Notes on Malinowski's contributions in anthropological thinking

Malinowski in the Trobriand Islands 

by Gideon Lasco, MD, MSc

Bronisław Malinowski, widely regarded as one of the greatest anthropologists of the 20th century, and one of the founding fathers of the ethnographic tradition. His ethnographies, set in Papua New Guinea during World War I, are classics because they are remarkably detailed and comprehensive, setting the standard for anthropologists. Although he is closely associated with the functionalism school of British anthropology which he founded, I can see many ways to relate his work to various schools of thought such as psychological anthropology and neoevolutionism.

Psychological anthropology is an attempt to weave together ‘self’ and ‘culture’, which was previously the exclusive projects of psychology (ala Freud) and anthropology (ala Boas) respectively. Its early exponents were students of Franz Boas: Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and Edward Sapir. One early idea was that culture was ‘personality writ large’ and that cultures can have distinct personalities, and modal personalities do exist for particular cultures. Mead’s contribution was that childhood development was a crucial aspect of personality, and therefore is an important stage where culture is inscribed.

I can think of three contributions of Malinowski to this effort. First, methodologically, he calls for ethnography not just to focus on the ‘organization of the tribe’ and the ‘imponderabilia of actual life’ but also the ‘typical utterances, items of folklore and magical formulae’ as ‘documents of native mentality', a nod to the importance of psychology in anthropology. James Frazer, in his preface to Argonauts, recognized the significance of this methodological turn:

He [Malinowski] has wisely refused to limit himself to a mere description of the processes of the [kula] exchange, and has set himself to penetrate the motives which underlie it and the feelings which it excites in the minds of the natives. It appears to be sometimes held that pure sociology should confine itself to the description of acts and should leave the problems of motives and feeling to psychology. Doubtless, it is true that the analysis of motives and feelings is logically distinguishable from the description of acts, and that it falls, strictly speaking, within the sphere of psychology; but in practice an act has no meaning for an observer unless he knows or infers the thoughts and emotiions of the agent; hence to describe a series of acts, without any reference to the state of mind of the agent, would not answer the purpose of sociology, the aim of which is not merely to register but to understand the actions of men in society. Thus sociology cannot fulfil its task without calling in at every turn the aid of psychology. 

Second, he paid attention to the childhood and adolescence of the islanders, foreshadowing Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa. From this work on young people, he gives his third contribution, which is to debunk the universality of the Oedipus complex. In Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927), he presents an entirely different kinship system - matriarchal uncles as "father figures" for boys - as the context in which psychosexual development is different; boys do not develop sexual jealousy for their fathers.

In searching for a number of rationales – from the material to the symbolic - that underline the Kula system, he also foreshadowed the interest of neoevolutionists and cultural ecologists in looking at materialist explanations for social phenonenoma. Moreover, as Moore says in Visions of Culture (p. 144):

Malinowski has been very influential, particularly on lines of anthropological theory emphasizing the adapative significance of culture. The ecological anthropology of the 1960s and 1970s took Malinowski’s basic insights, recast them as hypothesis, and tested them with quantitative data…

Moreover, Malinowski’s functionalist perspective was adopted by Leslie White, with the key difference of looking at the needs of the species instead of the needs of the individual.

Truly Malinowski’s influence is significant and can be seen across various subfields and schools of thought in anthropology.

REFERENCES

Malinowski, B., & Frazer, J. G. (1922). Argonauts of the Western Pacific, an Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea, by Bronislaw Malinowski,... With a Preface by Sir James George Frazer,... G. Routledge and sons.

Moore, J. D. (2000). Visions of culture: an introduction to anthropological theories and theorists. AltaMira Press

Kulam (sorcery) in different anthropological lenses

by Gideon Lasco, MD

Kulam (sorcery) is an oft-encountered institution in many Filipino communities. Evans-Pritchard makes the classic distinction between witchcraft (asuwang in Tagalog) and sorcery by suggesting that the power of the sorcerer (mangkukulam; mangbabarang) lies in the use of medicines, rituals, and spells while the power of the witch is an ‘inherent quality’ (Evans-Pritchard, 1937:21).

Anthropology offers different lenses through which we can understand the phenomenon of kulam:

Classical evolutionism, which places societies in different stages of development but on a linear track, would look at kulam as belonging to the realm of supernatural beliefs and it would classify such belief with those of other cultures holding the same belief, in keeping with its comparative methodology. In his Primitive Culture, for instance, Tylor devotes much attention to various supernatural beliefs of ‘lower cultures’ (Morgan, 1877:120-145), explaining them as attempts to explain life and death. Building on Tylor’s ideas, James Frazer compared religions and belief systems around the world and concluded that there are three progressive stages of human belief: primitive magic, religion, and science. The idea of kulam would fall under ‘primitive magic’, magic described as ‘one of the earliest means by which man endeavors to adapt the agencies of nature to his needs (Frazer, 1959:469).

Culture and personality exponents, like Margaret Mead, claim that ‘culture is personality writ large’ and that ‘culture, not biology, determined human responses to life’s transitions, like adolescence’ (Evans:110). Thus, this approach would look at how aspects of culture, like folktales, enable and enact the institution of kulam. For instance, the very real fear that people experience in relation to the sorcery endows the institution with power, and perpetuates the prestige of the sorcerer. Whenever children are threatened by their parents with words like “Don’t wander at night, a mangkukulam might get you!”, these views are reinforced and ‘writ’ into the people’s personalities.

Neo-evolutionism will have a freer hand in interpreting the notion of 'kulam'. With its emphasis on historical events and materialistic explanations, one may well look at the past, including epidemiologic events and environmental circumstances. For instance, a distant village may be labelled as a village of sorcerers as part of a general fear of outsiders that is rooted in the possibility of contagion. The illnesses that sorcery can inflict – or may have inflicted in the past – may very well be symptoms of diseases like yaws or leprosy. Leslie White’s brand of neoevolutionism would also look at the roles that sorcery play, bringing him closer to functionalism, which will be the last lens we will consider.

Structural-functionalism is concerned with how the structures of a society operate (cf. Spencer’s organic analogy) and how various elements of society, including belief systems, “function” to maintain the stability of a society. With this perspective, particularly of Malinowski’s functionalism, we can approach kulam as a form of social control, a “a valid way of “punishing” individuals who have violated social norms” (Tan, 2008:14). One observation I have that makes sense in light of this view is that the kulam institution is stronger in far-flung areas like islands or distant mountain communities. Without any other means of social control – and with the government institutions too far to make any effective presence – the institution continues in the present day.

By offering various lenses to look at phenomena, medical anthropology offers us perspectives that allow us to make sense of the mysteries of our culture.

REFERENCES


Evans-Pritchard, E. (1958). 1937. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande.

Frazer, J. G. (1959). The new golden bough: A new abridgment of the classic work. T. H. Gaster (Ed.). Criterion Books.

Morgan, L. H. (1877). Ancient society: or, researches in the lines of human progress from savagery, through barbarism to civilization. H. Holt.

Tan, M. L. (2008). Revisiting usog, pasma, kulam. UP Press.

Tylor, E. B. (1958). Religion in primitive culture (Vol. 2). Harper.