Originally published in 1922, this early work on anthropology is both expensive and hard to find in its first edition. It details the lives and customs of the Trobriand who live on an island chain in the western Pacific and is a highly regarded study of their tribal culture. This is a fascinating work and is thoroughly recommended for anyone interested in ethnology. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

The author takes into account the various views of religion which Tylor, Frazer, Marett, and Durkheim have given and goes on from there to provide his own conception that religion and magic are ways men have to make the world acceptable.

First published in 1922, this classic text examines the extensive and complex trading system maintained by the Trobriand Islanders. While the main theme is economics and social organization, the power of magic, mythology and folklore are also examined.

The volume presents the diary of one of the great anthropologists at a crucial time in his career. Malinowski's major works grew out of his findings on field trips to New Guinea and North Melanesia from 1914-1918. His journals cover a considerable part of that period of pioneer research. The diary contains observations of native life and customs and vivid descriptions of landscapes. Many entries reveal his approach to his work and the sources of his thought. In his introduction, Raymond Firth discusses the significance of the notebooks which formed the basis for this volume. First published in 1967.

Series Information:
Bronislaw Malinowski: Collected Works

Published, posthumously, this volume is both a summing up and a reformulation of Malinowski's functional theory of culture.

This volume discusses aspects of small scale societies, including the study of the mental processes, as well as indigenous economics and law.

Originally published in 1926. A study of crime and customs of the rapidly vanishing savage races. Contents Include: Primitive Law and Order - Rules of Law in Religious Acts - Law of Marriage - Rules of Custom Defined - Melanesian Economics - Primitive Crime and its Punishment - Sorcery and Suicide - Factors of Social Cohesion. - Primitive Law and Restoration of Order. Illustrated. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Home Farm Books are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

The main question of our age is how we live our lives. As we struggle with this question, we face others. How do we handle ideas and knowledge, both our own and those of others? What relationship to ideas do we want? Whose ideas do we want to be surrounded by? Where do we want to think? Most choose, or have the choice made for them, according to what family, colleagues, and friends do and say and what we read about, and a more or less rational calculation of the odds. Modern ecology results from the shift in thinking generated by quantum physics and systems theory, from the old view based on reductionism, mechanics, and fixed quantities to a new view based on holistic systems where qualities are contingent on the observer and on each other. This perception changes how people treat ideas and facts, certainties and uncertainties, and affects both art and science. Worldwide it is part of the process of understanding the current crisis in the environment, and the balance of economy, creativity, and control required in our response. The book's starting point is the growing role that information has played in industrial economies since the 1800s and especially in the last thirty years. It is an attempt to identify ecology of thinking and learning. It is also based on the need to escape from old, industrial ways and become more attuned to how people actually borrow, develop, and share ideas. Throughout the book, Howkins asks questions and offers signposts. He gives no guarantee that creative ecologies will be sustainable, but shows what should be aimed for.

Crime and Custom in Savage Society represents Bronislaw Malinowski's major discussion of the relationship between law and society. Throughout his career he constructed a coherent science of anthropology, one modeled on the highest standards of practice and theory. Methodology steps forward as a core element of the refashioned anthropology, one that stipulates the manner in which anthropological data should be acquired. Malinowski's choice of law was not inevitable, but neither was it unmotivated. Anyone interested in understanding the social structure and organization of societies cannot avoid dealing with the concept of "law," even if it is to deny its presence. Law and anthropology have shown a natural affinity for one another, sharing a beneficial history of using the methods and viewpoints of one to inform and advance the other. The best lesson Malinowski provides us with comes in the last paragraphs of Crime and Custom in Savage Society: "The true problem is not to study how human life submits to rules; the real problem is how the rules become adapted to life." On that question, he has left us richly inspired to continue the quest.

Bronislaw Malinowski's pathbreaking Argonauts of the Western Pacific is at once a detailed account of exchange in the Melanesian islands and a manifesto of a modernist anthropology. Malinowski argued that the goal of which the ethnographer should never lose sight is 'to grasp the native's point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world.' Through vivid evocations of Kula life, including the building and launching of canoes, fishing expeditions and the role of myth and magic amongst the Kula people, Malinowski brilliantly describes an inter-island system of exchange - from gifts from father to son to swapping fish for yams - around which an entire community revolves. A classic of anthropology that did much to establish the primacy of painstaking fieldwork over the earlier anecdotal reports of travel writers, journalists and missionaries, it is a compelling insight into a world now largely lost from view. With a new foreword by Adam Kuper.

Crime and Custom in Savage Society represents Bronislaw Malinowski's major discussion of the relationship between law and society. Throughout his career he constructed a coherent science of anthropology, one modeled on the highest standards of practice and theory. Methodology steps forward as a core element of the refashioned anthropology, one that stipulates the manner in which anthropological data should be acquired.

Malinowski's choice of law was not inevitable, but neither was it unmotivated. Anyone interested in understanding the social structure and organization of societies cannot avoid dealing with the concept of "law," even if it is to deny its presence. Law and anthropology have shown a natural affinity for one another, sharing a beneficial history of using the methods and viewpoints of one to inform and advance the other.

The best lesson Malinowski provides us with comes in the last paragraphs of Crime and Custom in Savage Society "The true problem is not to study how human life submits to rules; the real problem is how the rules become adapted to life." On that question, he has left us richly inspired to continue the quest.

The first part of a two volume classic devoted to the agriculture and agricultural rites of the Trobriand Islanders. This work looks at the signigicance of agriculture in the Trobriand Islands.

The main question of our age is how we live our lives. As we struggle with this question, we face others. How do we handle ideas and knowledge, both our own and those of others? What relationship to ideas do we want? Whose ideas do we want to be surrounded by? Where do we want to think? Most choose, or have the choice made for them, according to what family, colleagues, and friends do and say and what we read about, and a more or less rational calculation of the odds.

Modern ecology results from the shift in thinking generated by quantum physics and systems theory, from the old view based on reductionism, mechanics, and fixed quantities to a new view based on holistic systems where qualities are contingent on the observer and on each other. This perception changes how people treat ideas and facts, certainties and uncertainties, and affects both art and science. Worldwide it is part of the process of understanding the current crisis in the environment, and the balance of economy, creativity, and control required in our response.

The book's starting point is the growing role that information has played in industrial economies since the 1800s and especially in the last thirty years. It is an attempt to identify ecology of thinking and learning. It is also based on the need to escape from old, industrial ways and become more attuned to how people actually borrow, develop, and share ideas. Throughout the book, Howkins asks questions and offers signposts. He gives no guarantee that creative ecologies will be sustainable, but shows what should be aimed for.

Originally published in 1926. A study of crime and customs of the rapidly vanishing savage races. Contents Include: Primitive Law and Order - Rules of Law in Religious Acts - Law of Marriage - Rules of Custom Defined - Melanesian Economics - Primitive Crime and its Punishment - Sorcery and Suicide - Factors of Social Cohesion. - Primitive Law and Restoration of Order. Illustrated. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. Home Farm Books are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.