Malinowski, Bronislaw (Kasper) 1884-1942
British anthropologist, a founder of modern social anthropology

Born in Krak�w, Poland, he studied physics and mathematics at the Jagellonian University, and went on to study psychology under Wilhelm Max Wundt at Leipzig, and sociology under Edvard Westermarck at London. In 1914 he left on a research assignment to Australia, but with the outbreak of war was partially confined to the Trobriand Islands, off the eastern tip of New Guinea. Returning to London in 1920, he was appointed in 1927 to the first chair in social anthropology at the London School of Economics. In 1938 he moved to the USA, where he taught at Yale University and undertook field research in Mexico. He was the pioneer of 'participant observation' as a method of fieldwork, and his works on the Trobriand Islanders, especially Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) and Coral Gardens and their Magic (2 vols, 1935), set new standards for ethnographic description. His better-known writings on the Trobriands include Crime and Custom in Savage Society (1926) and Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927). A major proponent of functionalism in anthropology, he set out his views in A Scientific Theory of Culture (1944).

Bibliography: Malinowski and the Work of Myth (1992)