Description
Bronislaw Malinowski's pathbreaking Argonauts of the Western Pacific is at once a detailed account of exchange in the Melanesian islands and a manifesto of a modernist anthropology. Malinowski argued that the goal of which the ethnographer should never lose sight is 'to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world.' Through vivid evocations of Kula life, including the building and launching of canoes, fishing expeditions and the role of myth and magic amongst the Kula people, Malinowski brilliantly describes an inter-island system of exchange - from gifts from father to son to swapping fish for yams - around which an entire community revolves.
A classic of anthropology that did much to establish the primacy of painstaking fieldwork over the earlier anecdotal reports of travel writers, journalists and missionaries, it is a compelling insight into a world now largely lost from view.
Author: Bronislaw Malinowski
Publisher: Must Have Books
Published: 05/17/2022
Pages: 502
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.61lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.12d
ISBN13: 9781773238364
ISBN10: 1773238361
BISAC Categories:
- Social Science | Anthropology | Cultural & Social
- History | Indigenous Peoples in the Americas
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