Argonauts of the Western Pacific / An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea
Bronislaw Malinowski
Essays
Book language: English
589 pages
Argonauts of the Western Pacific is a foundational ethnography by Bronislaw Malinowski, written as a series of essays. It describes the kula, a ceremonial exchange of shell valuables among island communities in Melanesian New Guinea, based on his fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands. It is worth listening to for its account of gift exchange, social organization, and anthropological method.
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Cover of the original edition (Project Gutenberg, public domain).
Text source: gutenberg.org · The work is in the public domain.
Opening of the book
A Ceremonial Act of the Kula A Ceremonial Act of the Kula Argonauts of the Western Pacific An Account of Native Enterprise
and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea By Bronislaw Malinowski PH.D. (Cracow), D.Sc. (London) With a Preface By Sir James George, Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. With 5 Maps, 65 Illustrations, and 2 Figures, London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co. 1922
To
my friend and teacher
Professor C. G. Seligman, F.R.S.
Preface
By Sir James G. Frazer
My esteemed friend, Dr. B. Malinowski has asked me to write a preface to his book, and I willingly comply with his request, though I can hardly think that any words of mine will add to the value of the remarkable record of anthropological research which he has given us in this volume. My observations, such as they are, will deal partly with the writer’s method and partly with the matter of his book.
In regard to method, Dr. Malinowski has done his work, as it appears to me, under the best conditions and in the manner calculated to secure the best possible results. Both by theoretical training and by practical experience he was well equipped for the task which he undertook. Of his theoretical training he had given proof in his learned and thoughtful treatise on the family among the aborigines of Australia1; of his practical experience he had produced no less satisfactory evidence in his account of the natives of Mailu in New
Guinea, based on a residence of six months among them.2 In the Trobriand
Islands, to the east of New Guinea, to which he next turned his attention, Dr.
Malinowski lived as a native among the natives for many months together, watching them daily at work and at play, conversing with them in their own tongue, and deriving all his information from the surest sources—personal
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