A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term / Edition 1

by Bronislaw Malinowski

Overview

When it was first published (in 1967, posthumously), Bronislaw Malinowski's diary, covering the period of his fieldwork in 1914-1915 and 1917-1918 in New Guinea and the Trobriand Islands, set off a storm of controversy.

Many anthropologists felt that the publication of the diary—which Raymond Firth describes as "this revealing, egocentric, obsessional document"—was a profound disservice to the memory of one of the giant figures in the history of anthropology. Almost certainly never intended to be published, Malinowski's diary was intensely personal and brutally honest. He kept it, he said, "as a means of self-analysis." Reviews ranged from "it is to the discredit of all concerned that the diary has now been committed to print" to "fascinating reading."

Twenty years have passed, and Raymond Firth suggests that the book has moved over to a more central place in the literature of anthropological reflection. In 1967, Clifford Geertz felt that the "gross, tiresome" diary revealed Malinowski as "a crabbed, self-preoccupied, hypochondriacal narcissist, whose fellow-feeling for the people he lived with was limited in the extreme." But in 1988, Geertz referred to the diary as a "backstage masterpiece of anthropology, our The Double Helix." Similarly in 1987, James Clifford called it "a crucial document for the history of anthropology."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804717076
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	05/01/1989
Edition description:	1
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) was one of the most celebrated and influential of early twentieth-century anthropologists.

Table of Contents

	Preface	vii
	Introduction	xi
	Second Introduction 1988	xxi
	Note	xxxiii
	A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term
Part 1	1914-1915	1
Part 2	1917-1918	101
	An Index of Native Terms	299
	Illustrations
	Facsimile page	ii
	Eastern New Guinea and Adjacent Islands
	Mailu Island and Adjacent Coast of Papua	26
	The Kula District	138
	Trobriand Islands	164