AM a DIARY I}J the ,|, , Il, ICT SENSE of '|'Lie TERM by Bronislaw
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AM A DIARY I}J THE ,|, , Il, ICT SENSE oF '|'lIE TERM by Bronislaw Nllrlinowski AAAAA lt l,|,lI Nt W INTRODUCTION |,lt.l,]l,,^cl! BY YAIJTTA }ÍAI,INow- K^ l N,I,ILODUCTIoN BY RÁYMoND T.IBTIÍ ,t,l(^N LA,_[ED By NoRBERT GUTEB}ÍAN l N l)l,)x oF NATIYE TEBM BY MARIo BICK lit;rlrford university press iillrrrford, california Facsimile page from Trobriands diarg, beginning zlsith entrg for April P2, 1918 coNTENTs pREFAcE : Valetta Malinowska, aii INTRoDUCTI)N: Raymond Firth, xi SEcoND INTRODUCTION 1988: Raymond Firth xxi NOTE, xxxitt Stanford Uniaersity Press Stanford, Califurnia DIÁ-RY IN TIID TaIcT EN E oF TIIE TERM ^ Part One: 1914-1"915,1 Text @ 1967 by Valetta Malinowsha Part Two: 1917-1918, 107 Introduction @ 1989 by Raymond Firth Oňginally Published by Routledge and Kegan Paul, AN INDEX or NATIvE TaRM : Maňo Bick, 299 I967 Reissued, ulith a neul Introd ction, by The Althone Press, I989 lLLIr TEATIoN Reissue first published in the United States of Facsimi,le page, ii, ,\tneňca by Stanford IJniaersity Press, ]989 Eastern New Gui,nea anil Ád,xacent Island,s, enil paper Pňnted in Great Bňtain Mai,tw Isl,anď, and, Áiljacent Coast of Papua, 26 LC 8842043 The Kul,a District, 138-139 Cloth ISBN 0-8047-17064 T robri,anil I slanils, 7 611 Paper 1^SBN 0-a04 7-I 707-9 INTRODUCTION,K This diary by Bronislaw Malinowski covers only a very brief period of his life, from early September 19lrt to the beginning of August 1915, and from the end of October 1917 to mid-July l9l8;-about nineteen months in all. It was wrjtten in Polish, as a private document, and was never intended for publication. What then is its significance? Malinowski wa,s & great social scientist, one of the founders of modern social anthropology, and a thinker who tried to relate his generalizations about hu- man nature and human society to the issues of the world around him. The diary refers to that very critical period of his c&reer when, having equipped himself theoretically for empirical studies, he began to carry out field research in New Guinea. *" n*} section cover his apprenticeship period emong the Mailu; the second, after an orrio"too.t" cup;f t*o yur"., coÝer most of hi: ye&I,ll tle Tlobriands. Nowadays it is recognized that l ,t" while the personality of a scientist may not necessarily have a direct bearing upon his selection and treatment of problems, it must influence his work in other more subtle ways. Although , r grateful Richards ancl Phyllis Kaberry, friendr of ! am to Audrey l Malinowski, and to !ól&q Štuirt, his eldest daughter, for advice ol this Introduction. They bave, of course, no responsibility for the opinionr er- pressed here. xii Introilucti,on Introilucti,om xul chronologically very brief, and although giving no great amount made,con_tact wi_!h A. Q. Haldon and W: H. R. Rivers of Cam- of detail on professional matters, the diary does indicate vividly bridge-all of whom are mentioned in the diary. His first major how Malinowski thought about issues and about people-or at publióation, a documentary study of. The Fami,lg Among the least how he expressed himself when he was writing only for him- Áustralian Ábori,gines, was published in London in 1913. An- and Soci,al self as aurlience. other book, in Polish, on Pri,mžtirle Reli,gi,on Forms of Malinowski came to be in New Guinea through his associa- Structure, completed early in 1914, was published.in Poland in_ tion with British anthropology. What led him to this move o r9r5. Iníluenced especially by Seligman and Haddon, Malinow- far from Poland, his native country, is not now fully known. ski hád prepared for field research in the Western Pacific, after But despite his often unkind comments upon England and Eng- an unsuccessful attempt by Seligman to get funds for him to lish gentlemen, he eemed always to have a basic respect for the work in the Sudan. Money for field research in anthropology was English intellectual tradition and the English way of life, and then much more difficult to obtain than it is nowadays. Malinow- it seems likely that even at that early period of his career he ski was helped through scholarship funds and a grant from was attracted to both. (Note his revealing description of Robert Mond, the industrialist, obtained primarily througlr Machiavelli in this diary as 6'very like me in many respects. Seligman's energies. An attachment as Secretary to R. R. An Englishman, with an entirely European mentality and Marett, who was Recorder of Section H-the Anthropology European problems.") He himself has told us how, when at Section-of the British Association, which was meeting i" M;i bournó in 191rl, gavó him a free pas ege to Australia. Malinow- the (Jagiellonian) University of Cracow, he had been ordered ski's silua{ión, wit}r Ó*igooo. field resources, \t&s complicated by to abandon for a time his physical and chemical research because the outbreak of war, since he was technically an Austrian na- of iil-health, but was allowed to follow up a "favorite sid_eline tional. But through the help of his friends, the Australian au- of study" and so began to read Frazer's The Golilen Bough in thorities pioved themselves very understanding by allowing him the original English version-then three volumes only.* Mali- to to carry out his field research in l.[ew Guinea. Theii nowski had obtained his Ph.D degree in 1908 in physics and .proceed liberality was also shown in supplementing lris finances by a rnathematicsr'and after two years of advanced study at Leipzig grant from the Home and Territories Department of the Com- he came to London and began his systematic studies, of anthro- monwealth. After traveling to Port Moresby, ilíalinowski spent pology with Seligman and Edward Westermarck, at the C. G. the greater part of six months in the Mailu area in the south of Science. also Londón School of Economics and Political IIe New Guinea. A brief visit to the Trobriand rslands ofr the north- r For this anrl other details see B. l!íalinowsk i, Illyth ón Pritntitiae Psg, east coast stimulated his interest more and lre returned there on 1926, pp. 5-6; also Raymoncl Firth in Man and, Culture, chology, London, two subsequent expeditions of a year each, 1915-16 and London, l957, pp. 2-?; Konstantin Symmons-Symonolewicz, "Bronislaw Malinowski: Formative Influences anil Theoretical Evolutionr" The Polish 1917_18. R,etsiew, Vol. IV, 1959, pp. 1-28, New York. A few further facts appear One of Malinowski's outstanding contributions to the de- in "A Brief History (1913-1963)" of the Department of Ánthropology of the London School of Economics, published in the departmental programme velopment oť social anthropology was the introduction of much of cour es, session 1963-6,1 and succeeding years. more intensive and much more sophisticated methods of field re- xrv Introilucti,on Introilwction xv search than had previously been current in his subject.* The the making of village plan and census; the amassing of informa- many references to his ethnographic work in his diary show his tion about baloma and rnálami,la, about gimwali and sagali, Tbe industry. The day after his arrival in New Guinea he had con- references to the kula are íascinating to anyone who has fol- tacted an informant (Ahuia Ova), and the next day he began lowed his analysis of that complex svstem of exchange of shell collecting field data on social structure. only a fortnight later tokens of ,o"i"l status, with its economic, political, and ritual he noted two basic defects in his appro&ch-he did not observe overtone . the people enough, and he did not speak their language. Both of \ťhat an anthropologist may miss particularly in the diary these he tried hard to correct, and his endeavor was the clue to is any detailed account of how Malinowski arrived at the choice all his later work. The ethnography of the diary consists of' of his field problems, why he se]ected one topic rather than an_ references to subjects of talk or observation-taboo, burial rites, other for investigation at a particular point of time, and stone axes, black magic, dancing, procession with pigs-rather whether fresh evidence led him to reshape a hypothesis, Some than development of ideas about field questions or theoretical evidence there is-as when he notes that reading Rivers drew his problems. those of But an occasional note shows these behind the scene. attention to "problems of the Rivers typer" presumably "r asked about the division of land. rt would have been useful to kinship. But on the whole such methodological issues are not find out about the old system of division and to study today's as pursued in this daily record of his thoughts, Of more interest a form of adaptation." This is an early indication of an interest are Malinowskirs occasional flashes of theoretical observation, in social change which later developed into a major theme in his such as his remarks on language as a system of social ideas, both work. What the first diary does show is Malinowski's keen de- instrument and objective creation of on history as "obser_ sire to get his early material written up a soon as possible for vation of facts in keeping with a certain theory." These g_ive publication, and in fact his report on The Natiaes o1 Moilu *u" sign of his concern with issues which were then relatively ready before the middle of r9r5.f one is led to infer that it was novel but later became part of the general talk of the aca- in the course of writing up this material ("in íact as I worked demic market place.