Argonauts of the Western Pacific - Bronisław Malinowski (darmowa biblioteka online .TXT) 📖
Argonauts of the Western Pacific to rozprawa naukowa autorstwa Bronisława Malinowskiego. Jest ona efektem wyprawy badacza na wyspy Toulon i wyspy Trobriandzkie.
Malinowski opisuje w niej przede wszystkim rytuał Kula, ukazujący zdolności handlowe ludów tam żyjących. Rytuał polega na wymianie biżuterii, opierającej się na pewnych szytwno ustalonych regułach związanych m.in. z równą wartością wymienianych przedmiotów. Malinowski upatruje w przedstawicielach społeczeństw pierwotnych wcielenia Argonautów z mitologii greckiej, którzy udali się po Złote Runo. Rozprawa Malinowskiego została oparta na wynikach jego metody badań antropologicznych — metody uczestniczącej, a nie wyłącznie obserwacyjnej. Jego działalność była przełomowa dla antropologii, która do tej pory bazowała na prowadzeniu obserwacji, a także rozszerzaniu założeń na kolejne wyniki badań.
Bronisław Malinowski był polskim antropologiem i socjologiem publikującym w pierwszej połowie XIX wieku. Prowadził badania społeczeństw pierwotnych w różnych zakątkach świata.
- Autor: Bronisław Malinowski
- Epoka: Współczesność
- Rodzaj: Epika
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So, the third commandment of field-work runs: Find out the typical ways of thinking and feeling, corresponding to the institutions and culture of a given community, and formulate the results in the most convincing manner. What will be the method of procedure? The best ethnographical writers — here again the Cambridge school with Haddon, Rivers, and Seligman rank first among English Ethnographers — have always tried to quote verbatim13 statements of crucial importance. They also adduce terms of native classification; sociological, psychological and industrial termini technici14, and have rendered the verbal contour of native thought as precisely as possible. One step further in this line can be made by the Ethnographer, who acquires a knowledge of the native language and can use it as an instrument of inquiry. In working in the Kiriwinian language, I found still some difficulty in writing down the statement directly in translation which at first I used to do in the act of taking notes. The translation often robbed the text of all its significant characteristics — rubbed off all its points — so that gradually I was led to note down certain important phrases just as they were spoken, in the native tongue. As my knowledge of the language progressed, I put down more and more in Kiriwinian, till at last I found myself writing exclusively in that language, rapidly taking notes, word for word, of each statement. No sooner had I arrived at this point, than I recognised that I was thus acquiring at the same time an abundant linguistic material, and a series of ethnographic documents which ought to be reproduced as I had fixed them, besides being utilised in the writing up of my account15. This corpus inscriptionum Kiriwiniensium can be utilised, not only by myself, but by all those who, through their better penetration and ability of interpreting them, may find points which escape my attention, very much as the other corpora form the basis for the various interpretations of ancient and prehistoric cultures; only, these ethnographic inscriptions are all decipherable and clear, have been almost all translated fully and unambiguously, and have been provided with native cross-commentaries or scholia16 obtained from living sources.
No more need be said on this subject here, as later on a whole chapter (Chapter XVIII) is devoted to it, and to its exemplification by several native texts. The Corpus will of course be published separately at a later date.
IXOur considerations thus indicate that the goal of ethnographic field-work must be approached through three avenues:
1. The organisation of the tribe, and the anatomy of its culture must be recorded in firm, clear outline. The method of concrete, statistical documentation is the means through which such an outline has to be given.
2. Within this frame, the imponderabilia of actual life, and the type of behaviour have to be filled in. They have to be collected through minute, detailed observations, in the form of some sort of ethnographic diary, made possible by close contact with native life.
3. A collection of ethnographic statements, characteristic narratives, typical utterances, items of folk-lore and magical formulae has to be given as a corpus inscriptionum, as documents of native mentality.
These three lines of approach lead to the final goal, of which an Ethnographer should never lose sight. This goal is, briefly, to grasp the native’s point of view, his relation to life, to realise his vision of his world. We have to study man, and we must study what concerns him most intimately, that is, the hold which life has on him. In each culture, the values are slightly different; people aspire after different aims, follow different impulses, yearn after a different form of happiness. In each culture, we find different institutions in which man pursues his life-interest, different customs by which he satisfies his aspirations, different codes of law and morality which reward his virtues or punish his defections. To study the institutions, customs, and codes or to study the behaviour and mentality without the subjective desire of feeling by what these people live, of realising the substance of their happiness is, in my opinion, to miss the greatest reward which we can hope to obtain from the study of man.
These generalities the reader will find illustrated in the following chapters. We shall see there the savage striving to satisfy certain aspirations, to attain his type of value, to follow his line of social ambition. We shall see him led on to perilous and difficult enterprises by a tradition of magical and heroical exploits, shall see him following the lure of his own romance. Perhaps as we read the account of these remote customs there may emerge a feeling of solidarity with the endeavours and ambitions of these natives. Perhaps man’s mentality will be revealed to us, and brought near, along some lines which we never have followed before. Perhaps through realising human nature in a shape very distant and foreign to us, we shall have some light shed on our own. In this, and in this case only, we shall be justified in feeling that it has been worth our while to understand these natives, their institutions and customs, and that we have gathered some profit from the Kula.
I — Sailing, and trading in the South Seas; the Kula. II — Method in Ethnography. III — Starting field work. Some perplexing difficulties. Three conditions of success. IV — Life in a tent among the natives. Mechanism of „getting in touch” with them. V — Active methods of research. Order and consistency in savage cultures. Methodological consequences of this truth. VI — Formulating the principles of tribal constitution and of the anatomy of culture. Method ot inference from statistic accumulation of concrete data. Uses of synoptic charts. VII — Presentation of the intimate touches of native life; of types of behaviour. Method of systematic fixing of impressions; of detailed, consecutive records. Importance of personal participation in native life. VIII — Recording of stereotyped manners of thinking and feeling. Corpus inscriptionum Kiriwinensium IX — Summary of argument. The native’s vision of his world.
IThe tribes who live within the sphere of the Kula system of trading belong, one and all — with the exception perhaps, of the Rossel Island natives, of whom we know next to nothing — to the same racial group. These tribes inhabit the easternmost end of the mainland of New Guinea and those islands, scattered in the form of the long-drawn archipelago, which continue in the same south-easternly trend as the mainland, as if to bridge over the gap between New Guinea and the Solomons.
New Guinea is a mountainous island-continent, very difficult of access in its interior, and also at certain portions of the coast, where barrier reefs, swamps and rocks practically prevent landing or even approach for native craft. Such a country would obviously not offer the same opportunities in all its parts to the drifting migrations which in all probability are responsible for the composition of the present population of the South Seas. The easily accessible portions of the coast and the outlying islands would certainly offer a hospitable reception to immigrants of a higher stock; but, on the other hand, the high hills, the impregnable fastnesses in swampy flats and shores where landing was difficult and dangerous, would give easy protection to the aborigines, and discourage the influx of migrators.
The actual distribution of races in New Guinea completely justifies these hypotheses. Map II shows the Eastern part of the main island and archipelagoes of New Guinea and the racial distribution of the natives. The interior of the continent, the low sago swamps and deltas of the Gulf of Papua — probably the greater part of the North Coast and of the South — West Coast of New Guinea, are inhabited by a „relatively tall, dark-skinned, frizzly-haired” race, called by Dr. Seligman Papuan, and in the hills more especially by pygmy tribes. We know little about these people, swamp tribes and hill tribes alike, who probably are the autochtons in this part of the world17. As we shall also not meet them in the following account, it will be better to pass to the tribes who inhabit the accessible parts of New Guinea. The Eastern Papuasians, that is, the generally smaller, lighter coloured frizzly-haired races of the eastern peninsula of New Guinea and its archipelagoes now require a name, and since the true Melanesian element is dominant in them, they may be called PapuoMelanesians. With regard to these Eastern Papuasians, Dr. A. C. Haddon first recognised that they came into the country as the result of a „Melanesian migration into New Guinea” and further, „That a single wandering would not account for certain puzzling facts”18 The Papuo-Melanesians again can be divided into two groups, a Western and an Eastern one, which, following Dr. Seligman’s terminology, we shall call the Western Papuo-Melanesians and the Massim respectively. It is with these latter we shall become acquainted in the following pages.
If we glance at a map and follow the orographical features of Eastern New Guinea and its coast line, we see at once that the high main range of mountains drops off between the 149th and 150th meridians, and again that the fringing reef disappears at the same point, that is, at the west end of Orangerie Bay. This means that the extreme East End of New Guinea, with its archipelagoes, in other words, the Massim country, is the most easily accessible area, and might be expected to be inhabited by a homogeneous stock of people, consisting of immigrants almost unmixed with the autochtons (Cf. Map II). „Indeed, while the condition actually existing in the Massim area suggests that there was no slow mingling of the invaders with a previous stock, the geographical features of the territory of the Western Papuo-Melanesians with its hills, mountains and swamps, are such that invaders could not have speedily overrun the country, nor failed to have been influenced by the original inhabitants...19
I shall assume that the reader is acquainted with the quoted work of Dr. Seligman, where a thorough account is given of all the main types of Papuo-Melanesian sociology and culture one after the other. But the tribes of the Eastern Papuo-Melanesian or Massim area, must be described here somewhat more in detail, as it is within this fairly homogeneous area that the Kula takes place. Indeed, the Kula sphere of influence and the ethnographic area of the Massim tribes almost completely overlap, and we can speak about the Kula type of culture and the Massim culture almost synonymously.
IIThe adjacent Map III shows the Kula district, that is, the easternmost end of the main island and the archipelagoes lying to its East and North-East. As Professor C. G. Seligman says: „This area
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