Argonauts of the Western Pacific
Encyclopedia
Argonauts of the Western Pacific is a 1922 ethnological work by Bronisław Malinowski. The book is about the Trobriand people who live on a small island chain called the Kiriwina Islands northeast of Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...

. The book is part of Malinowski's trilogy on the Trobrianders; the other books include The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia
The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia
The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia is a 1929 book by anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski...

(1929) and Coral Gardens and their magic
Coral Gardens and their Magic
Coral Gardens and Their Magic, properly Coral Gardens and Their Magic: A Study of the Methods of Tilling the Soil and of Agricultural Rites in the Trobriand Islands, is the final book in anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski's ethnographic trilogy on the lives of the Trobriand Islanders...

(1935).

Argonauts is arguably the most "famous" book in the history of anthropology, and its influence on generations of anthropologists has been profound. The posthumous publication of Malinowski's diaries in 1967--in which he revealed clearly his distaste for many aspects of field experience--if anything deepened interest in Malinowski and Argonauts. Above all, the publication of Argonauts of the Western Pacific clearly distinguished the genre of ethnography from the growing documentation of foreign places that had been building since the mid-eighteenth century. Malinowski's opening chapter on "Subject, Method and Scope" drew a line, so to speak, around the work done by anthropologists, on the one hand, and a motley array (as he saw them) of travelers, missionaries, and journalists, on the other. It also helped create a "narrative" for the history of anthropology that privileged fieldwork and "professional" methods, as opposed to what he portrayed as a grab-bag of methods (including colonial-style interviewing of "natives" far from their homes and social networks) employed before Argonauts was published.

External links

  • Downloadable copy from the Internet Archive
    Internet Archive
    The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...

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