The Stakes in Anthropology

The Early Writing of Bronislaw Malinowski, Cambridge University Press, 1993

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942), born and educated in Poland, helped to establish British social anthropology. His classic monographs on the Trobriand Islanders were published between 1922 and 1935, when he was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. The present collection of Malinowski's early writings establishes the intellectual background to this achievement. Written between 1904 and 1914, before he went to Melanesia, all but two of the essays are published here in English for the first time. They show how Malinowski's considerable impact on twentieth-century thought is rooted in the late nineteenth-century philosophy of Central Europe, especially the work of Ernst Mach and Friedrich Nietzsche, and in the critical appraisal of the ethnological theories of Sir James Frazer. The table of contents is as follows: Introduction: Malinowski's reading, writing, 1904-1914. 1 On Malinowski's writings from 1904 to 1914 1 Nietzsche, Mach and Frazer, and their relationship in Malinowski's work. 3 Malinowski's personal and intellectual development 9 The Nietzsche essay: a charter for a theory of myth 16 The dissertation 'On the economy of thought' 26 'Religion and magic': observations on Frazer’s The Golden Bough 38 The methodological critique of Frazer's Totemism and Exogamy, the review in Lud 42 Gender and power in Australian society: ‘Tribal male associations in Australia' 49 'The economic aspects of the intichiuma ceremonies' 51 Durkheim's dichotomy disputed 57 The essay on 'The relation of primitive beliefs to the forms of social organization' 58 The essay on 'The sociology of the family', a review of the literature 61 Malinowski's writings, 1904-1914 1. Observations on Friedrich Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy (1904/5) 67 2. On the principle of the economy of thought (1906) 89 3. Religion and magic: The Golden Bough (1910) 117. 4. Totemism and exogamy (1911-1913) 123 5. Tribal male associations in Australia (1912). 201 6. The economic aspects of the intichiuma ceremonies (1912). 209 7. The relationship of primitive beliefs to the forms of social organization (1913) 229 8. A fundamental problem of religious sociology (1914) 243 9. Sociology of the family (1913-14) 247

Sir Raymond Firth once asked: why is it that Malinowski made such an impression on the social sciences, and especially social anthropology and social anthropologists, in spite of the fact that his general theory never stood the test of time. That his impression has remained with us is witnessed by this conference and the others that have been held or are planned in the English speaking world in honor of the centenary of his birth. (I understand that the event is being celebrated to some extent in Malinowski's native Poland as well.)

1993

Cultural and social anthropology present a curious case in intellectual history. Early twentieth century reformers, of the likes of Franz Boas, Bronislaw Malinowski, and even Emile Durkheim, helped forge a "modern" and "professional" image of anthropology through wholesale attacks on many of the discipline's founding figures. On both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, these novel approaches to the study of anthropology dismantled the scientific status of social Darwinism and other forms of racial-determinism. In many ways, this sea change began in the 1890s with Franz Boas. As a German-Jew, he came to United States and simultaneously escaped Germany's anti-Semitism and built the American school of cultural anthropology. With an acute understanding of the dangers of scientific rationalizations for racism and national chauvinism, Boas rejected the way social evolutionism depended on biological explanations of culture, which judged rather than assessed differences in behavior. In place of "race" and biology, Boas argued culture developed historically through interactions between groups and the diffusion of ideas. As Michel-Rolph Trouillot argues, Boas' signature concept of culture is better understood as an "anticoncept," which ultimately succeeded in pushing "race" from "occupying the defining place in anthropological discourse" (Trouillot, 2003, pp. 100).

Article, 1993

In this article the author discussed at length his reading of Malinowski's book "Freedom and civilization.

Comparativ | Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung, 2021

In the 1780s and 1790s, the Prussian doctor Paul Erdmann Isert and the Swedish mineralogist Carl Bernhard Wadström gained traction among French and British abolitionists for their advo- cacy of the colonization and “civilization“ of Africa. Both had traveled to the African continent in the 1780s, Isert as a surgeon in the service of the Danish slave trading fort in Ghana, and Wadström as part of a Swedish expedition to the French holdings in Senegal. Upon their return to Europe, Isert and Wadström published accounts of their travels in which they vehemently criticized the transatlantic slave trade and promoted new colonial opportunities in Africa, offering practical knowledge on African soil, crops, and labour systems. To the growing number of abolitionists in France and Britain, this proved to be very useful knowledge since it enabled them to anchor their own expansionist desires in Africa in first-hand accounts. This paper ex- amines the transimperial trajectories that Isert and Wadström followed in order to acquire such first-hand knowledge of the African continent. It also explores the ways in which their observa- tions about Africa were appropriated by French, British, and even American abolitionists. In so doing, it brings into view some of the social and political structures that mediated transimperial knowledge production during the Age of Imperial Revolutions and it highlights how people hailing from the margins of European empires participated in the broader processes of imperial regeneration that undergirded the rise of the nation state.

Antropolítica, 2022

One of the main milestones in the history of anthropology is the publication in 1922 of The Argonauts of the Western Pacific, written by the Polish-British anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski (1884-1942). Professor Grażyna Kubica from the Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland) is a specialist in the history of anthropology, with an emphasis on the work of Malinowski. In this interview, she not only presents us her trajectory in anthropology, reflecting on the field of anthropology in Poland, but also explores issues related to the history of anthropology. In addition to this, she addresses Malinowski's work and life, something that gains special relevance in the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Argonauts of the Western Pacific.

2017

is a novelist, poet and scholar. He has written on Marx, Benjamin, Badiou and Zizek. His latest book is a literary historical novel about Joan of Arc, The Last Days of Jeanne d'Arc (Giramondo, 2017). His collection of poems, Ashes in the Air, was shortlisted for the Australian Prime Minister's Literary Award. He is currently researching the French Revolution, and lectures in Literary Studies and Creative Writing at