Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942)

• Polish-born social anthropologist

• Professional training and career, beginning in 1910, were

based in England.

• Malinowski is often considered one of anthropology's most

skilled ethnographers, especially because of the highly

methodical and well theorized approach to the study of

social systems

• His principal field work was carried out among the Papuo-

Melanesian people of the Trobriand Islands during the World

War I. (Kula ring and advanced the practice of participant

observation)

Minimum Definition of Science for Humanities

Science: Use of previous observation for the prediction of future

The starting point of science is man’s reasonable behaviors and this initates and

develops the culture.

• Basic human activity for survival involves use of knowledge

(fire making, making and use of tools, building shelters)

• Human can not survive –or maintain to be human- without scientific attitude

in other words human need scientific attitude to maintain their lives.

Minimum definition of science for humanities

• Anthropologist’s study consists of field work and analysis of culture which

are carried out conjointly.

• The scientific attitude is as old as culture

• The minimum definition of science is emerged from pragmatic performance

• To be defined as scientific activity, Anthropology should study a reasonable

subject, put general laws which are verifiable by observation. And the

observation must follow the lines of conceptual analysis.

Concepts and methods of Anthropology

• The history of anthropology started with the interest in exotic cultures.

• Anthropological inspiration consists of the observation of savagery and

the comparison of savagery with civilization. (Monstesquieu and Oliver

Goldsmith were the first to compare the surrounding culture with the

exotic civilizations)

• Modern anthropology started with evolutionary point of view. Main

assumptions of evolutionism is valid and indispensible for both field-study

and theory.

Concepts and methods of Anthropology

• Origins of culture: the essential nature of an institution like marriage or

the nation, the family or the state.

• Stages of culture: evolutionary scheme of successive developmental

strata. (technological setting: Stone Age- Bronze Age- Iron Age)

Concepts and methods of Anthropology

• Diffusionism

– Diffusion or transmission of culture from one society to other ones

– Adopting and borrowing by one culture from another various devices,

implements, institutions and beliefs.

– As a cultural process, real and unassailable as evolution

Concepts and methods of Anthropology

• Comparative method: Gathering of cross-cultural documentation

• Psychological (Wundt and Crawley, Westermarch and Lang, Frazer and

Freud have approached the problem by psychological solutions)

• Sociological (W. Robertson Smith was the first to approach all discussions

on the sociological context)

• Historical (linking up phenomena)

Concepts and methods of Anthropology

• Psychoanalytic brought to the Study of Man a specific and important point

of view. (formation of mental)

• Behaviorism: the newer developments of stimulus and response

psychology.

• To guess what the other people think or felt is very difficult for people

from different culture (empathy)

Concepts and methods of Anthropology

• If we take any example of survival:

– The culture of survival nature is due to incomplete analysis of the facts

– Most survivals have gradually and prograssively faded out of antropological

theory

– To retard effective field-work

• F. Graebner defined cultural process as ‘laws of mental life’ and ‘their

scientific and methodical study is only from the psychological point of

view’

What is culture?

“It’s obviously the integral whole consisting of the implements and

consumers’ goods, of the constitutional characters for the various social

groupings, of human ideas and crafts, beliefs and customs”

What is culture?

A vast apparatus partly material, partly human, partly spiritual, by which man

is able to cope with concrete specific problems that face man.

• Starts with the needs of human

• Problems solved by an artificial environment

• Maintained and reproduced permanently (standard of living)

• Transmit to next generation (educational character)

• Establish law and order for cooperation

• Maintain the material substratum in a working order (economical

organization)

What is culture?

Cultural Needs:

Instrumental Imperatives: Economic- Normative- Educational- Political

Integrative Imperatives: Knowledge-Religion-Magic

• Organization: Human beings have to organize to achieve any purpose,

reach any end.

• Institution: It requires an agreement on a set of traditional values to get

human beings together.

• Unless the anthropologist and humanist agree on what is definite isolate

in the concrete cultural reality, there will never be a science of civilization.

• The element of time: all evolutionary process heppen in the form of

institutional change.

• As a theory of basic needs, and a derivation of instrumental and

integrative imperatives, scientific anthropology gives us the functional

analysis, which allows us to define the form, as well as the meaning of a

customary idea or contrivance.

What is culture?

Theory of organized behavior

Essential fact of culture: the organization of human into permanent

• Cooperative activities are organized of:

– the invention of device

– the discovery of principle

– the formulation of idea

– moral or aesthetic movement

• The science of human behaviour begins with organization

Theory of organized behavior

• Rules of the organization (technical, social, traditional)

• Any invention or idea should be translated into organization and accepted

by the society to be a part of culture.

• Every part of an individual’s daily life is related to one of the systems of

organized activities which are the subdivisions of culture.

Theory of organized behavior

• All today’s society institutions are organizations and the Anthropologist

have to state hierarchy, the division of function and status of each

member, and the relation between the members.

• Best description of the culture is the listings and analysis of the

institutions that the culture is organized into.

Keywords

Thank you.