Bronisław Malinowski, (born April 7, 1884, Kraków, Pol., Austria-Hungary—died May 16, 1942, New Haven, Conn., U.S.), Polish-British anthropologist. He is principally associated with studies of the peoples of Oceania and with the school of thought known as functionalism. After taking degrees in philosophy, physics, and mathematics in Poland, Malinowski happened upon James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough and went to study anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science (1910–16). Doing research in the Trobriand Islands, he lived in a tent among the people (see Trobriander), spoke the vernacular fluently, recorded “texts” freely on the scene as well as in set interviews, and observed reactions with an acute clinical eye. He was thus able to present a dynamic picture of social institutions that clearly separated ideal norms from actual behaviour and in doing so laid much of the basis for modern anthropological field research. He taught at the London School of Economics (1922–38) and Yale University (1938–42). He wrote several works that are now considered classics of anthropology, including Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) and Magic, Science and Religion (1948).
Bronisław Malinowski Article
Bronisław Malinowski summary
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New Guinea Summary
New Guinea, island of the eastern Malay Archipelago, in the western Pacific Ocean, north of Australia. It is bounded by the Pacific Ocean to the north, the Bismarck and Solomon seas to the east, the Coral Sea and Torres Strait to the south, and the Arafura Sea to the southwest. New Guinea is
cultural anthropology Summary
Cultural anthropology, a major division of anthropology that deals with the study of culture in all of its aspects and that uses the methods, concepts, and data of archaeology, ethnography and ethnology, folklore, and linguistics in its descriptions and analyses of the diverse peoples of the world.