Bronisław Malinowski
For Malinowski, to understand a people one must live among them, speak their language and grasp their point of view; every custom appears as part of a working whole that meets human needs, and magic serves where practical knowledge cannot master chance and danger.
Placement
Polish-British anthropologist in London whose long fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands made participant observation the model of ethnography; in his view, institutions such as the kula exchange, magic or law are explained by the needs they serve within a culture as a whole.
Key ideas
- Participant observation
- The kula ring
- Culture as a response to needs
- Magic where knowledge reaches its limits
Teachers: Edvard Westermarck
Students: E. E. Evans-Pritchard, Fei Xiaotong
Influence
Influenced by 2
Ernst Mach
influenced by
Malinowski’s dissertation On the Principle of the Economy of Thought (Kraków, 1906) critically examined Mach’s empiriocriticism, which scholars such as Gellner link to his later functionalism. B. Malinowski, “O zasadzie ekonomii myślenia” (diss., Kraków, 1906), in R. J. Thornton and P. Skalník (eds.), The Early Writings of Bronisław Malinowski (1993); E. Gellner, “Zeno of Cracow” (1987); SEP “Ernst Mach”
Evidence: AI draft
Ernst Mach › 1838–1916
Edvard Westermarck studied with
studied with
Malinowski came to the London School of Economics in 1910 to study with Westermarck and C. G. Seligman; there he wrote The Family among the Australian Aborigines (1913), and he took his DSc in 1916. M. W. Young, Malinowski: Odyssey of an Anthropologist, 1884–1920 (2004)
Evidence: AI draft
Edvard Westermarck › 1862–1939
Influenced 5
Marcel Mauss
influenced
Mauss built his comparison of gift exchange on Malinowski’s kula ring (Argonauts of the Western Pacific, 1922), reading it as total prestation (Essai sur le don, 1925). M. Mauss, “Essai sur le don”, L’Année sociologique, new series 1 (1923–24, published 1925); B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922)
Evidence: AI draft
Marcel Mauss › 1872–1950
Karl Polanyi
influenced
Polanyi used Malinowski’s Trobriand ethnography to show that economies can rest on reciprocity and redistribution rather than market exchange (The Great Transformation, 1944). K. Polanyi, The Great Transformation (1944), “Societies and Economic Systems”; B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922)
Evidence: AI draft
Karl Polanyi › 1886–1964
E. E. Evans-Pritchard taught
taught ✓
Evans-Pritchard studied at the London School of Economics (1923–27), where he attended Malinowski’s seminar, but his doctorate was supervised by C. G. Seligman; relations with Malinowski soon turned hostile. M. Douglas, Evans-Pritchard (1980)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
E. E. Evans-Pritchard › 1902–1973
Talcott Parsons
influenced ✓
Parsons heard Malinowski at the LSE (1924–25) and later read his functionalism as a step towards social systems theory (‘Malinowski and the Theory of Social Systems’, 1957). T. Parsons, “Malinowski and the Theory of Social Systems”, in R. Firth (ed.), Man and Culture (1957)
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Talcott Parsons › 1902–1979
Fei Xiaotong taught
taught ✓
Fei took his PhD at the London School of Economics (1936–38) under Malinowski; the thesis appeared as Peasant Life in China (1939) with a preface by Malinowski. Fei Hsiao-Tung, Peasant Life in China (1939), preface by B. Malinowski
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Fei Xiaotong › 1910–2005
Criticism
Criticized by 1
Claude Lévi-Strauss
criticised by
Lévi-Strauss objected that Malinowski’s functionalism forbids itself history and comparison yet claims general truths from the intensive study of a single society (‘Histoire et ethnologie’, 1949). C. Lévi-Strauss, “Histoire et ethnologie”, Revue de métaphysique et de morale 54 (1949); Anthropologie structurale (1958), ch. 1
Evidence: AI draft
Claude Lévi-Strauss › 1908–2009
Criticizes 1
Sigmund Freud
criticised
Malinowski argued from Trobriand fieldwork that Freud’s Oedipus complex is not universal: in a matrilineal society hostility targets the mother’s brother (Sex and Repression in Savage Society, 1927). B. Malinowski, Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927); E. Jones, “Mother-Right and the Sexual Ignorance of Savages” (1925)
Evidence: AI draft
Sigmund Freud › 1856–1939
Works
Monograph on the kula, a ring of ceremonial exchange in which shell necklaces and armbands circulate in opposite directions among islands off eastern New Guinea; its introduction sets out the method of long fieldwork and participant observation.
Essay arguing, against the idea of a “prelogical” primitive mentality, that Trobriand Islanders use careful empirical knowledge in gardening and fishing and turn to magic where chance and danger exceed it; religion helps people through death and other crises of life.
Position
Malinowski is on the map as a founder of modern social anthropology and of the functionalist school. In the introduction to “Argonauts of the Western Pacific” (1922) he described a method: the ethnographer should live for a long time among the people studied, learn their language, record everyday life as well as rules, and aim “to grasp the native’s point of view”. His account of the kula, a ring of ceremonial exchange between islands, showed an economy in which gifts and obligations rather than profit organise exchange; Mauss built on it in “The Gift” (1925), Karl Polanyi in “The Great Transformation” (1944). In “Sex and Repression in Savage Society” (1927) he argued against Freud that the Oedipus complex is not universal, since in the matrilineal Trobriand family tension is directed at the mother’s brother rather than the father. In “Magic, Science and Religion” (1925) he held that Trobrianders possess sound empirical knowledge and use magic where outcomes are uncertain. His late theory, “A Scientific Theory of Culture” (1944), explained institutions as responses to biological and derived needs; Talcott Parsons assessed it in relation to the theory of social systems, while Lévi-Strauss objected that functionalism shuts out history and comparison. His posthumously published diary and the relation of his “practical anthropology” to colonial administration are still debated.
Life & context
Bronisław Malinowski was born on 7 April 1884 in Kraków, then part of Austrian Galicia; his father was a professor of Slavic philology. He studied philosophy at the Jagiellonian University; his dissertation on the principle of the economy of thought, submitted in 1906, earned him a doctorate with imperial honours in 1908. After three semesters with Wilhelm Wundt and Karl Bücher in Leipzig he went in 1910 to the London School of Economics, where he studied with Edvard Westermarck and C. G. Seligman. In 1914 he travelled to New Guinea; as an Austro-Hungarian subject he became an enemy alien when war broke out but was allowed to continue his research, on Mailu (1914–15) and in the Trobriand Islands (1915–16, 1917–18). From 1921 he taught at the LSE, from 1927 as professor of social anthropology. In 1938 he went to the United States, taught at Yale and died in New Haven on 16 May 1942.
Further main works
- The Family among the Australian Aborigines (1913)
- Crime and Custom in Savage Society (1926)
- Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927)
- Coral Gardens and Their Magic (2 vols., 1935)
- A Scientific Theory of Culture (1944)
As of November 2026 · Sources · Improve this page · How Agora is made