Bronisław Malinowski

Bronislaw Malinowski is arguably the most influential anthropologist of the 20th century, certainly for British social anthropology. 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 need, as the way to understand other cultures. I argue that his lasting legacy, however, is methodological rather than theoretical. Although not the first to conduct

two anthropologists, namely Bronislaw Malinowski and Annette Wiener, have successfully given people a look into the intricate works of the Kula. While no anthropologist is more right than the other, one can see how two different ethnographers can give two very different analysis of one ceremonial gift giving ritual. Malinowski studies the Kula through the lens of an individualistic functionalist while Wiener studies through a structural functionalist lens. Malinowski studies the causes and affects

idea of rituals being performed because of a psychological reason. Bronislaw Malinowski proposed that humans participated in rituals whenever they were in danger. He suggested that rituals were performed as a mean to help people deal with anxiety. Bronislaw Malinowski was lead to believe that uneducated cultures did not understand how to cope with everyday problems so they performed rituals instead. In the reading, Bronislaw Malinowski uses The Trobriand Islanders as an example of his theory. The islanders

The people of the Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea have been a source of interest to anthropologists since the early 1900s, when Bronislaw Malinowski first studied them. In a time when anthropology was "barely established as a formal discipline" (Weiner, 1988), Malinowski had an intense interest in ethnographical field work as well as the fascinating culture of the natives of what was then called Papua, the southeastern part of mainland New Guinea. The Trobriand way of life is extremely different

Bronislaw Malinowski is a Pole who died in New Haven, Connecticut at the age of 58. He traveled to the Trobriand Islands, east of Papua New Guinea, to reform ethnographic work on the native islanders. In The Argonauts of the Pacific West Bronislaw Malinowski captured his ethnographic works for Anthropologists to read and take in, for years to come. In his introduction, The Subject, The Method and The Scope of This Inquiry, he addresses his intentions of this ethnography and what he was studying

Bronislaw Malinowski argued that law functions in and shapes daily life in every culture. Regardless of whether it is a civilized society or a savage society, every culture has laws and “there are among the many norms of conduct in savage societies regarded as compulsory obligations of one individual or group towards another individual or group” (Malinowski, 1985, 12). Laws are essential in every culture regardless of “whether ‘savage’ or ‘civilized’ (Malinowski, 1985, 13). Malinowski believed that

(Malinowski, 11) This basically means that it is the role of the ethnographer to rationalize and put in writing the ways of existence of another culture. What he gains from the experience of living with the trobriand islanders is of no concern the people he

The Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea have been a landmark of anthropological study since the early twentieth century. Anthropologists such as Bronislaw Malinowski and Annette Weiner have written extensive ethnographies detailing the patriarchal ruling structure and matrilineal descent style of Trobriand society. Different functionalist approaches to anthropology have attempted to give meaning to the complex Trobriand culture. Perhaps one of the greatest performances of Trobriand culture is in

approaches to this study; Franz Boas, for example, preferred using documents and informants to learn more about other cultures. However, many ethnographers nowadays follow the approach of Bronislaw Malinowski, who believed that researchers should immerse themselves in the life of the people they were studying. Malinowski embodied this belief by going to Trobriand Island, living there for several years while he did his fieldwork, and even learning the language of the local people. At first glance, ethnography

The following review will be about a movie named Avatar. Avatar dates back to 2009 and was directed by James Cameron. The greediness of those in power will always results in the suffering of those lacks power. This statement refers to the greediness that was depicted in the movie by the Resources Development Administrators (RDA), which led to a forceful relocation of the Na’Vi people. The following essay will include the discussion of three anthropological themes that were displayed. The first theme