Biography of Bronislaw Malinowski is closely related to travel.
Since 1910, Malinowski studied economics at the London School of Economics (LSE) under the leadership of Seligman and Westermark, analyzing patterns of economic activity of Australian Aborigines through ethnographic documents.
In 1914, he was given the opportunity to travel to New Guinea, accompanying the anthropologist R.R. Marett, but World War I began, and Malinovsky was an Austrian citizen and, therefore, an enemy of the British community, and therefore could not return to England. Nevertheless, the Australian government granted him permission and funds to conduct ethnographic work on his territories, and Malinovsky decided to go to the Trobrian Islands in Melanesia, where he spent several years studying the culture of indigenous peoples.
Upon returning to England after the war, he published his main work, The Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), which established him as one of the most important anthropologists in Europe at that time. He held the position of teacher, and then as the head of the anthropology department at the LSE, he attracted a large number of students and had a great influence on the development of British social anthropology.
Among his students during this period were such prominent anthropologists as Raymond Firth, E. Evans-Pritchard, Edmund Leach, Audrey Richards and Meyer Fortes. Since 1933, he visited several American universities, and when the Second World War began, he decided to stay there, making an appointment at Yale. There he remained until the end of his life, also influencing the generations of American anthropologists - in this regard, the scientific activity of Bronislav Malinovsky was very fruitful.
great scientist
His ethnography of the Trobrian Islands described the complex institution of the Kula ring and became the basis for subsequent theories of reciprocity and exchange. He was also widely regarded as a prominent field worker, and his texts on anthropological and ethnographic field methods were fundamental to early anthropology, for example, as an example for monitoring the condition.
According to Malinovsky, ethnography is a purely practical science. His approach to social theory was a brand of psychological functionalism that emphasized how social and cultural institutions serve a person’s basic needs - a perspective opposite the Radcliffe-Brown structural functionalism that emphasized how social institutions function in relation to society as a whole.
early years
Bronislaw Kaspar Malinowski was born on April 7, 1884 in Krakow, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian province, known as the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, into a Polish middle-class family. His father was a professor, and his mother came from a landowning family.
As a child, he was fragile, suffered from poor health, but studied well. In 1908, he received his doctorate in philosophy from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, where he focused on mathematics and physics. Visiting a university, he fell ill for a long time and during his illness decided to become an anthropologist.
Bronislaw Malinowski was influenced by the "Golden Branch" by James Fraser. This book drew his attention to ethnology, which he undertook to study at the University of Leipzig, studying with economist Karl Bücher and psychologist Wilhelm Wundt.
In 1910, he went to England, where he studied at the London School of Economics under the guidance of S. G. Seligman and Edward Westermark.
Trip to papua
In 1914, he traveled to Papua (later Papua New Guinea), where he conducted field work on the island of Mailu, and then on the Trobriand Islands. The ethnographic compilation he made on the Trobriand Islands now belongs to the British Museum.
On his most famous trip to the area, he found himself in connection with the outbreak of World War I. Malinowski was not allowed to return to Europe from the UK-controlled region, because he was a subject of Austro-Hungarian, but the Australian authorities gave him the opportunity to conduct research in Melanesia, which he gladly accepted.
It was during this period that he carried out his field work on the Kula ring and promoted the practice of observing the natives, which remains a hallmark of ethnographic research in our time.
After the expedition
In 1920, he published a scientific article on the Kula Ring. In 1922, Bronislav Malinovsky received his doctorate in anthropology and taught at the London School of Economics. In the same year, his book Argonauts of the Western Pacific was published.
She was widely regarded as a masterpiece and Malinowski became one of the most famous anthropologists in the world. Over the next two decades, he will create the London School of Economics as the main center of European anthropology.
Malinowski became a British citizen in 1931. In 1933, he became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Teaching activities
Bronislaw Malinowski taught intermittently in the United States. When World War II began during one of his American visits, he stayed there. He took up a position at Yale, where he remained until his death. In 1942, he became a co-founder of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America.
Death
Malinowski died May 16, 1942 at the age of 58 from a heart attack, preparing for summer field work in Oaxaca, Mexico. He was buried at Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven, Connecticut.
Recognition, ideas, books
Malinovsky is considered one of the most qualified ethnographers of anthropology, especially because of a very methodical and well-theorized approach to the study of social systems.
He is often called the first researcher who brought anthropology “from the veranda” (a phrase that is also the name of a documentary about his work), that is, he experienced the daily life of objects of his research with them.
Malinowski emphasized the importance of detailed observation of the natives and argued that anthropologists should contact their informants daily if they should adequately record the “indifference in everyday life” that is so important for understanding another culture.
Anthropology Goals
He stated that the goal of an anthropologist or ethnographer is “to understand the point of view of the indigenous people, their attitude to life, to realize their vision of their world” (“Argonauts of the Western Pacific,” 1922, p. 25). Among the books of Bronislaw Malinowski, it is often considered the main one.
It is also worth mentioning his other important works - "Trobrian Islands", "Myth in a primitive society", "Figure of a father in primitive psychology."
Malinowski created a school of social anthropology, known as functionalism. Unlike structural functionalism of Radcliffe-Brown, Malinowski argued that culture functioned to meet the needs of individuals, not society as a whole, and ethnography is a science that studies the relationship between ethnos and customs.
He believed that when the needs of the people who make up society are satisfied, the needs of society are satisfied.