<r\ MAN AND CULTURE Contributors J. R. FIRTH RAYMOND FIRTH MEYER FORTES H. IAN HOGBIN PHYLLIS KABERRY E. R. LEACH LUCY MAIR S. F. NADEL TALCOTT PARSONS RALPH PIDDINGTON AUDREY I. RICHARDS I. SCHAPERA At the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association in 1939 at Chicago Photograph by Leslie A. White Man and Culture AN EVALUATION OF THE WORK OF BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI EDITED BY RAYMOND FIRTH Routledge & Kegan Paul LONDON First published ig^y by Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited Broadway House, 68-y4 Carter Lane London, E.C.4 (g) Routledge & Kegan Paul Limited ig^y Printed in Great Britain by Lowe & Brydone {Printers) Limited London, N.W.io Second impression ip3g Second impression with corrections ig6o GN msLFsi Contents EDITOR S NOTE VII ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS viii REFERENCES viii Introduction: Malinowski as Scientist and as Man i RAYMOND FIRTH The Concept of Culture in Malinowski's Work 15 AUDREY I. RICHARDS MalinowskVs Theory of Needs 33 RALPH PIDDINGTON Malinowski and the Theory of Social Systems 53 TALCOTT PARSONS Malinowski's Contribution to Field-work Methods and the Writing of Ethnography 71 PHYLLIS KABERRY Ethnographic Analysis and Language with Reference to Malinowski's Views 93 J. R. FIRTH The Epistemological Background to MalinowskVs Empiricism 119 E. R. LEACH MalinowskVs Theories of Law 139 I, SCHAPERA Malinowski and the Study of Kinship 157 MEYER FORTES Malinowski on Magic and Religion 189 S. F. NADEL The Place of Malinowski in the History of Economic Anthro- pology 209 RAYMOND FIRTH Malinowski and the Study of Social Change 229 LUCY MAIR Anthropology as Public Service and MalinowskVs Contribution to it 245 H. IAN HOGBIN SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 265 INDEX 285 V The Authors J. R. FIRTH is Emeritus Professor of General Linguistics in the University of London. RAYMOND FIRTH is Professor of Anthropology in the University of London. MEYER FORTES is William Wyse Professor of Social Anthropology in the University of Cambridge; Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. H. IAN HOGBiN is Reader in Anthropology in the University of Sydney. PHYLLIS KABERRY is Reader in Anthropology in the University of London. E. R. LEACH is Reader in Anthropology in the University of Cambridge. LUCY MAIR is Reader in Applied Anthropology, University of London. s. F. NADEL (died 1956) was Professor of Anthropology and Sociology in the Australian National University. TALCOTT PARSONS is Professor of Sociology, Harvard University. RALPH PiDDiNGTON is Professor of Anthropology, Auckland University College, University of New Zealand. AUDREY \. RICHARDS is Vice-Principal, Newnham College, Cambridge. I. SCHAPERA is Professor of Anthropology in the University of London. VI Editor s Note THE plan for this volume arose from discussions in the Department of Anthropology of the London School of Economics, where Malinowski was for so long a distinguished student, teacher, and leader. As a result of these discussions I was given responsibility for collecting and editing the essays which here appear. I am grateful to all my col- laborators, whose names are in the Table of Contents, for the patience and good humour with which they have complied with editorial demands and borne with delays. I am especially indebted to Audrey I, Richards and to I. Schapera for their help and counsel. The essays here are not eulogies but evaluations. Their viewpoints are essentially personal and therefore by no means all the same. Their intention is to try and give, after a lapse of much more than a decade since Malinowski's death, a clear notion of his contribution to his chosen subject, in terms of its meaning for a student today. This subject, the science of man as seen in the regularities and significance of man's social behaviour, has of necessity been split up rather arbitrarily by the origin- ators of this volume into a number of themes. Not every major aspect of Malinowski's work has been thus separately treated. For example, his concept of function and his use of psycho-analytical theory are men- tioned, though somewhat briefly, under other heads. But it will probably be agreed that the essays as a set do give a synoptic view of the main strength and weakness of Malinowski's contribution and its modern relevance. In the selection of authors, the intention of the originators of the volume was to obtain the opinions of a representative set of Malinowski's former students and colleagues who came under his influence in Lon- don. This meant giving primarily, though not exclusively, a British viewpoint. It has also meant severe limitation on the number of con- tributors and on the space allotted to them. Yet even though some who were invited to contribute were unable to accept, a substantial book has still been put together. It is regretted that various other colleagues with full entitlement to appear are not here represented. But it is hoped that they will approve the spirit of the volume. vii Acknowledgements For assistance with the Introduction acknowledgement is gratefully made to Sgnora Valetta Swann (Mme Valetta Malinowska) for permission to quote from various letters by Bronislaw Maiinowski to Raymond Firth and for much helpful information; to Mrs. B. Z. Seligman for permission to quote from letters of Maiinowski to C. G. Seligman; and to the Association of Polish University Professors and Lecturers in Great Britain for permission to reproduce passages from an Address by Raymond Firth printed in their memorial publication in honour of Maiinowski (see Bibliography), Gratitude is also due to Malinowski's daughters Jozefa (Mrs. Walker Stuart), Wanda (Mrs. Donald Allen), and Helena (Mrs. Donald Burke) for their help in reading and commenting upon the Introduction; and to Mrs. Burke and to Leslie A. White for photographs of Maiinowski. To Mrs. Sheila Patterson thanks are also due for her help in verifying and abstracting Polish items in the Bibliography of Malinowski's works. References For uniformity and to save space, references in the text are usually given to Malinowski's works by date and page only: where page alone is given, the reference is to the work cited immediately before. Refer- ences to works of other authors are given usually by name, date and page. Details are to be found in the Selected Bibliography at the end of the volume— a distinction being drawn between works by Maiinowski, works primarily about Maiinowski, and works by other authors cited. R. F. London School of Economics and Political Science June, 1956 vm Introduction: Malinowski as Scientist and as Man RAYMOND FIRTH THIS book has been written because some of us have thought for a long while that too little attention has been paid to the work of Bronislaw Malinowski. He has been one of the outstanding influences in shaping modern British social anthropology. More than ten years have passed since his death and the time has come for a fresh estimate of his contribution. His achievement has indubitably suflfered from his early death. If he had lived for another decade his dialectical skill, let alone the richness of his creative mind, would have found many answers to his critics and derived profit from their comment. Much of this com- ment has been justified, but by no means all, and sometimes his work has been passed over where credit was due. Three factors in particular seem to be responsible for this. One is that the climate of opinion, particularly in British social anthropology, changed radically in the decade and a half after Malinowski left Eng- land. This was partly due to the influence of Radcliffe-Brown, and partly to the growing realization of the need for a clearer structural approach to give more precision to many anthropological generalizations. Malinowski was not a structuralist in the narrow sense, and appreciation of his work suflfered by comparison. Secondly, Malinowski's analytical contributions to anthropology were much stronger than his systematic contributions. He did not develop his concept of function very far. And in his attempts to create a system which would take full account of his concept of culture he landed himself with a difficult, unwieldy and to some extent unprofitable theoretical construction. The third reason was that Malinowski's personal qualities made for him 'unfriends' as well as friends. His intolerance of what he considered sham or insincerity, his impatience with criticism that he did not think was based on loyalty, his tenderness towards personal slights and his relative insensitivity to the effects of his exuberance towards others all tended to arouse hostility. Some criticisms of Malinowski's work, however justified, I RAYMOND FIRTH could hardly be expected therefore to have been made with entire detachment. One result was that Malinowski has become something of a legend in to those who never knew him. He has continued to be a great name anthropology. But while his reputation as a superb field-worker has been maintained, his fame as a really great teacher in the Socratic tradition has been allowed to fade, and his achievement in creating a new and enduring approach to anthropology has not been properly understood. Without him, the aridities of the Kulturkreislehre and the fantasies of pan-Egyptianism would doubtless have in due course been corrected and overcome. But for the younger generation of anthropologists in Europe, at least, he fought that battle and won it by the end of the 'twenties'. And though now this is dim history, those who were students at that time know what formidable opponents were to be encountered in Elliot Smith, Pater Schmidt, and their adherents. Yet this was merely by the way. It was incidental to the main task Malinowski had set him- self—a dynamic interpretation of human behaviour in the widest range of cultural circumstances, in terms which were at once more theoretically sophisticated, and more realistic, than any then current.