Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski

Gunter Senft
Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen

1. Biographical sketch

"...he had an artists power to create with great integrative capacity a world of his
own ... and he had the true scientist's intuitive discrimination between relevant and
adventitious fundamental and secondary issues", this kind epitaph, which Malinowski
formulated in his obituary for Sir James George Frazer a year before he himself died,
could equally apply to Malinowski, as Raymond Firth (1981: 137) so rightly empha-
sized in one of his articles on his teacher and colleague. Bronislaw Malinowski, one of
the most important anthropologists of the 20th century, is generally recognized as one
of the founders of social anthropology, transforming 19th century speculative anthro-
pology into a field-oriented science that is based on empirical research. Malinowski
is principally associated with his field research of the Mailu and especially of the Tro-
briand Islanders in what is now Papua New Guinea, and his masterpieces on Trobri-
and ethnography continue "to enthrall each generation of anthropologists through its
intensity, rich detail, and penetrating revelations" (Weiner 1987: xiv).
Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski (nicknamed Bronek & Bronio) was born in Cracow
(then Austrian Galicia, now Poland) on 7 April 1884 as the only child of Jozefa (nee Lacka)
and Lucjan Malinowski. His father (1839-1898) was professor of Slavonic philology at
the Jagiellonian University of Cracow and was well known not only as a philologist but
also as an ethnographer specialized in Polish dialects and Silesian folklore and ethnol-
ogy. He died of a heart attack at the age of 58 when his son (who was to die in the same
way at the same age) was only 14. However, his mother Jozefa ('Josephine', 1848-1918),
who came from a wealthy land-owning family and was a highly cultured woman and
a good linguist, was much more important for Bronislaw's development and educa-
tion (see Wayne 1985, 1995), and the mother-son bond was extremely strong. Both
parents belonged to a social class that Malinowski's youngest daughter Helena Wayne
(1985: 529) characterized as being something "between landed gentry and nobility,
but certainly not aristocracy".
Bronislaw was a delicate child and had constant problems with his health: he nearly
died of peritonitis and he had severe trouble with his eyes — he was even threatened
with blindness. Therefore, after a year as an internal student he became an external
student of the Jan Sobieski Gimnajum, one of Cracow's best secondary schools. He
worked at home and with the loving and caring help of his mother he managed to
 Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski 211

brilliantly complete his schooling. Because of his health Malinowski and his mother —
at the behest of his doctors — made various journeys south. They were already well
travelled in central European countries, but in the time between 1899 and 1906 they
went to Northern Italy, the Mediterranean, especially to the Dalmatian coast, Malta, Sicily,
to North African countries, and to Madeira and the Canary Islands (Wayne 1985: 531).
Nevertheless, his poor health continued to plague him throughout his life.
In 1902 Malinowski went to Cracow University and studied first physics, math-
ematics and chemistry, and then philosophy and also psychology. In 1908 he was
awarded his doctorate with the highest honours in the Austrian Empire (summa cum
laude — sub auspiciis imperatoris) and was presented with a large gold and diamond
ring from Kaiser Franz Josef (see Wayne 1985: 531). His Ph.D. thesis (On the principle
of the economy of thought) examined the 'second positivism' of Richard Avenarius &
Ernst Mach (see Paluch 1981:284; Young 1987:125); the doctorate was mainly a philo-
sophical study with physics and mathematics as subsidiaries.
After his doctoral work, Malinowski developed his interest in anthropology and
ethnology. His health problem forced him to postpone the studies he had planned to
undertake after his graduation and he started to read Frazer's The Golden Bow (at this
time only the first 3 of the 12 volumes had been published). Malinowski then went for
three terms ('semester') to the University of Leipzig and studied 'Volkerpsychologie'
with Wilhelm Wundt and historical economy and economics with Karl Biicher. He
also worked in the chemistry laboratories of Wilhelm Ostwald.
In 1910 Malinowski went to London with the South African pianist Annie Brunton
whom he met in Leipzig, and he became a postgraduate student at the London School
of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Here anthropology had been recently estab-
lished as a discipline. Malinowski studied anthropology with Charles Gabriel Seligman
(1873-1940) and sociology with Edward A. Westermarck (1862-1939). The influence
of these great scholars on Malinowskis thinking is excellently outlined in Weiner
(1987). In 1913 Malinowski wrote his first book in English, The Family among the Aus-
tralian Aborigines, as one part of his doctoral requirements. This monograph — like his
second book, Primitive Religion and Forms of Social Structure, that was published in
Polish (and in Poland) in 1915 — was written on the basis of published accounts, but
he had already conceived plans to do anthropological field research.
In 1914 Seligman managed to raise funds from the LSE and from the industrialist
Robert Mond for Malinowski to do field research in the Western Pacific. Malinowski
"went out to Australia with the British Association for the Advancement of Science...
as a guest, and at the expense, of the Commonwealth Government of Australia"
(Malinowski 1922: xix). On his arrival in Australia, war had been declared in Europe.
As a Pole, Malinowski was a subject of the Austrian Emperor and thus an enemy alien.
He nevertheless managed to get permission from the Australian authorities to proceed
with his research. In September 1914 Malinowski sailed from Brisbane to British New
212 Gunter Senft

Guinea, after his friend Stanislaw I. Witkiewicz, who had planned to become his field
work photographer, had left him and returned to Europe to fight for the Russians. He
stayed for six months and — following Seligmans advice — did about three months of
field research with the Mailu on the south coast.
In March of 1915 Malinowski returned to Australia after a brief trip to Samarai
and Woodlark Island. He now wrote the monograph The Natives of Mailu: Prelimi-
nary Results of the Robert Mond Research Work in British New Guinea, published as
Volume 39 of the Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society of South Australia
in Adelaide in 1920 (Malinowski 1988). Together with his research on the Australian
Aboriginal family, published in 1913, it earned him a doctor of science degree from the
University of London in 1916.
In May 1915 Malinowski left Australia for his second expedition to British
New Guinea. Together with Seligman he had been discussing a possible fieldsite for
this second field trip, and among the candidates were the Binandere people in the
Mambare district, the Borowai, and especially the Rossel Islanders. Malinowski's let-
ters to Seligman reveal that he had the intention to make for the Mambare, but that
he wanted to visit the Trobriands and stay there for a month on his way to this pro-
jected field site. It was R.L. Bellamy, the Assistant Resident Magistrate and Medical
Officer of the district, who attracted Malinowski to the Trobriands. On his arrival on
the Trobriands in July, Malinowski stayed with Bellamy, who taught him some basics
of Kilivila (also: Kiriwina, Boyowa), the Austronesian language of the islanders (Senft
1986). Bellamy left the Trobriands after a month for the War, but Malinowski decided
to stay there and he chose Omarakana, the village of the paramount chief To'uluwa, as
the place to set up his tent. Already in September 1915 he mastered the language so
well that he did not need the help of an interpreter any more (besides his mother tongue
Polish he could also speak Russian, German, French, English, Italian, and Spanish).
Malinowski stayed on Kiriwina, the largest of the Trobriand Islands, for nine months,
then returned to Melbourne at the end of March 1916 (see Young 1984: 20) and
started to write his article Baloma — the Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands
(Malinowski 1974:149-254). He managed to get a permit to continue his research on
the Trobriands for another year, but he was not allowed to go anywhere else and thus
had to give up his plans to briefly visit Rossel Island after his second field trip to the
Trobriands. Seligman in England and Spencer in Australia managed to raise further
funds for his research (from 1914 to 1920 Malinowski had a budget of 250 pounds a
year), and Malinowski left Australia again in October 1917 for the Trobriands where
he stayed until October 1918 (see Young 1984). It was during the second period of field
research on the Trobriands, in January 1918, that Malinowski's mother died.
Back in Melbourne he continued working on his Trobriand material together
with Elsie Rosaline Masson. Malinowski had met Elsie in 1916, and they married in
March 1919. They had three daughters, Josefa Maria, Wanda, and Helen. A year after
 Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski 213

their marriage the couple left Australia for good. They first spent some months in
England, then they moved to the Canary Islands and lived for a year in a country
villa in Tenerife. Here Malinowski finished his first monograph on the Trobriand
Islands, The Argonauts of the Western Pacific, which was accepted by Routledge within
three days and published in 1922. This book made Malinowski's reputation. In 1921
Malinowski started to give lectures at the LSE. In 1924 he was appointed to a reader-
ship in anthropology, and in 1927 he accepted the offer to become the first chair in
anthropology at the LSE. Between 1921 and 1927 the Malinowski family travelled to
the south of France, to Poland and to the south of Tyrol — where in 1923 they bought a
beautiful Alpine house in Oberbozen (Soprabolzano) that was to become the home of
the family for 6 years. During this time Malinowski continuously commuted between
London and Oberbozen.
He was a brilliant teacher, attracted students from many disciplines and trained
a generation of distinguished British anthropologists. Among his students were
Raymond Firth, E.-E. Evans Pritchard, Isaac Schapera, Hortense Powdermaker,
Edmund R. Leach, Meyer Fortes, Lucy Mair, and Ian Hogbin (see also Firth 1957b). The
Director of the LSE, Sir William Beveridge, urged Malinowski to live in London — and
in 1929 the family moved to a house in Primrose Hill. Moreover, following the advice
of Beveridge, Malinowski also became a British subject. He remained in London for
almost twenty years, but he continued to travel widely. In 1926 Malinowski was invited
to the United States and spent 6 months there as a guest of the Rockefeller Foundation.
He visited Ruth Benedict at Columbia and gave a summer course on anthropology at
the University of California, Berkeley. He also visited the Hopi Indians and travelled
to Mexico for the first time.
The years between 1923 and 1938 were his most productive years as a writer and
a teacher. Besides many essays and shorter theoretical works Malinowski published
the other two of his three major monographs on the Trobriands, The Sexual Life of
Savages in Northwestern Melanesia in 1929 and the two volumes of Coral Gardens
and their Magic in 1935. Among his shorter essays on aspects of Trobriand eth-
nography Magic, Science and Religion (1925), Crime and Custom in Primitive Soci-
ety (1926), and Myth in Primitive Psychology (1926) deserve special mention. With
respect to his interdisciplinary research in anthropology and psychology his publi-
cations titled The Psychology of Sex (1923), Psychoanalysis and Anthropology (1924),
and The Father in Primitive Psychology (1927) have to be mentioned as well. In her
article on Malinowski, Rhoda Metraux (1968) lists 70 publications (see also Ellen et al.
1988: 210-227; Firth 1957b: 265-271).
In 1930 Malinowski developed an interest in Africa. He travelled for four
months through South and East Africa, visiting his students (Audrey Richards, the
Wilsons, and Hilda Beemer) who were working on the Bemba, the Swazi and on
other tribes. Among his African students was Jomo Kenyatta, who prepared his
214 Gunter Senft

book Facing Mount Kenya (published with an introduction by Malinowski) as a

diploma thesis under his supervision.
In 1933 Malinowski made his second visit to the USA, presenting the Messenger
lectures at Cornell University. Two years later, in September 1935, his wife Elsie died.
In 1936 Malinowski was awarded the honorary doctor of science degree from Harvard
University, and in 1938 he spent his sabbatical leave in the USA. In September 1939 the
director of the LSE, Sir A.M. Carr-Saunders, advised Malinowski to stay in the States
because of the unclear wartime future of his university. Malinowski followed this advice
and brought his daughters to America. In the same year he became a Bishop Museum
Visiting Professor of Anthropology at Yale (where the brilliant teacher had difficulties
with students who — according to Metraux (1968: 546) — "were far less mature than
his students in London"). In 1939 he also married Valetta Swann (nee Hayman-Joyce),
an English painter 20 years his junior. Together with his second wife and the Mexican
anthropologist Julio de la Fuente he spent the summers of 1940 and 1941 in Mexico
doing fieldwork studying the Zapotec Indians' peasant market in Oaxaca. Early in 1942
Malinowski was appointed professor of anthropology at Yale, but on the 16th of May
1942 he suffered a heart attack and died in New Haven, Connecticut.

2. The study of culture

As Metraux (1968:541) pointed out so pertinently,"Malinowski's primary scientific inter-

est was in the study of culture as a universal phenomenon and in the development of a
methodological framework that would permit the systematic study of specific cultures in
all their peculiarities and open the way to systematic cross-cultural comparison". Central
and recurrent themes in his research were the following topics: the family, kinship, culture
change, anthropology and psychology, the integrity of culture; the complex interrelation-
ship of the society, the culture and the individual, and the systematic nature of culture.
In his 1931 article on "Culture" in the Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences Malinowski
states that for him "culture comprises inherited artefacts, goods, technical processes,
ideas, habits, and values". Moreover, besides social organization the concept of culture
also includes "the set of forces impinging on the individual born into each society"
(Richards 1957: 21). For Malinowski this idea of the "... 'social heritage' is the key con-
cept of cultural anthropology" (Malinowski 1931:621). He was convinced that human
beings have biological needs that culture satisfies, that culture is an instrumental real-
ity derived from human needs: "...rites, beliefs, and customs, however extraordinary
they appear to an observer, actually fill 'needs', biological, psychological, and social"
(Richards 1957: 18). Therefore anthropology is the science that has the task to "study
the 'use' or 'function' of the customs, institutions, and beliefs which formed part of
each culture" (Richards 1957:16). Each culture represents for him a closed system, and
therefore all cultures are comparable.
 Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski 215

On the basis of these ideas he developed his functional theory of needs "in which
each basic human biological need triggers a cultural response" (Weiner 1987: xxx). Func-
tionalism "aims at the explanation of anthropological facts at all levels of development by
their function, by the part which they play within the integral system of culture, by the
manner in which they are related to each other within the system, and by the manner in
which this system is related to the physical surroundings. It aims at an understanding of
the nature of culture, rather than at conjectural reconstructions of its evolution or of past
historical events...". Moreover, functional theory "... insists... upon the principle that in
every type of civilisation, every custom, material object, idea and belief fulfils some vital
function, has some task to accomplish, represents an indispensable part within a work-
ing whole" (Malinowski 1926:132,133). Understanding a culture therefore presupposes
the understanding of such functions (for a synthesis of his ideas on functional theory see
Malinowski 1944; see also Young 1987: 132ff). However, as Metraux (1968: 541) points
out, although "the idea of'function is a key concept throughout his work ... his use of
the term was open-ended, exploratory, and subject to continual modification".
His theoretical thinking was very much influenced by Westermarck and Seligman,
of course, but also by Wilhelm Wundt, Karl Bücher, James Frazer, Alfred Haddon,
William Rivers and R.R. Marrett, by the French sociological school, especially by
Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss (though he did not like their abstract notions of
society), by Richard Thurnwald, by Richard Gregory, Havelock Ellis, A.H. Gardiner,
Julian Huxley, C.K. Ogden, Cyril Burt, S.S. Myers, J.C. Flugel, W. Powys Mathers,
G.H.L.F. Pitt-Rivers, and J.H. Oldham (see Firth 1957a). He reacted strongly
against the speculations of evolutionists and diffusionists like Lewis Henry Morgan,
Herbert Spencer, Edward Burnett Taylor, Fritz Graebner, Wilhelm Schmidt and
other representatives of the Kulturhistorische Schule and their Kulturkreislehre, against
Levy-Bruhl's theory of primitive mentality, and against Freud's theory of psychoanalysis.
On the basis of his theoretical ideas about culture he studied a broad range of cultural
aspects and institutions — mainly, if not almost exclusively, with respect to the culture
of the Trobriand Islanders — and he challenged in, and with, his work many theories on
core-concepts of anthropology such as kinship, marriage, exchange, and ritual.
For Malinowski, functionalism was a research tool, "the prerequisite for field-work and
for the comparative analysis of phenomena in various cultures" (Malinowski 1944: 175),
and therefore his theory had to include a general theory of how to do fieldwork.

3. Fieldwork

Malinowski was not the first anthropologist who did intensive field research —
Lewis H. Morgan studied the Iroquois, Franz Boas the Kwakiutl, Carl Strehlow as well
as Spencer and Gillen Australian Aborigines in the field — but through "his exam-
ple and teaching, fieldwork became the 'constitutive experience' of anthropology, the
2i6 Gunter Senft

'central rite of the tribe'" (Young 1987: 124). As Leach (1957: 120) points out so aptly,
Malinowski, the 'fanatical theoretical empiricist', developed a field technique that
was unique because of the "severely curtailed use of the professional informant" and
because of "the theoretical assumption that the total field of data under the obser-
vation of the field worker must somehow fit together and make sense". He was con-
vinced that observation without theory is impossible. However, he also insisted on
the principle that theory can only be falsified or verified on the basis of the observed
and that the observed will always lead to a refinement or to a reformulation of basic
assumptions in the field researcher's theory. Already in his 1916 article Baloma — the
Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands Malinowski (1974: 237f.) emphasized that
the traditional gathering of 'pure facts' in the field is 'pure 'collectioneering' of data'
if it is not accompanied by "the interpretation which sees in the endless diversity of
facts general laws; which severs the essential from the irrelevant; which classifies and
orders phenomena, and puts them into mutual relationship". Thus, "field work consists
only and exclusively in the interpretation of the chaotic social reality, in subordinat-
ing it to general rules". In his introduction to the Argonauts of the Western Pacific he
clearly formulates the basic lines of his approach to field research and the final goal of
an ethnographer:
.. .the goal of ethnographic fieldwork must be approached through three avenues:
1. The organisation of the tribe, and the anatomy of its culture must be recorded in
firm clear outline. The method of concrete statistical documentation is the means
through which such an outline has to be given.
2. Within this frame, the imponderabilia of actual life, and the type of behaviour have
to be filled in. They have to be collected through minute, detailed observations, in
the form of some sort of ethnographic diary, made possible by close contact with
native life.
3. A collection of ethnographic statements, characteristic narratives, typical utter-
ances, items of folklore and magical formulae has to be given as a corpus inscrip-
tionum, as documents of native mentality.
These three lines of approach lead to the final goal, of which an Ethnographer should
never lose sight. This goal is, briefly, to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to
life, to realise his vision of his world. We have to study man, and we must study what
concerns him most intimately, that is, the hold which life has on him.... In each cul-
ture we find different institutions... To study the institutions, customs, and codes or
to study the behaviour and mentality without the subjective desire of feeling by what
these people live, of realising the substance of their happiness — is, in my opinion,
to miss the greatest reward which we can hope to obtain from the study of man....
Perhaps as we read the account of these remote customs there may emerge a feeling
of solidarity with the endeavours and ambitions of these natives. Perhaps man's men-
tality will be revealed to us, and brought near, along some lines which we never have
 Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski 217

followed before. Perhaps through realising human nature in a shape very distant and
foreign to us, we shall have some light shed on our own. (Malinowski 1922: 24f.)
Thus, Malinowski introduced the concept and the method of "participant obser-
vation" into anthropology, being convinced that "alien cultures had to be explored
'from the inside' to make most sense" (Young 1987: 131). That this ambitious concept
necessarily puts field researchers in a position where they have to face the strains of
field research is very explicitly and incredibly frankly documented in Malinowski's
posthumously published Diary (Malinowski 1967), which Raymond Firth in his new
introduction to the 1989 edition (re-)evaluates as follows: "It is not merely a record of
the thinking and feeling of a brilliant, turbulent personality .... it is also a highly sig-
nificant contribution to the understanding of the position and role of a fieldworker as
a conscious participator in a dynamic social situation" (Firth 1989: xxxi).
Moreover, besides the anthropologist's role as a "participant observer", the eth-
nographer's linguistic competence in, and competent use of, the native language is for
Malinowski another and an equally important basic requirement to fulfil the anthro-
pologist's task "to give a full description of language as an aspect and ingredient of
culture" and "to translate the native point of view to the European" (Malinowski 1935,
vol. II: xxf.).

4. Theory of language

Malinowski became very much interested in linguistics when he found that he could
not realize his project of writing a grammar of Kilivila because he had no linguistic
training and because he was — rightly — convinced that the grammatical categories
offered by the linguistic theories of his time did not fit for the description of a language
like Kilivila (Malinowski 1920: 74, see also Senft 1994a). As early as 1920 he explicitly
stated the following:

...there is an urgent need for an Ethno-linguistic theory, a theory for the guidance
of linguistic research to be done among natives and in connexion with ethnographic
study... A Theory which, moreover, aims not at hypothetical constructions — 'origins',
'historical developments', cultural transferences,' and similar speculations — but
a theory concerned with the intrinsic relation of facts. A theory which in linguistics
would show us what is essential in language and what therefore must remain the same
throughout the whole range of linguistic varieties; how linguistic forms are influenced
by physiological, mental, social, and other cultural elements; what is the real nature of
Meaning and Form, and how they correspond; a theory which, in fine, would give us a
set of well-founded plastic definitions of grammatical concepts. (Malinowski 1920:69)

Besides coining the term 'ethnolinguistics', Malinowski emphasizes in his first 'linguis-
tic' paper that "grammar can be studied only in conjunction with meaning, and mean-
ing only in the context of situation" (Nerlich & Clarke 1996: 320).
218 Gunter Senft

Malinowski's linguistic interests "centered on language as a mode of behavior and

on problems of culturally determined meaning" (Metrauxl968: 524). The second vol-
ume of Coral gardens and their magic (Malinowski 1935) presents his "ethnographic
theory of language". Before this he published two linguistic papers, one on Classificatory
particles in the language of Kiriwina (Malinowski 1920; see Senft 1996:200f.) and one on
The problem of meaning in primitive languages (Malinowski 1923; see Senft 1995b).
Malinowski developed his ethnographic theory of language mainly in connection
with his attempts to translate the Trobriand Islanders' magical formulae. He realized
that the Trobriand Islanders believed in the power of the words in the magical formu-
lae: they used these magical formulae to reach certain aims with the firm conviction
that they can thus influence and control nature and the course of, and events in, their
lives. Thus, in the domain of magic language is doing something, it has certain effects,
it has power and force. Malinowski (1922: 432) summarized this observation as fol-
lows: "Magic is ... an instrument serving special purposes, intended for the excercise
of man's specific power over things, and its meaning, giving this word a wider sense,
can be understood only in correlation to this aim". As Nerlich & Clarke (1996: 321)
rightly infer, Malinowski explicitly equates here meaning with pragmatic function —
and this is typical for his way of looking at language functionally and contextually with
semantics as the starting point for linguistic analyses. He characterized his — prag-
matic — theory of meaning as a theory that insists on the "linking up of ethnographic
descriptions with linguistic analysis which provides language with its cultural context
and culture with its linguistic interpretation. Within this latter ... [Malinowski has]
... continually striven to link up grammar with the context of situation and with the
context of culture" (Malinowski 1935: 73). Malinowski was influenced by the work
of the German linguist Philipp Wegener (Wegener 1885, see also Nerlich & Clarke
1996: 318) and familiar with the works of other linguists like Humboldt, Lazarus,
Meinhof, Miiller, Jespersen, Paul, Steinthal, Tregear, Wundt, Oertl, Temple, and
Tucker (see Malinowski 1920: 71f., 74f.). On the basis of this linguistic background
speech is for Malinowski first and foremost part of the context of situation in which
it is produced, language — in its primitive function — has an essentially pragmatic
character (Malinowski used the term 'pragmatic' himself, see, e.g., Malinowski 1935:
45), and "meaning resides in the pragmatic function of an utterance" (Baumann 1992:
147). For Malinowski (as well as for Wittgenstein) the meaning of a word lies in its
use. Thus, to study meaning one cannot examine isolated words but sentences or utter-
ances in their situative context: "the real understanding of words is always ultimately
derived from active experience of those aspects of reality to which the words belong"
(Malinowski 1935: 58). Malinowski emphasizes that language — at least in its primi-
tive function — has to be regarded as a mode of action (Malinowski 1923:296; see also
Firth 1957: 94); and that to understand the use of a complex speech situation requires
the understanding of the situation in which it occurred and the action it accomplished.
 Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski 219

This position can certainly be described as a "radical functionalism and contextualism"

(Nerlich & Clarke 1996: 323). Malinowski (1923: 296, 309ff) illustrates how the mean-
ing of utterances can be determined in what he calls "the essential primitive uses of
speech: speech in action, ritual handling of words, the narrative, 'phatic communion
(speech in social intercourse)"; he emphasizes his main position as follows: "language
in its primitive function and original form has an essentially pragmatic character; ...
it is a mode of behaviour, an indispensable element of concerted human action ... to
regard it as a means for the embodiment or expression of thought is to take a one-sided
view of one of its most derivate and specialized functions" (Malinowski 1923: 316; see
also Firth 1957: 94; Langendoen 1968: 21ff). Moreover, Malinowski is convinced that
language "serves for definite purposes, that it functions as an instrument used for and
adapted to a definite aim". Malinowski exemplifies the essentially pragmatic character
of language by referring to two situations from his Trobriand experience — a fish-
ing expedition (Malinowski 1923: 310-312) and the verbal guiding of a boat into a
reef channel in complete darkness (Malinowski 1935: 58f.) — in which he noted that
"words have to be uttered with impeccable correctness and understood in absolutely
adequate manner in ... situations where speech is an indispensable adjunct to action"
(Malinowski: 1935: 58). Malinowski sums up his analysis of the linguistic actions he
observed during the fishing expedition as follows:

All the language used during such a pursuit is full of technical terms, short references to
surroundings, rapid indications of change — all based on customary types of behaviour,
well-known to the participants from personal experience. Each utterance is essentially
bound up with the context of situation and with the aim of the pursuit, whether it be
the short indications about the movements of the quarry, or references to statements
about the surroundings, or the expression of feeling and passion inexorably bound
up with behaviour, or words of command, or correlation of action. The structure of
all this linguistic material is inextricably mixed up with, and dependent upon, the
course of the activity in which the utterances are embedded. The vocabulary, the
meaning of the particular words used in their characteristic technicality is no less
subordinate to action. For technical language, in matters of practical pursuit, acquires
its meaning only through personal participation in this type of pursuit. It has to
be learned, not through reflection but through action. ... The study of any form of
speech in connection with vital work would reveal the same grammatical and lexical
peculiarities: the dependence of the meaning of each word upon practical experience,
and of the structure of each utterance upon the momentary situation in which it is
spoken. Thus the consideration of linguistic uses associated with any practical pursuit,
leads us to the conclusion that language in its primitive forms ought to be regarded
and studied against the background of human activities and as a mode of behaviour
in practical matters. (Malinowski 1923: 311f.)

It is obvious that Malinowski here emphasizes and stresses "action at the expense of
structure and system" (Nerlich & Clarke 1996: 333). He even argues further that this
220 Gunter Senft

"adaptation, this correlation between language and the uses to which it is put, has left
its traces in linguistic structure" (Malinowski 1923: 327). Therefore, for Malinowski
"the categories of universal grammar are reflections of universal human attitudes
toward life and are brought out by the universally found conditions under which
children grow up in the world" (Langendoen 1968: 27). Thus, these "categories of
universal grammar must underlie categorizations implicit in nonlinguistic human
behavior" (Langendoen 1968:36). In the second volume of Coral gardens and their magic
Malinowski developed the central idea of his theory, namely "that the meaning of
utterances is provided by the context of concurrent human activity" (Langendoen
1968: 30). He once more points out that "the real linguistic fact is the full utterance
within its context of situation" (Malinowski 1935: 11). And he emphasizes "that the
context of situation may enable one to 'disambiguate' sentences that are semantically
ambiguous" (Langendoen 1968: 32; see Malinowski 1935: 32).
Langendoen presents a rather fair and competent criticism of Malinowski's lin-
guistic views. However, he seems to underestimate the importance of what J.R. Firth
(1957: 118) referred to as Malinowski's "outstanding contribution to linguistics",
namely "his approach in terms of his general theory of speech functions in contexts
of situation, to the problem of meaning in exotic languages and even in our own".
Malinowski certainly had a major impact on English linguistics in the first half of our
century. And within linguistics, anthropology and anthropological linguistics some
of Malinowski's ideas about language continue to be thought-provoking, and — with
explicit reference to Malinowski — social scientists have started 'rethinking context'
(Duranti & Goodwin 1992).

5. An appraisal

Malinowski's work and his theory of language and culture has been amply criticized
and discussed (Firth 1957b, Weiner 1987, Kohl 1987, Agar 1994, Nerlich, Clarke
1996:317-335). In what follows I will give an assessment and appraisal of the master of
Trobriand ethnography on the basis of my own field research on the Trobriand Islands.
I cannot but completely agree with Michael Young (1987: 138) that Malinowski
"was an incomparable fieldworker and master ethnographer". The only reliable lin-
guistic data I found in the literature preparing for my first 17 months of field research
on the Trobriands in 1982/83 came from Malinowski's linguistic publications and
from his anthropological linguistic remarks in his ethnographic masterpieces on
the Trobriand Islanders. Bits and pieces of Kilivila linguistics that I found in Capell,
Lithgow, and Greenberg turned out to be either utterly wrong or extremely specula-
tive (see Senft 1991: 27,46). Moreover, I had the quite romantic feeling when I first set
foot on the Trobriands in 1982 that it was like stepping right into the picture so vividly
 Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski 221

presented in Malinowskis Trobriand ethnography (Senft 1992: 68). I could easily ver-
ify major aspects of his exceptionally thorough ethnographic description of Trobriand
culture in my own experience as a participant observer.
Although the Trobriand culture — as well as the Kilivila language, of course —
have been affected by numerous changes since Malinowski worked and lived there
(see Senft 1992, 1997a, b), I have always found it worth my while to check my obser-
vations and insights with Malinowskis publications. There are two excellent ethno-
graphic restudies on the Trobriands. First of all Harry A. Powell's An Analysis of Present
Day Social Structure in the Trobriand Islands, his 1957 Ph.D-thesis, "is envisaged as
supplementary to Malinowskis published data" and presents "a theoretical interpre-
tation of Trobriand kinship and marriage relations different from that developed by
Malinowski" (Powell 1957: Abstract of thesis). Second, the results from the 1978 "Kula
and Massim Exchange Conference" in Cambridge published by Leach & Leach (1983)
present an excellent reassessment of Malinowskis classic study of 1922. One of the few
ethnographic niches Malinowski left, the 'female world' on the Trobriands, was conge-
nially filled by Annette Weiner (1976, 1988). It is extremely difficult to find other such
niches (see e.g., Senft & Senft 1986; Senft 1994b: 65f) with respect to Trobriand eth-
nography (but not, of course, with respect to linguistic research on Kilivila). Moreover,
I found it equally difficult to falsify major aspects of his ethnography. However, there
is one — hotly debated — topic in Malinowski's description of Trobriand sexuality
where I am convinced that Malinowski either made a gross mistake or played career
politics' (or even took his peer group for a ride?) — I am referring to the controversy
over Trobriand "virgin birth".
In 1983 my wife stayed with me for 11 months on the Trobriands. We then had
no children, and after my wife had learnt to speak Kilivila, the women started to dis-
cuss contraception with her. The women of Tauwema told my wife that they had two
means of contraception that are both based on a mixture of herbs that grow in the
bush; to this mixture a little bit of water is added. Some women but also some men
know how to prepare this fluid based on the herbal composition. Once the women
had talked about this topic, I could easily verify this information with two of my male
informants, namely with Weyei, the weather-magician of Tauwema (see Senft 1985a,
1997b), and Vapalaguyau, who both were very proud of the expertise which they had
inherited from their ancestors; however, they did not want to show me how and with
which herbs they produce this mixture (I respected their reservations and did not urge
them for further information about something that is as personal and secret as magic).
Anyhow, there are two modes of application for this contraceptive. Either, before
the coitus the woman drips the fluid on a small sponge and then inserts it into her
vagina placing it in front of her os uteri — the herbal composition is spermato-
cidal and thus prevents contraception. Or, the woman drinks the herbal composi-
tion in a more hydrous solution. The problem with this second mode of application
222 Gunter Senft

is that the ratio between the herbal mixture and the water is rather delicate: the
contraceptive effect of the drink may either last for a few days only or for years
— and if the herbal mixture is too highly concentrated it may even cause steril-
ity. Such a long term effect of the contraceptive almost endangered the marriage
of a loving couple — however, when we returned to the Trobriands in 1989 (with
our then 2 and 4 year old children), the woman who six years ago poured out her
troubles to me and especially to my wife proudly presented us her two children.
(I would like to note here that the "yam or Dioscorea" — the most important part
of the Trobriand diet — "was long known by certain Mexican Indians to have a
contraceptive effect. In 1993 Dr. Russell Marker ... determined the molecular struc-
ture of diosgenin, a stereoid substance with progesteronic effect derived from the
yam root. Based on this information, Organon, a leading producer of contraceptive
pills, uses the diosgenin from Mexican yam roots as the raw material for some of its
products" (de Revai: 1992) — but this is just an aside). The fact that the Trobriand
Islanders know about natural contraceptives and that this knowledge is traditional
is — to my mind — a clear and convincing counter-argument against Malinowski's
claim which he first made in his very first publication on the Trobriands in 1916,
Baloma; the Spirits of the Dead in the Trobriand Islands (Malinowski 1974:220-237),
which he used like a beat of a drum to introduce his "sex book" (as he himself and
his first wife called it, see Weiner 1987: xxxii), and which he elaborates in Chapter 7
of The Sexual life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia, namely that the Trobriand
Islanders are ignorant of the role of the 'pater' as 'genitor'.
Given Malinowski's excellent command of Kilivila and the incredible amount of
magical formulae he managed to collect and to translate — texts that represent secret
and inherited knowledge which was up till 1983 well guarded by the experts and almost
exclusively bestowed on relatives (i.e., within the matrihneal line, see Senft 1997b) — it
is very hard for me to understand why the master of Trobriand ethnography did not
hit upon the fact of Trobriand natural contraceptives, but took the Trobriand "myth" of
conception and "virgin birth" not as a kind of ideology with the function (!) to dimin-
ish discrimination of extramarital births and to allow obviously cuckolded men to
keep their face (see Weiner 1976:122; Sprenger: 1997:61ff). Note also that the incident
Weiner reports about a man who returns after his year-long absence to his village and
to his wife and who reacts extremely jealous when his wife presents him with a new
born child, is just another confirmation of the fact that this man obviously knew about
physical paternity.
I can only explain this — for me rather open and blunt — mistake of Malinowski's
in two ways. Either he became the victim of the Trobriand Islanders' love of making fun
of people — with their metalinguistic vocabulary they also differentiate the so-called
'Biga Sopa', the lying or joking or indirect language (see Senft 1985b, 1986: 125) — and
 Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski 223

they really took him for a ride, or — but this alternative is a somewhat nasty imputation
— he used this "exotic" claim to promote his academic career even further. In her intro-
duction to the latest edition of The Sexual Life of Savages Werner (1987: xxvii) discusses
Malinowski's relation to psychoanalysis in detail and refers to Stocking (1986) with a
footnote, in which she states: "According to Stocking (pp. 32-33) Malinowski's response
to psychoanalysis may have been more than intellectual. Rivers, the most eminent figure
in British anthropology, died suddenly in 1922, leaving a vacuum in leadership. Stocking
suggests that because Rivers had a long interest in psychoanalysis, Malinowski in taking up
psychoanalytic debates, strengthened his bid against the diffusionists William Perry and
Elliot Smith, to become Rivers's successor" (Weiner 1987: xlii, fn. 19) — and the claim in
'the sex book' could then be interpreted as the final culmination of such a strategic move
within academic politics (however, I want to emphasize that this assumption is noth-
ing but a nasty imputation. An even nastier imputation would be to accuse Malinowski
of having taken his peer group for a ride with this exotic fact' — I still find it extremely
interesting and sometimes quite hilarious to note that — with the exception
of Anna Weiner — all people engaged in this debate have never set foot on the
Trobriand Islands).
However, this obvious mistake does not and cannot diminish Malinowski's
incredible achievements within his Trobriand ethnography. With respect to the style
in which he presents his insights and analyses of Trobriand culture I have to agree with
Robert Redfield (1974: 9) who pointed out that no "writer of our times has done more
than Bronislaw Malinowski to bring together in single comprehension the warm real-
ity of human living and the cool abstractions of science. His pages have become an
almost indispensable link between the knowing of exotic and remote people as we
know our own neighbors and brothers, and conceptual and theoretical knowledge
about mankind". According to Mrs. Seligman, Malinowski once said proudly "Rivers
is the Rider Haggard of anthropology; I shall be the Conrad" (Firth 1957: 44), and I
must confess that I read the books of the Polish ethnographer with the same suspense
as the books of his fellow Polish novelist.
With respect to an overall assessment of Malinowski I would like to point out
once more that he is one of the most important anthropologists of our century, that he
is one of the founders of social anthropology who introduced the concept of "partici-
pant observation" into anthropology and who insisted on the ethnographer's linguis-
tic competence in, and competent use of, the language spoken in the culture studied
as another absolutely necessary prerequisite for doing sound anthropological research.
It is extremely difficult to do justice to such a "protean character" (Firth 1989: xxi) like
Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski in a rather short handbook article — the expected pub-
lication of Michael Young's biography on this great anthropologist and ethnographer
will be more than welcome.
224 Gunter Senft

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