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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Tovasana then asked them, „How long are you going to stay?”
„Till Dobu men come”.
„They will come”, said Tovasana, „not in two days, not in three days, not in four days; they will come tomorrow, or at the very last, the day after tomorrow”.
„You go with them to Boyowa?”
„I sail first to Vakuta, then to Sinaketa with the Dobu men. They sail to Susuwa beach to fish, I go to your villages, to Kaduwaga, to Kaysiga, to Kuyawa. Is there plenty of mwali in your villages?”
„Yes, there are. So-and-so has...”
Here followed a long string of personal names of big armshells, the approximate number of smaller, nameless ones, and the names of the people in whose possession they were at the time.
The interest of both hearers and speakers was very obvious, and Tovasana gave the approximate dates of his movements to his visitors. Full moon was approaching, and the natives have got names for every day during the week before and after full moon, and the following and preceding days can therefore be reckoned. Also, every seven-day period within a moon is named after the quarter which falls in it. This allows the natives to fix dates with a fair exactitude. The present example shows the way in which, in olden times, the movements of the various expeditions were known over enormous areas; nowadays, when white men’s boats with native crews often move from one island to the other, the news spreads even more easily. In former times, small preliminary expeditions such as the one we have just been describing, would fix the dates and make arrangements often for as much as a year ahead.
The Kaduwaga men next inquired as to whether any strangers from the Trobriands were then staying in Gumasila. The answer was that there was in the village one man from Ba’u, and one from Sinaketa Then inquiries were made as to how many Kula necklaces there were in Gumasila, and the conversation drifted again into Kula technicalities.
It is quite customary for men from the Trobriands to remain for a long time in the Amphletts, that is, from one expedition to another. For some weeks or even months, they live in the house of their partner, friend, or relative, careful to keep to the customs of the country. They will sit about with the men of the village and talk. They will help in the work and go out on fishing expeditions. These latter will be specially attractive to a Trobriander, a keen fisherman himself, who here finds an entirely new type of this pursuit. Whether an expedition would be made on one of the sandbanks, where the fishermen remain for a few days, casting their big nets for dugong and turtle; or whether they would go out in a small canoe, trying to catch the jumping gar fish with a fishing kite; or throwing a fish trap into the deep sea — all these would be a novelty to the Trobriander, accustomed only to the methods suitable to the shallow waters of the Lagoon, swarming with fish.
In one point the Trobriander would probably find his sojourn in the Amphletts uncongenial; he would be entirely debarred from any intercourse with women. Accustomed in his country to easy intrigues, here he has completely to abstain, not only from sexual relations with women married or unmarried, but even from moving with them socially, in the free and happy manner characteristic of Boyowa. One of my main informants, Layseta, a Sinaketa man, who spent several years in the Amphletts, confessed to me, not without shame and regret, that he never succeeded in having any intrigues with the women there. To save his face, he claimed that he had had several Amphlett belles declaring their love to him, and offering their favours, but he always refused them:
„I feared...eared the bowo’u of Gumasila; they are very bad”.
The bowo’u are the local sorcerers of the Amphletts. Whatever we might think about Layseta’s temptations — and his personal appearance and charm do not make his boastings very credible — and whether he was afraid of sorcery or of a sound thrashing, the fact remains that a Trobriander would have to change his usual mode of behaviour when in the Amphletts, and keep away from the women entirely. When big parties arrive in Gumasila, or Nabwageta, the women run away, and camp in the bush till the beach is clear.
The Amphlettans, on the contrary, were used to receive favours from unmarried women in Sinaketa. Nowadays, the male inhabitants of that village, always disapproving of the custom, though not to the extent of taking any action, tell the Amphlettans that the white man’s Government has prohibited the men from Gumasila and Nabwageta to have sexual relations in Sinaketa. One of the very few occasions, when the men from the Amphletts showed any interest in talking to me was when they asked me whether this was true.
„The Sinaketa men tell us that we will go to jail if we sleep with girls in Sinaketa. Would the Government put us into jail, in truth?”
As usually, I simply disclaimed all knowledge of the white man’s arcana in such matters.
The small party of Kaduwaga men, whose visit to Tovasana I have just been describing, sat there for about two hours, smoked and chewed betel-nut, the conversation flagging now and then, and the men looking into the distance with the habitual self-important expression worn on such occasions. After the final words about mutual plans were exchanged, and a few pots had been brought by small boys to the canoe as talo’i (farewell gift to the visitors), they embarked, and paddled back three or four miles across to Nabwageta.
We must imagine the big Kula party from Sinaketa, whom we just watched landing in the two villages of Gumasila, behaving more or less in the same manner; conducting similar conversations, offering the same type of pari gifts to their partners. Only everything happens of course on a much bigger scale. There is a big group seated before each house, parties walk up and down the village, the sea in front of it is covered with the gaudy, heavily laden canoes. In the little village, of which Tovasana is headman, the two chiefs, To’udawada and Kouta’uya, will be seated on the same platform, on which we saw the old man receiving his other guests. The other headmen of the Sinaketans will have gone to the bigger village round the corner, and will encamp there under the tall palms, looking across the straits towards the pyramidal forms of Domdom, and further South, to the main island fronting them with the majestic form of Koyatabu. Here, among the small houses on piles, scattered picturesquely through the maze of little harbours, lagoons and dykes, large groups of people will be seated on mats of plaited coco-nut, each man as a rule under the dwelling of his partner, chewing betel-nut stolidly, and watching stealthily the pots being brought out to be presented to them, and still more eagerly awaiting the giving of Kula gifts, although he remains to a superficial glance quite impassive.
IIIn Chapter III I spoke about the sociology of Kula, and gave a concise definition of partnership with its functions and obligations. I said there that people enter into this relationship in a definite manner, and remain in it for the rest of their life. I also said that the number of partners a man possesses, depends upon his social position and rank. The protective character of an overseas partner becomes now clearer, after we have realised the nervous tension with which each Kula party in olden days would have approached a land full of mulukwausi, bowo’u and other forms of sorcery, a land from which originate the very tauva’u themselves81. To have a friend there, one who will not on the surface of it have bad intentions, is a great boon. What this really means to the natives can, however, only be realised when we arrive at Dobu, learn the special safety magic performed there and find how genuinely serious these apprehensions are.
We must now make another short digression from our consecutive account, and discuss the several aspects of the sociology of the Kula one after the other.
1. Sociological Limitations to the Participation in the Kula. — Not everyone who lives within the cultural sphere of the Kula does participate in it. More especially in the Trobriand Islands, there are whole districts which do not practise the Kula. Thus a series of villages in the North of the main Island, the villages on the Island of Tuma, as well as the industrial villages of Kuboma and the agricultural ones of Tilataula do not practise Kula. In villages like Sinaketa, Vakuta, Gumasila and Nabwageta, every man carries on the Kula. The same applies to the small Islands which link up the big gaps of the Kula chain, the Islands of Kitava, Iwa, Gawa and Kwayawata, strewn on the seas between the Trobriands and Woodlark Island, to Tubetube and Wari, etc., etc. In the Dobuan speaking district, on the other hand, I think that certain village complexes either do not practice Kula at all, or else practice it on a small scale, that is, their headmen have only a few partners in the neighbouring villages.
In some of the big chiefs’ villages in Kinwina there are certain people who never practice Kula. Thus in a village where the headman has the rank of guya’u (chief) or gumguya’u (minor chief) the commoners of the lowest rank and unrelated to the headman are not supposed to carry on the Kula. In olden days this rule would be very strictly observed, and nowadays even, though somewhat relaxed, not many commoners of this description practice the Kula. Limitations as to entry into the Kula, therefore, exist only in big Kula districts such as that of Dobu and of the Trobriands, and they are partly local, excluding whole villages, and partly social, excluding certain people of low rank.
2. The Relation of Partnership. — The name for an overseas partner is in the Trobriand language karayta’u; „my partner” is styled ulo karayta’u, ulo being the possessive pronoun of remote relation. In Gumasila he is called ulo ta’u, which means simply „my man”; in Dobuan, yegu gumagi The inland partners are known in Kiriwinian by the term denoting a friend, „lubaygu”, the suffixed possessive pronoun gu being that of nearest possession.
Only after this relationship has been established between two men, can the two make Kula with one another. An overseas visitor would as a rule go to his partner’s house and offer him a small present as pari. This again would be returned by the local man by means of a talo’i present. There would not be any great intimacy between two overseas partners. But, in sharp contrast to the essential hostility between two strange tribesmen, such a relationship of friendship would stand out as the most remarkable deviation from the general rule. In inland relations between two partners of neighbouring villages, the closeness and intimacy would be relatively small as compared to other ties. This
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