Malinowski, Bronislaw

Abstract Bronislaw Malinowski (1884 − 1942) was a well‐known Polish‐British‐American anthropologist who became famous for his first book (1922/1984), Argonauts of the Western Pacific , which discussed the Kula Ring. The Kula Ring is a fascinating topic because it so clearly shows that in pre‐modern, traditional economics many of the so‐called “laws” of neo‐classical economics clearly do not apply in any simple, straightforward manner. The Trobriand Islands, just east of Papua New Guinea, were his object of study. His research in the modernist tradition has been critiqued by postmodernist thinkers who would like to recast the epistemological basis for social anthropology. Malinowski the “fieldworker” and Malinowski the “theoretician” have sometimes been replaced by Malinowski “the anti‐hero” in some of the postmodernist accounts. Publication of Malinowski's Diary (1967) contributed to the controversy. For those who believe that striving for some degree of objectivity in ethnographic monographs is possible, Malinowski still represents a founder of the kind of fieldwork that constitutes the bedrock of solid anthropological work. Much of the rhetoric against Malinowski ignores his path‐breaking innovations. pointed out: “… it is often a great deal easier to criticize one's intellectual heritage than to acknowledge one's inheritance”.