29 Facts About Bronislaw Malinowski

1.

Bronislaw Kasper Bronislaw Malinowski was a Polish-British anthropologist whose writings on ethnography, social theory, and field research have exerted a lasting influence on the discipline of anthropology.

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2.

Bronislaw Malinowski was born in what was part of the Austrian partition of Poland, and completed his initial studies at Jagiellonian University in his birth city of Krakow.

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3.

Bronislaw Malinowski conducted research in the Trobriand Islands and other regions in New Guinea and Melanesia where he stayed for several years, studying indigenous cultures.

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4.

Bronislaw Malinowski took posts as lecturer and later as chair in anthropology at the LSE, attracting large numbers of students and exerting great influence on the development of British social anthropology.

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5.

Bronislaw Malinowski died in 1942 and was interred in the United States.

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6.

Bronislaw Malinowski was widely regarded as an eminent fieldworker, and his texts regarding anthropological field methods were foundational to early anthropology, popularizing the concept of participatory observation.

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7.

Bronislaw Malinowski, scion of Polish szlachta, was born on 7 April 1884 in Krakow – in the Austrian partition of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – then part of the Austro-Hungarian province known as the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria.

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8.

In 1911 Bronislaw Malinowski published, in Polish, his first academic paper, "Totemizm i egzogamia", in Lud.

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9.

Bronislaw Malinowski organized two larger expeditions during that time; from May 1915 to May 1916, and October 1917 to October 1918, in addition to several shorter excursions.

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10.

Bronislaw Malinowski resumed teaching at the London School of Economics, accepting a position as a lecturer, declining a job offer from the Polish Jagiellonian University.

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11.

Bronislaw Malinowski taught intermittently in the United States, which he first visited in 1926.

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12.

Bronislaw Malinowski took up a position at Yale University as a visiting professor, where he remained until his death.

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13.

Bronislaw Malinowski died in New Haven, Connecticut on 16 May 1942, aged 58, of a stroke while preparing to resume his fieldwork in Oaxaca.

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14.

Bronislaw Malinowski is often considered one of anthropology's most skilled ethnographers, especially because of his highly methodical and well-theorised approach to the study of social systems.

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15.

Bronislaw Malinowski is often referred to as the first researcher to bring anthropology "off the verandah", that is, stressing the need for fieldwork enabling the researcher to experience the everyday life of his subjects along with them.

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16.

Bronislaw Malinowski emphasised the importance of detailed participant observation and argued that anthropologists must have daily contact with their informants if they are to adequately record the "imponderabilia of everyday life" that are so important to understanding a different culture.

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17.

Bronislaw Malinowski stated that the goal of the anthropologist, or ethnographer, is "to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world".

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18.

Bronislaw Malinowski's argument was shaped by his initial experiences as an anthropologist in the mid-1910s in Australia and Oceania, where during his first field trip he found himself grossly unprepared for it, due to not knowing the language of the people he set to study, nor being able to observe their daily customs sufficiently .

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19.

Bronislaw Malinowski's pioneering decision to subsequently immerse himself in the life of the natives represents his solution to this problem, and was the message he addressed to new, young anthropologists, aiming to both improve their experience and allow them to produce better data.

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20.

Bronislaw Malinowski advocated that stance from his very first publications, which were often harshly critical of those of his elders in the field of anthropology, who did most of their writing based on second-handed accounts.

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21.

Bronislaw Malinowski has been credited with originating, or being one of the main originators, of the school of social anthropology known as functionalism.

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22.

Bronislaw Malinowski reasoned that when the needs of individuals, who comprise society, are met, then the needs of society are met.

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23.

Apart from fieldwork, Bronislaw Malinowski challenged the claim to universality of Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex.

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24.

Bronislaw Malinowski likewise influenced the course of African history, serving as an academic mentor to Jomo Kenyatta, the father and first president of modern-day Kenya.

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25.

Bronislaw Malinowski wrote the introduction to Facing Mount Kenya, Kenyatta's ethnographic study of the Gikuyu tribe.

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26.

Bronislaw Malinowski has been praised for his friendly and egalitarian attitude towards women students.

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27.

Bronislaw Malinowski is considered to have raised the next generation of anthropologists, particularly British.

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28.

Life and work of Bronislaw Malinowski is the subject of a documentary film Tales From The Jungle: Bronislaw Malinowski aired by BBC Four channel in 2007.

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29.

In 1919 Bronislaw Malinowski married Elsie Rosaline Masson, an Australian photographer, writer, and traveler .

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