Malinowski, Bronislaw (1884–1942)

Bronislaw Malinowski, born in Poland, obtained his doctorate in London, and became the leading British anthropologist of the interwar years. He is best known for his practice and advocacy of intense anthropological fieldwork based on participant observation, and for his role as the self‐proclaimed creator of functionalist theory, which stated that all social institutions served certain social and biological needs. Among those institutions was the family, whose universality Malinowski asserted in his earliest work, The Family among The Australian Aborigines . Sexuality is the basis of the family, and Malinowski's fieldwork among the Trobriand Islanders of Melanesia gave him a reputation as an expert on the topic. In Sex and Repression in Savage Society he stated that Trobriand matrilineal institutions provided evidence that proved Freud's claim that the Oedipus complex was universal was incorrect. In The Sexual Life of Savages , he showed that the Trobrianders’ premarital sexual license was subject to clear rules and prepared them for stable family life. Malinowski played a modest role in the sexual reform movements of his time.