social Anthropology 10.3: 377–393.
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Using Malinowski’s early field notebooks, this article explores the relation between his field notes and the published ethnography. For those interested in the process of “writing up.” Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Persona and Pedagogy

Interest in, or rather fascination with, Malinowski has almost as much to do with his persona as with his importance in the development of British anthropology. He was brilliant, enthusiastic, arrogant, controversial, and a hypochondriac and had a reputation as a womanizer. He encouraged some of the first women (Audrey Richards, Lucy Mair, and Hortense Powdermaker, among others) to take up anthropology and attend his seminars at LSE. The seminars also attracted missionaries, colonial administrators, and such politicians as Jomo Kenyatta, first Prime Minister and President of Kenya, and Ralph Bunche, who was instrumental in drafting the United Nation Charter and United Nation’s Declaration of Human Rights. They were attracted to his lectures, not because he lectured, because he rarely did, but because of their scope, polemics, and rigor. Former students describe them as stimulating and inspiring. Malinowski also promoted anthropology, writing for popular magazines and giving radio interviews. No stranger to controversy, book titles such as the Sexual Life of Savages (Malinowski 1987, cited under Psychoanalysis), and Sex and Repression in Savage Society (Malinowski 2001, cited under Psychoanalysis), which were banned in some universities, along with his romantic image of the exotic primitive and his frank approach to the major issues of the day—religion, economics, psychoanalysis, sex, the family—made him an international celebrity. He also had open disputes with several of his former students such as Evans-Pritchard and Isaac Schapera, and with contemporaries, especially Radcliffe-Brown over the nature of functionalism. Malinowski also had an acute sense of his own self-importance, seeing his fieldwork methods and functionalist ideas as “effecting a revolution in anthropology” (Malinowski 1967, p. 289, cited under Diary). The story of his conversion to anthropology through reading James Frazer, his fieldwork in the Trobriands during World War I, and the development of functionalism has become a “charter myth” of anthropology. Repeated in some of his students’ ethnographies and histories of anthropology the myth has overshadowed the contributions of others, especially W. H. R. Rivers in the development of British social anthropology. See Wayne 1995 for a discussion of his relationship with his first wife and Wayne 1985 for the importance of other women in his life. Mills 2010 discusses his relationship with students at the LSE. The Film Interviews with Leading Thinkers series (Macfarlane 2011a; Macfarlane 2011b; Macfarlane 2011c) contains interviews with Lucy Mair, Audrey Richards, and Raymond Firth—former Malinowski students—who discuss his personality, methods, and seminars.

Macfarlane, Alan, dir. 2011a. Audrey Richards. Video recording. In Film Interviews with Leading Thinkers. Cambridge, UK: Univ. of Cambridge.
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In this interview, filmed in 1982, Audrey Richards discusses conducting fieldwork under colonialism, Malinowski’s personality, his seminars, and his visit to her during her fieldwork in Africa.
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Macfarlane, Alan, dir. 2011b. Lucy Mair. Video recording. In Film Interviews with Leading Thinkers. Cambridge, UK: Univ. of Cambridge.
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Part of the University of Cambridge’s Film Interviews with Leading Thinkers series, this hour-long interview with Lucy Mair was originally filmed in 1983. She discusses her early fieldwork, her relationship with Malinowski, and his seminars.
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Macfarlane, Alan, dir. 2011c. Raymond Firth. Video recording. In Film Interviews with Leading Thinkers. Cambridge, UK: Univ. of Cambridge.
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Filmed in 1983, Raymond Firth discusses Malinowski’s influence on his fieldwork as well as his personality in this nineteen-minute video.
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Mills, David. 2010. Difficult folk? A political history of social anthropology. Oxford: Berghahn.
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A history of the politics of anthropology in Britain, chapters 3–5 (pp. 29–92) discuss anthropology at LSE, colonialism, and Malinowski’s relationships with his students, his seminars, and his efforts to fund anthropological fieldwork. First published in 2008.
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Wayne, Helena. 1985. Bronisław Malinowski: The influence of various women on his life and work. American Ethnologist 12.3: 529–540.
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Written by Malinowski’s youngest daughter, this article discusses, as the title suggests, the important women in Malinowski’s life. They include his mother, his first wife Elsie Masson, his second wife Valetta Swann, his daughter Helena Wayne, and some of his students. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Wayne, Helena, ed. 1995. The story of a marriage: The letters of Bronisław Malinowski and Elsie Masson. 2 vols. London: Routledge.
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Edited by Malinowski’s youngest daughter, Volume 1 contains the letters Malinowski and his wife, Elsie Masson, exchanged between 1916 and 1920 when they left Australia for Europe. Volume 2 covers the years 1920–1935 during which time Elsie died after a long struggle with multiple sclerosis. Not only a moving story, the letters also provide insight into Malinowski’s character and personal relationships.
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Functionalism and Culture

In many of his early articles Malinowski repudiated the evolutionism of his predecessors, viewing their attempts to reconstruct the history of socio-cultural phenomena as speculative. Evolutionism’s comparative approach was also more suited to a library, and he found it of little use in understanding the immediacy of people’s motivations and actions, which he observed in the field and which were crucial in understanding how a society worked in the present. In many respects his functionalism developed from his field experiences; indeed, his functionalism cannot be divorced from fieldwork. Yet his functionalism was evident in nascent form, even before he went to the field (Malinowski 1913, Malinowski 1915). Although he disagreed with Émile Durkheim’s ideas about collective consciousness and effervescence (Stocking 1995; Young 2004, both cited under Biographies and Bibliographies), he did find value in Durkheim’s ideas about the function of social institutions. Malinowski developed a pragmatic brand of functionalism that emphasized how cultural institutions served human needs. Culture’s basic function was to satisfy human biological needs such as food, shelter, and reproduction. Malinowski spent much of the 1920s and 1930s determining the functions of various social institutions, and in his later years he developed synoptic tables that linked the function of each institution to a biological need and to developing a concept of culture that would explain, in general terms, how all societies worked. From Malinowski’s perspective, it was because the function of any particular institution, whatever its form, was to satisfy the same biological need that made anthropology scientific. Discussion of his theory of functionalism can be found in Malinowski 1926, Malinowski 1931, and Malinowski 1944. For a discussion of his later scientific theory of culture, see Young 1987. Malinowski saw his ideas about functionalism as revolutionizing the discipline and he himself as its leading revolutionary. Most anthropologists, however, rejected his pragmatic functionalism in favor of Radcliffe-Brown’s structural functionalism, which emphasized how social institutions functioned to maintain social solidarity. For a scathing critique of Malinowski’s functionalism, see Gluckman 2004.

Gluckman, Max. 2004. Order and rebellion in tribal Africa: Collected essays with an autobiographical introduction. London: Routledge.
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Originally published in 1963, the book contains two 1947 review essays of Malinowski’s posthumously published books (see chapter 8, “Malinowski’s ‘Functional’ Analysis of Social Change,” pp. 207–234, and chapter 9, “Malinowski’s Contribution to Social Anthropology,” pp. 235–243) as well as a third paper broadcast on the BBC in 1959 (see chapter 10, “Malinowski—Fieldworker and Theorist,” pp. 244–252). Gluckman argues that Malinowski misunderstood the concepts of history and culture and that his biopsychological anthropology fails to recognize the sociological aspects of functionalism.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1913. The family among the Australian Aborigines: A sociological study. London: Univ. of London Press.
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In the late 19th and early 20th centuries the Australian Aborigines, because they were considered the most primitive people still living, were the focus of considerable theoretical interest. Rather than search for origins, however, Malinowski in this, his first, monograph (a library dissertation) rejects the evolutionary explanation of Totemism for a more functional inquiry discussing how the Aboriginal kinship organization actually worked. It is his first discussion of functionalism.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1915. Wierzenia pierwotne i formy ustroju społecznego: Pogla̧d na genezẹ religii ze szcególnym uwzglẹdnieniem totemizmu. Kraków, Poland: Polish Academy of Science.
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A full-length monograph on religion and social organization, it is Malinowski’s only major work yet to be translated from the Polish into English. It does, however, contain his first articulation of the idea that the structure of society is related to the psycho-physiological needs of the individual.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1926. Anthropology. In Encyclopedia Britannica. 13th ed. Suppl. Vol. 1. Edited by James L. Garvin, 131–140. London: Encyclopædia Britannica.
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This article is the first in which Malinowski articulates in some detail his ideas that social institutions function to fulfill human biological needs and where he feels confident enough to call this approach a “new school” of anthropology. Also in fourteenth edition, supplementary.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1931. Culture. In Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. Vol. 4. Edited by Edwin R.A. Seligman, 621–646. New York: Macmillan.
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By 1931 Malinowski was much clearer about how each institution centers around a specific biological need. A good overview of his theory of needs.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1944. A scientific theory of culture and other essays. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press.
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When Malinowski died, he left a finished and corrected manuscript. Published posthumously, this work is his most developed position on the relation between human physiological needs and cultural institutions. It incorporates much of the material contained in several articles published in the 1930s.
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Young, Michael W. 1987. Malinowski and the function of culture. In Creating culture: Profiles in the study of culture. Edited by Diane J. Austin-Broos, 124–140. Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin.
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A brief essay in a rather obscure collection that looks at the early influences on Malinowski’s concept of culture and that summarizes his more mature ideas of the concept as they developed later in life.
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Economics

Malinowski’s interest in economics existed even before he left Poland for England (see Malinowski 1912), but his real impact on economic theory was his description and analysis of the Kula ring, in Malinowski 1984. As with every topic Malinowski tackled, he emphasized the interrelatedness of cultural institutions; an appreciation of the Kula could not be obtained without also considering magic, science, kinship, politics, and so on. This approach challenged the neo-classical economics’ premise of the self-interested individual who was rationally motivated, since the Trobrianders “irrationally” risked their lives on long and hazardous journeys for essentially worthless baubles. Malinowski contended that these exchanges were not irrational but had to be understood in terms of reciprocity and gift exchange rather than the economics of market exchange. The Kula rings stands as an archetype of balanced reciprocity. Much of the ensuing debate about “primitive” or precapitalist economics and mentality drew on Malinowski’s description of the Kula as a starting point (see Mauss 2011). Malinowski’s last monograph, Malinowski and de la Fuente 1982, was also on economics and looks at market exchange in Mexico. For commentary on Malinowski’s contribution to economic anthropology, see Firth 1957 and Hann 1992. The Kula ring has intrigued several generations of anthropologists, such as Uberoi 1962 and Weiner 1976 who have different perspectives on the institution.

Firth, Raymond. 1957. The place of Malinowski in the history of economic anthropology. In Man and culture: An evaluation of the work of Bronisław Malinowski. Edited by Raymond Firth, 209–228. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
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A brief article tracing the development of Malinowski’s ideas about economics and assessing his contributions to economic anthropology.
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Hann, Christopher H. 1992. Radical functionalism: The life and work of Karl Polanyi. Dialectical Anthropology 17.2: 141–166.
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This article compares Malinowski’s economic ideas with those of the Hungarian economist Karl Polanyi and discusses Malinowski’s influence on him. Of value to those interested in the history of economic anthropology. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1912. The economic aspect of the Intichiuma ceremonies. In Festskrift tillegnäd Edvard Westermarck i Anledning af hans femtiöårsdag den 20. November 1912, 81–108. Helsinki: Simelli.
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Malinowski’s first paper in English (and rather inaccessible) in which he disagrees with the prevailing view that totemic ceremonies are primarily religious, arguing instead that they had a primarily economic function and that the Aborigines were motivated to perform them for religious reasons rather than self-interested ones. Also available in The Early Writings of Bronisław Malinowski, edited by Robert J. Thornton and Peter Skalník and translated by Ludwik Krzyzanowski (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993, pp. 209–228), which is available online by subscription.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1984. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An account of native enterprise and adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. Long Grove, IL: Waveland.
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Originally published in 1922. The book analyzes the economic aspects of the Kula ring and its interrelation with mythology, canoe building, and magic and has been foundational in theories of reciprocity and exchange. A necessary read for understanding the formalist–substantivist debate.
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Malinowski, Bronisław, and Julio de la Fuente. 1982. Malinowski in Mexico: The economics of a Mexican market system. Edited by Susan Drucker-Brown. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
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Malinowski’s last publication, appearing forty years after his death, is an edited version of his original 1941 manuscript based on fieldwork in Oaxaca Mexico with his assistant Julio de la Fuente. The long introduction by Drucker-Brown contextualizes it in relation to his ideas about economics.
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Mauss, Marcel. 2011. The gift: Forms and functions of exchange in archaic societies. Translated by Ian Cunnison. Eastford, CT: Martino.
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Originally published in 1923. The most accessible of several editions of this classic text, this book is a reprint of first English translation of 1954, with an introduction by Evans-Pritchard. Chapter 2 (“Distribution of the System: Generosity, Honour and Money,” pp. 17–45) uses Malinowski’s discussion of the Kula to demonstrate how exchanges are connected with other aspects of culture. Required reading for undergraduates.
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Uberoi, J. P. Singh. 1962. Politics of the Kula ring: An analysis of the findings of Bronisław Malinowski. Manchester, UK: Manchester Univ. Press.
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A reassessment of the economic role of the Kula in relation to Trobriand politics, this book will be of interest to those concerned with the development of anthropological theory as it shifts the focus from a functional interpretation to a political-economic one that is concerned with power relations.
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Weiner, Annette B. 1976. Women of value, men of renown: New perspectives on Trobriand exchange. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.
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Women were almost invisible in Malinowski’s ethnographic accounts, especially when it came to their presence in public rituals and economic exchange. Weiner provides the first ethnography of the Trobriand Islands since Malinowski. A classic in its own right, and with frequent reference to Malinowski’s ideas about exchange and the Kula ring, Weiner’s book offers a corrective to his male-centered anthropology.
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Magic, Science, and Religion

In his account of the Kula, magic played a major role and was a concern in most of his Trobriand Islands ethnographies. Magic, he soon discovered, accompanied most dangerous or uncertain activities such as Kula expeditions, gardening (Malinowski 1978), shark fishing, and so on. His interest in magic grew from an early review of Frazer 2009. James Frazer saw magic as a pseudo-science based on false premises, while for Malinowski magic differed from science and religion in terms of its function. He elaborated on this view in Malinowski 1954. In keeping with his idea that each institution had its own unique function, Malinowski, in the mid-1920s, began to articulate the function of a number of institutions. Magic’s function was to warrant myth’s truth; science functioned to ensure survival; and religion’s function was to engender a reverence for tradition, to inspire confidence, and to relieve the anxiety of death. Malinowski’s ideas about the relations are discussed in Rosengren 1976. His analysis and discussions of magic, science and religion have also become important in the discourse on rationality and are discussed in Tambiah 1990.

Frazer, James George. 2009. The golden bough: A study in magic and religion: A new abridgement from the second and third editions. Edited by Robert Fraser. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.
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Originally published as two volumes in 1890, Frazer’s Golden Bough expanded to twelve volumes before being abridged in 1920. This work is an accessible new abridgement. It was through listening to his mother read the Golden Bough to him during one of his bouts of illness that Malinowski says he was converted to anthropology.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1954. Magic, science and religion. In Magic, science and religion and other essays. By Bronisław Malinowski, 19–84. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor.
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Originally published in 1925. This essay is essential for understanding Malinowski’s ideas about the relation among magic, science, and religion and their functions.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1978. Coral gardens and their magic: A study of the methods of tilling the soil and of agricultural rites in the Trobriand Islands. New York: Dover.
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Originally published in two volumes in 1935. Volume 1, The Description of Gardening, continues the economic theme of earlier texts, yet Malinowski’s aim is to show the relation between rational economic work and kinship, politics, mythology, and, especially, magic. In Volume 2, The Language of Magic and Gardening, he discusses his theory of language in relation to gardening and magical spells.
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Rosengren, Karl Erik. 1976. Malinowski’s magic: The riddle of the empty cell. Current Anthropology 17.4: 667–685.
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With commentary and a reply, this article looks at the distinctions Malinowski makes among science, magic, and religion with an emphasis on that between science and religion. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Tambiah, Stanley J. 1990. Magic, science, religion and the scope of rationality. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
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Tambiah first examines Western concepts of magic, science, and religion and the role rationality plays in all three and then compares the approaches of Tylor, Frazer, and Malinowski, among others.
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Culture and the Individual

Throughout his life Malinowski struggled to synthesize the relationship between the individual and society. A common theme throughout his writings, many of which are contained in Malinowski 1962, and one of the key differences from the evolutionary anthropologists, was that the “savage” mind was no different from that of “civilized” peoples; savages were just as creative, as intelligent, and as motivated as “civilized” people—they were just as human. It was simply that their creativity, rationality, and motivations were played out in a different cultural context. Malinowski’s goal was to understand how that context shaped human thoughts and what the nature of the human mind was. Although this theme is present in almost all of his writings it is most observable when he discusses language, myth, law, and in his encounter with psychoanalysis. At the end of the first chapter of Argonauts (Malinowski 1984, p. 25, cited under Economics), he writes, “Perhaps through realising human nature in a shape very distant and foreign to us, we shall have some light shed on our own. In this, and in this case only, we shall be justified in feeling that it has been worth our while to understand these natives, their institutions, and customs.” To a large extent this is still the goal of anthropology today, that is, self-understanding through understanding difference.

Malinowski, Bronisław. 1962. Sex, culture, and myth. London: Hart-Davis.
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A compilation of many of Malinowski’s articles on sex, the family, kinship, myth, and religion.
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Language

A remarkable linguist (he was fluent in Polish, English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Kiriwinian, the language of the Trobriands; see Young 2004, cited under Biographies and Bibliographies), language for Malinowski was not only the key to his success as a fieldworker but was also the key to understanding the “savage” mind. In his writings on language Malinowski argued against the common-sense view that language was primarily a form of communication but that it also had a pragmatic function. Except for an early article on the structure of Kiriwinian language, his article “The Problem of Meaning in Primitive Languages” (Malinowski 1946), and the second volume of Coral Gardens and Their Magic (see Malinowski 1978, cited under Magic, Science, and Religion), most of his comments on language are scattered in his writings. Malinowski’s functionalist theories of language and meaning were at odds with those of linguists. Henson 1974 describes this relation and Langendoen 1968 traces the development of his ideas.

Henson, Hilary. 1974. British social anthropologists and language: A history of separate development. Oxford: Clarendon.
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A text for specialists in the history of anthropology and its relation to linguistics, Henson’s book traces the relation between the two from the mid-19th century to the early 1960s. Over half the book discuses Malinowski’s theory.
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Langendoen, D. Terrence. 1968. The London school of linguistics: A study of the linguistic theories of Bronisław Malinowski and J. R. Firth. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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Compares Malinowski’s view of language with that of his student and shows the development of his pragmatic view.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1946. The problem of meaning in primitive languages. In The meaning of meaning: A study of the influence of language upon thought and of the science of symbolism. Edited by Charles K. Ogden and Audrey I. Richards, 296–336. London: Kegan Paul.
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Originally published in 1923. Malinowski outlines his ideas about the pragmatic function of language here.
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Myth

As with other topics, Malinowski disagreed with his evolutionary predecessors over how to understand myth. Myth was neither a rational attempt to explain past events, nor was it to be evaluated in terms of its truthfulness. Rather, myth was a vital force intimately connected with people’s emotional lives, with their hopes and dreams and fears. As such, it could only be properly understood in the social context of their beliefs, behaviors, and rituals. Myth thus fulfilled an individual psychological need as well as a social need. It provided a charter for social organization and behavior—it explained and justified the structure of society and social norms—and it provided hope and assuaged human anxieties, particularly the fear of death. Most of Malinowski’s thoughts on myth are contained in two monographs: Malinowski 1948 and Malinowski 1962, as well as several articles, which are anthologized in Malinowski 1992. Strenski 1987 also makes some interesting comparisons with other theories.

Malinowski, Bronisław. 1948. Myth in primitive psychology. In Magic, science and religion and other essays. By Bronisław Malinowski, 93–148. Garden City, NY: Doubleday Anchor.
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Originally published in 1926 as a separate monograph, this edition is a more accessible version. In it, Malinowski describes several Trobriand Island myths and then articulates his functional interpretation of them.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1962. The foundations of faith and morals: An anthropological analysis of primitive beliefs and conduct with special reference to the fundamental problems of religion and ethics. In Sex, culture, and myth. Edited by Bronisław Malinowski, 295–336. London: Hart-Davis.
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Originally published in 1936. The text of the Riddell Memorial lectures he delivered at the University of Durham in 1934–1935. The lectures are perhaps Malinowski’s clearest statement of his ideas about the function of myth in relation to religion and morality.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1992. Malinowski and the work of myth. Edited by Ivan Strenski. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
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An anthology of Malinowski’s theoretical writings on myth including articles and excerpts from books. Arranged chronologically they show the development of Malinowski’s thoughts about myth.
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Strenski, Ivan. 1987. Four theories of myth in twentieth century history: Cassirer, Eliade, Lévi-Strauss, and Malinowski. London: Macmillan.
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In chapter 3 of this comparative study of myth, Strenski contextualizes Malinowski’s pragmatic theory of myth both in terms of his personal development and his external social and cultural environment.
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Law

Malinowski argued that the “savage” is not slavishly bound by custom, as portrayed by evolutionists, but that law should be looked at in terms of reciprocity and that following laws and norms is influenced by social relationships, obligations, and personal interest. The theme of integration of aspects of culture is again reiterated in Malinowski 1989. Malinowski’s writings on laws and customs, as with many topics in anthropology today, are the starting point for understanding contemporary legal anthropology. Conley and O’Barr 2002 discusses Malinowski’s enduring relevance to the topic.

Conley, John M., and William M. O’Barr. 2002. Back to the Trobriands: The enduring influence of Malinowski’s Crime and Custom in Savage Society. Law and Social Inquiry 27.4: 847–874.
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Conley and O’Barr reexamine Malinowski’s Crime and Custom. Its legacy, they maintain, lies not so much in Malinowski’s conclusions but with the questions he asked that are still relevant today. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1989. Crime and custom in savage society. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
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A reprint of the 1926 edition, this short ethnography is a classic in the anthropology of law.
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Psychoanalysis

While Malinowski was in the Trobriands, his supervisor, Charles Seligman sent him a package containing some of Freud’s psychoanalytic writings (Malinowski 1987). His study of Freudian psychoanalytic theory influenced many of his early ideas about the family, marriage, sexual relations, law, and morality (see Malinowski 1987). In the early 1920s he wrote several articles dealing with psychoanalysis and anthropology, the substance of which were incorporated into Malinowski 2001. Malinowski believed Freud’s psychoanalytic theory contained both psychological and sociological aspects. He agreed with Freud’s notion that much of human mentality was the result of repressed sexual desires, which provided insights into human instinct and emotions. But he felt Freud’s ideas about the Oedipus complex were ethnocentric, being a product of evolutionary thinking that presupposed a patriarchal society. Because the Trobriand Islanders were matrilineal and, Malinowski believed, ignorant of paternity, it was thus not universal and was therefore in need of a corrective. His corrective was not well received by some psychoanalysts, especially in Jones 1925. The debate is revisited in Spiro 1982 and later contextualized in Stocking 1986.

Jones, Ernest. 1925. Mother-right and the sexual ignorance of savages. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 6:109–130.
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Jones defends the universality of Freud’s Oedipus complex against Malinowski’s position. Available online by subscription.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1987. The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia: An ethnographic account of courtship, marriage and family life among the natives of the Trobriand Islands, British New Guinea. 3d ed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
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Originally published in two volumes in 1929, this work, intentionally provocative, dealt not only with the topics stated in the title but also with such issues as lovemaking, eroticism, incest, and love magic. The third edition contains a lengthy special forward in which Malinowski expresses dismay that reception of his book failed to adequately focus on the functional method.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 2001. Sex and repression in savage society. 2d ed. London: Routledge.
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Originally published in 1927. A synthesis of earlier articles, this book is essential for understanding Malinowski’s ideas about psychology. He criticizes Freudian theory and offers an alternative, stressing the importance of social organization and structure on unconscious psychological motivation. The second half of the book is a rejoinder to Jones 1925.
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Spiro, Melford E. 1982. Oedipus in the Trobriands. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
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Spiro reopens the debate about the universality of the Oedipus complex and, after a reanalysis of Malinowski’s data, refutes his contention that it was not universal.
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Stocking, George W., Jr. 1986. Anthropology and the science of the irrational: Malinowski’s encounter with psychoanalysis. In Malinowski, Rivers, Benedict and others: Essays on culture and personality. Edited by George W. Stocking Jr., 13–49. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.
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Stocking discusses Malinowski’s suggested revision of Freud’s Oedipal complex and the negative reaction to it by leading psychoanalysts. The article is important for those wanting to understand Malinowski’s ideas about the relationship between the individual and society.
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Colonialism, Culture Change, and War

In his diary (Malinowski 1967, cited under Diary), Malinowski wrote of the outrage he felt at the destruction of native cultures and the consequent loss of the native’s joy in life, caused by missionaries and colonial administrators. These ideas were first expressed in his article “Ethnology and the Study of Society” (Malinowski 1922). Ironically it was colonial administrators who enabled his fieldwork in the Trobriands. For an account of his dealings with Australian government officials, see Laracy 1975 and Stocking 1992 (cited under Fieldwork and Ethnography). By the late 1920s Malinowski had come to two realizations: first, that colonialism changed cultures rather than destroyed them and, second, that anthropology, with its empathetic perspective of “seeing the native’s point of view,” could be of value not only to administrators but to the natives themselves. A humanist, Malinowski hoped ethnography would engender a more humane attitude among colonialists (see Malinowski 1929). Thus, in his later research, he began to investigate culture change and to promote anthropology to both government officials and missionaries. In 1934 he toured East and South Africa where he conducted survey work; many of his articles at this time relate to Africa, the substance of which was incorporated in Malinowski 1945. His perspective on change, however, was that cultures changed because of such external forces as colonization, missionary activity, and war rather than internal causes. Commentary about his ideas on colonialism and anthropology is provided in Cocks 2000. As the National Socialists gained power in Germany, Malinowski turned his attention to the dangers of totalitarianism and war (see Malinowski 1947). He became involved with the Polish partisan cause in the United States and believed that anthropology and anthropologists should speak out against fascism.

Cocks, Paul. 2000. The king and I: Bronisław Malinowski, King Sobhuza II of Swaziland and the vision of culture change in Africa. History of the Human Sciences 13.4: 25–47.
DOI: 10.1177/09526950022120854Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Discusses Malinowski’s ideas about change in colonial Africa and his relationship with King Sobhuza II of Swaziland. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Laracy, Hugh. 1975. Malinowski at war, 1914–1918. Mankind 10:264–283.
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Discusses how World War I affected Malinowski’s research and his relationship with the Australian government. For the historian of anthropology.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1922. Ethnology and the study of society. Economica, no. 6: 208–219.
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In this short article, the first to relate the practical value of anthropology to colonialism, Malinowski asserts that the ethnocentrism of banning local practices because they are thought disgusting has destroyed much of interest and value to the natives. He suggests that a scientific understanding and management of natives should guide colonial policy.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1929. Practical anthropology. Africa 2.1: 22–38.
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Malinowski argues that not only should anthropology consider studying the changing native but also that colonial administrators should receive training in the methods and outlook of anthropology. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1945. The dynamics of culture change: An inquiry into race relations in Africa. Edited by Phyllis M. Kaberry. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
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Published posthumously by one of his students, this text is based on previously published articles as well as notes Malinowski made before he died and covers his ideas about culture change, particularly in relation to Africa under colonialism.
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Malinowski, Bronisław. 1947. Freedom and civilization. London: Allen and Unwin.
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Published posthumously, the book incorporates material from articles on war written in 1941 and deals with the dangers of totalitarianism, war, and the virtues of democracy.
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Stocking, George W., Jr. 1991. Maclay, Kubary, Malinowski: Archetypes from the dreamtime of anthropology. In Colonial situations: Essays on the contextualization of ethnographic knowledge. Edited by George W. Stocking Jr., 9–74. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press.
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An article for those interested in the relationships between anthropologists and colonialists, much of the article discusses Malinowski’s relationships with various levels of administrators throughout his life.
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