Biography of Bronislav Malinovsky is closely related to travel.
From 1910, Malinowski studied economics at the London School of Economics (LSE) under Seligman and Westermarck, analyzing Australian Aboriginal economic patterns through ethnographic documents.
In 1914 he was given the opportunity to travel to New Guinea, accompanying the anthropologist R. R. Marett, but the First World War began, and Malinowski was an Austrian citizen and therefore an enemy of the British Commonwe alth, and therefore could not return to England. Nevertheless, the Australian government granted him permission and funds to carry out ethnographic work in their territories, and Malinovsky decided to go to the Trobriand Islands in Melanesia, where he spent several years studying the culture of the indigenous peoples.
On his return to England after the war, he published his major work The Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922), which established him as one of the most important anthropologists in Europe at the time. He held teaching positions and then, as head of the anthropology department at the LSE, attracted a large number ofstudents and had a great influence on the development of British social anthropology.
Among his students during this period were such eminent anthropologists as Raymond Firth, E. Evans-Pritchard, Edmund Leach, Audrey Richards and Meyer Fortes. From 1933 he visited several American universities, and when World War II began, he decided to stay there, making an appointment at Yale. There he remained until the end of his life, also influencing generations of American anthropologists - in this respect, the scientific activity of Bronisław Malinowski was very fruitful.
Great scientist
His ethnography of the Trobriand Islands described the complex institution of the Kula ring and became the basis for subsequent theories of reciprocity and exchange. He was also widely regarded as a prominent field worker, and his texts dealing with anthropological and ethnographic field methods were foundational to early anthropology, for example as an example for state observation.
According to Malinovsky, ethnography is a purely practical science. His approach to social theory was a brand of psychological functionalism that emphasized how social and cultural institutions serve basic human needs-a perspective opposed to Radcliffe-Brown's structural functionalism that emphasized how social institutions function in relation to society as a whole.
Early years
Bronislav Kaspar Malinovsky was bornApril 7, 1884 in Krakow, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian province known as the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, in an upper middle-class Polish family. His father was a professor and his mother came from a landowning family.
As a child, he was frail and suffered from poor he alth, but was an excellent student. In 1908 he received his doctorate in philosophy from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, where he concentrated on mathematics and physics. While attending the university, he fell ill for a long time and during his illness decided to become an anthropologist.
Bronisław Malinowski was influenced by James Fraser's Golden Bough. This book drew his attention to ethnology, which he undertook to study at the University of Leipzig, studying with the economist Karl Bucher and the psychologist Wilhelm Wundt.
In 1910 he went to England where he studied at the London School of Economics under S. G. Seligman and Edward Westermarck.
Trip to Papua
In 1914 he traveled to Papua (later Papua New Guinea) where he did field work on the island of Mailu and later on the Trobriand Islands. The ethnographic collection he made in the Trobriand Islands is now in the British Museum.
On his most famous trip to the area, he found himself in connection with the outbreak of the First World War. Malinowski was not allowed to return to Europe from the British-controlled region because he was a subject of Austria-Hungary, but the Australian authorities gave him the opportunity to conduct research in Melanesia,which he happily accepted.
It was during this period that he carried out his field work on the Kula ring and promoted the practice of observing the natives, which remains a hallmark of ethnographic research today.
After the expedition
In 1920 he published a scientific paper on the Kula Ring. In 1922, Bronisław Malinowski received his PhD in anthropology and taught at the London School of Economics. In the same year, his book Argonauts of the Western Pacific was published.
She was widely regarded as a masterpiece and Malinowski became one of the most famous anthropologists in the world. Over the next two decades, he would establish the London School of Economics as the main center for anthropology in Europe.
Malinovsky became a British citizen in 1931. In 1933 he became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Teaching activities
Bronislaw Malinowski taught intermittently in the United States. When World War II broke out during one of his American visits, he stayed there. He took a position at Yale University, where he remained until his death. In 1942, he co-founded the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America.
Death
Malinovsky died on May 16, 1942 at the age of 58 from a heart attack while preparing for summer field work in Oaxaca, Mexico. He was buried at Evergreen Cemetery in New York. Haven, Connecticut.
Recognition, ideas, books
Malinowski is considered one of the most qualified ethnographers of anthropology, especially because of his very methodical and well-theorized approach to the study of social systems.
He is often referred to as the first researcher to bring anthropology "from the porch" (a phrase that is also the title of a documentary about his work), that is, to experience the daily lives of the subjects of his research with them.
Malinowski stressed the importance of close observation of the natives and argued that anthropologists must be in daily contact with their informants if they are to adequately record the "indifferences in everyday life" that are so important to understanding another culture.
Goals of Anthropology
He stated that the goal of the anthropologist or ethnographer is to "understand the point of view of the indigenous population, their attitude to life, realize their vision of their world" ("The Argonauts of the Western Pacific", 1922, p..25). Among the books of Bronislav Malinovsky, it is often considered the main one.
It is also worth mentioning his other important works - "The Trobriand Islands", "Myth in Primitive Society", "The Figure of the Father in Primitive Psychology".
Malinovsky created a school of social anthropology known as functionalism. In contrast to Radcliffe-Brown's structural functionalism, Malinowski argued that culturefunctioned to meet the needs of individuals, not society as a whole, and ethnography is a science that studies the relationship between ethnicity and customs.
He believed that when the needs of the people who make up society are met, the needs of society are met.
