Book Description

Bronislaw Malinowski was born in Krakow, Poland on April 7, 1884, died 1942. Through the acquisition of an outstanding education and many years of fieldwork, he became a very influential British anthropologist and the founder of Functionalism. He attended King John Sobieski public school then continued on to the University of Krakow where he received his Ph.D. in Philosophy, Physics and Mathematics. In 1913, he lectured at the London School of Economics where he earned his Ph.D. in Science in 1916. It was there that he read The Golden Bough by Sir James Frazer and sparked his interest in anthropology. Malinowski founded the field of Social Anthropology known as Functionalism, holding the belief that all components of society interlock to form a well-balanced system. He emphasized characteristics of beliefs, ceremonies, customs, institutions, religion, ritual and sexual taboos. His New York Times obituary named him an "integrator of ten thousand cultural characteristics." Malinowski?s first field study came in 1915-18 when he studied the Trobriand Islanders of New Guinea in the southwest Pacific. He used a holistic approach in studying the native?s social interactions including the annual Kula Ring Exchange, finding it to be associated with magic, religion, kinship and trade. He contributed to a cross-cultural study of psychology through his observations of the relationships of kinship. He discovered evidence to discredit Sigmund Freud?s theory of the Oedipus Complex in the lives of the Trobianders by proving that individual psychology depends on cultural context. He wrote a book about his fieldwork and experiences entitled Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922).