BRONISLAW MALINOWSKI With a Preface by Huntington Cairns A GALAXY BOOK New York OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1960 Copyright 1944 by The University of North Carolina Press First published, 1944 First published as a Galaxy Book, by arrangement with The University of North Carolina Press, 1960 Second Printing, 1961 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA PREFACE THIS VOLUME is both a summing up and a reformulation of Professor Bronislaw Malinowski's functional theory of culture. Some of its ideas in embryonic form may be found on the first page of his first book, published more than thirty years ago; others, at least in their developments, are new. Altogether the work presents the mature views in a field of great importance of one of the most brilliant and influential anthropologists who has appeared in the history of that subject. Those views, as they are here set forth, are the product of fierce controversy. Their lot has thus been the happiest that can befall ideas: they have been subjected to the minute scrutiny of experts attached to rival positions. That they have withstood, except for minor modifications, the analysis they have undergone is evidence of their vitality. Bronislaw Malinowski was born in Cracow, Poland, on April 7, 1884. His first training was in mathematics and the physical sciences; the results of this discipline are clearly apparent in his sure grasp of the basic elements of scientific method. At the same time he remained free from the dogmatism usually associated with the study of the exact sciences. His interests were diverted to cultural an­ thropology by Wilhelm Wundt. Although his basic field- work was done in New Guinea and Northwestern Mela­ nesia, particularly in the Trobriand Islands, he also spent briefer intervals with some Australian tribes, the Hopi of Arizona, the Bemba and Chagga of East Africa and the Zapotec of Mexico. Early encouragement came to him from scholars of a distinctly encyclopaedic approach—Wundt, Westermarck, Hobhouse, Frazer, Ellis—but his own prac­ tice was in the strictest accord with the contemporary standards which require a meticulous knowledge of the VI PREFACE whole life of individual tribes. His absorption of the cul­ ture of the Trobrianders was probably as complete as is possible for any field investigation, and was conducted with full benefit of modern methods, which include a knowledge of the language and controls in the form of actual illustra­ tions for all general statements obtained from the natives. From that preoccupation with the life of the Trobrianders emerged the great series of volumes in which their life is depicted in all its complexity. As he pointed out, he, like every empirical worker in any branch of science, had to see what appeared to him the general and universal in the range of facts which he observed. But he always urged that the final decision as to the validity, throughout the whole range of sociological phenomena, of his general views, based as they were on his specific knowledge of the Tro­ brianders, could only be determined after those conclu­ sions had been tested in all the enthnographic areas still open to observation. Side by side with the prosecution of his exceptionally thorough field-work he had an unremitting concern with the development of theory. He had something of Plato's admiration for the beauty inherent in the perfection of an ordered body of propositions. Theory satisfied that ''inde­ pendent hunger of the mind" which leads in the end to knowledge. He also saw theory in its practical aspects, not only as the instrument which enabled the field-worker to anticipate his solutions, but, in the modern logical view, as explanation. He never tired of insisting that the great need in anthropology was for more theoretical analysis, particu­ larly analysis born from actual contact with natives. In that aspect theory was the instrument which allowed inquiry to be something more than a mere fumbling with multitudi­ nous possibilities; it was an indispensable guide to the field-worker in the selection of facts; it was a necessary ele­ ment in any sound descriptive science. But culture as a whole, no less than the particular tribal practice, stood ip. need of explanation. He was convinced that cultural PREFACE Vii phenomena were not the consequence of capricious inven­ tiveness or simple borrowing, but were determined by basic needs and the possibilities of satisfying them. This func­ tional concept, he held, accounted for variety and differen­ tiation, as well as for the common measure in the variety. The present volume is his last sustained elaboration of that idea. Professor Malinowski died on May 16, 1942. At the re­ quest of Mrs. Bronislaw Malinowska I undertook to see the manuscript through the press. Fortunately, Professor Malinowski himself had revised the typed manuscript as far as 200 and I was thus able to confine corrections to typographical and other obvious errors. Professor Mali- nowski's basic approach is clarified further by the inclusion in this volume of two hitherto unpublished essays. I am in­ debted to Mrs. Bronislaw Malinowska and Mr. Blake Eggen for their assistance in the preparation of the book for publication. HUNTINGTON CAIRNS Washington, D. C. February 15, 1944 CONTENTS PAGE Preface, by Huntington Cairns v A Scientific Theory of Culture i I. CULTURE AS THE SUBJECT OF SCIENTIFIC INVES­ TIGATION 3 II. A MINIMUM DEFINITION OF SCIENCE FOR THE HUMANIST 7 III. CONCEPTS AND METHODS OF ANTHROPOLOGY 15 IV. WHAT IS CULTURE? 36 V. THEORY OF ORGANIZED BEHAVIOR 43 VI. THE CONCRETE ISOLATES OF ORGANIZED BEHAVIOR 52 VII. THE FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF CULTURE 67 VIII. WHAT IS HUMAN NATURE? 75 IX. THE DERIVATION OF CULTURAL NEEDS 85 X. BASIC NEEDS AND CULTURAL RESPONSES 91 XI. THE NATURE OF DERIVED NEEDS 120 XII. THE INTEGRATIVE IMPERATIVES OF HUMAN CUL­ TURE 132 XIII. THE INSTRUMENTALLY IMPLEMENTED VITAL SEQUENCE 137 The Functional Theory 145 Sir James George Frazer *77 Index 223 A SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF CULTURE CULTURE AS THE SUBJECT OF I SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION THE "Study of Man" is certainly a somewhat presumptuous, not to say preposterous, label when applied to academic anthropology as it now stands. A variety of disciplines, old and recent, venerable and new, deal also with inquiries into human nature, human handiwork, and into the relations between human beings. These can claim, one and all, to be regarded as branches of the legitimate Study of Man. The oldest, of course, are the contributions to moral philosophy, to theology, to more-or-less legendary history, and to the interpretations of old law and custom. Such contributions can be traced back to cultures still perpetuating the Stone Age; they certainly have flourished in the old civilizations of China and India, of Western Asia and Egypt. Economics and jurisprudence, political science and aesthetics, linguis­ tics, archaeology, and the comparative study of religions, constitute a more recent addition to humanism. Some two centuries ago psychology, the study of the mind, and later on, sociology, an inquiry into human relations, were added to the list of official academic studies. Anthropology, as the science of man at large, as the most comprehensive discipline in humanism without portfolio, was the last to come. It had to peg out its claims as to scope, subject matter, and method as best it could. It absorbed what was left over, and even had to encroach on some older preserves. It consists now of such studies as prehistory, folk­ lore, physical anthropology, and cultural anthropology. These come dangerously near other legitimate fields of so­ cial and natural sciences: psychology, history, archaeology, sociology and anatomy. 3 4 A SCIENTIFIC THEORY OF CULTURE The new science was born under the star of enthusiastic evolutionism, of anthropometric methods, and of revela­ tory discoveries in prehistory. No wonder that its original interests centered round the reconstruction of human be­ ginnings, the search for the "missing link," and inquiries into parallels between prehistoric finds and ethnographic data. Looking back at the achievements of the last century, we could at worst see in them little more than an assemblage of antiquarian odds and ends, embracing ethnographic erudition, the measuring and counting of skulls and bones, and a collection of sensational data about our semi-human ancestors. This estimate, however, would certainly miss the best contributions of such pioneering students in compara­ tive human cultures as Herbert Spencer and Adolf Bastian, E. B. Tylor and L. H. Morgan, General Pitt-Rivers and 4jpt£clerick Ratzel, W. G. Sumner and R. S. Steinmetz, £. Durkheim and A. G. Keller. All these thinkers, as well as some of their successors, have been gradually working to­ wards a scientific theory of human behavior, towards a bet­ ter understanding of human nature, human society, and human culture. Thus, in writing about the scientific approach to the Study of Man, an anthropologist has a task which, though perhaps not easy, is of some importance. It is his duty to define in what relation to one another the various branches of anthropology really stand. He has to determine the place which anthropology ought to occupy in the wider fraternity of humanistic studies. He has also to reopen the old ques­ tion, in what sense humanism can be scientific. In this essay I shall attempt to show that the real meeting- ground of all branches of anthropology is the scientific study of culture. As soon as the physical anthropologist rec­ ognizes that "race is as race does," he will also admit that no measurements, classifications, or descriptions of physical SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION r 5 type have any relevancy unless and until we can correlate* physical type with the cultural creativeness of a race.