Bronislaw Malinowski

(1884-1942, Poland-Britain-The United States)

Bronislaw Malinowski is credited with Functionalism, which explains a culture as an interrelated whole, not a collection of isolated traits. Based on his fieldwork in various areas of the world, particularly the Trobriand Islands in New Guinea , Malinowski established the theory of Functionalism. A culture is composed of many different elements, such as food acquisition, family relationships, and housing. Malinowski believed that all of these elements are connected and work together for one purpose, which is to meet the needs of individuals in the culture. In other words, culture exists to satisfy the basic biological, psychological, and social needs of individuals.

For example, the first human need, metabolism, refers to “the process of food intake, digestion, the collateral secretions, the absorption of nutritive substances, and rejection of waster matter…” (Malinowski 1944:91). Culture meets this need by possessing the following different domains:

1) How food was grown, prepared, and consumed

2) Where food was consumed and in what social units

3) The economic and social organization of the distribution of foods (e.g., trade in canned salmon or reciprocal exchange of garden products)

4) The legal and customary rules that ensure the steady operation of food distribution

5) The authority that enforces those rules

All of these domains are linked and function together to meet the basic human need, metabolism. Malinowski called this whole function commissariat, which is a cultural response to metabolism. In this way, he outlined the basic human needs and cultural responses as follows.

Basic Needs	Cultural Responses
1. Metabolism	1. Commissariat
2. Reproduction	2. Kinship
3. Bodily Comforts	3. Shelter
4. Safety	4. Protection
5. Movement	5. Activities
6. Growth	6. Training
7. Health	7. Hygiene

Malinowski is known for his psychological analysis. A classic example is his analysis on magic. In Trobriand Islands, magic was used for various purposes, such as to kill enemies and prevent being killed, to ease the birth of a child, to protect fishermen, and to ensure harvest. Malinowski hypothesized that magic is reliable in domains where there is a limited amount of scientific knowledge. Magic appears to work in these areas because people cannot handle situations with systematic knowledge. For example, the Trobriand Islanders did not practice magic when they fished inside a protected coral reef because they were able to predict catch and safety by weather and the conditions of the sea. In contrast, they did rely on magic when they went ocean fishing because it was difficult to predict unknown dangers and the amount of fish they might harvest. Based on this data, Malinowski argued that magic has a profound function in exerting human control over those dimensions that are otherwise outside of our element. The essential function of magic is to extend control over uncontrollable elements of nature and thereby reduce anxiety.
Malinowski is also known as a pioneer of fieldwork, which is intense and long-term research conducted among people in a particular community. He set criteria for fieldwork and brought this method to a fundamental element of the discipline. His criteria require anthropologists to actually live in communities and to acquire the language of the people among whom they are conducting their researches.

Biography of Malinowski

Sources:

Barfield, Thomas. 1996 The Dictionary of Anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.

Barnard, Alan, and Jonathan Spencer. 1997 Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London; New York: Routledge.

Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1944 A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Moore, Jerry D. 1997 Visions of Culture. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.

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Bronislaw Malinowski

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