Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea (1922)

“The time when we could tolerate accounts presenting us the native as a distorted, childish caricature of a human being are gone. This picture is false, and like many other falsehoods, it has been killed by Science.” 

Malinowski scorns the tendency of anthropologists before him to study different cultures from afar, with preconceived notions of how they behave and of their level of sophistication. By beginning instead with scientific methods of recording as much data as possible rather than fixating on the foreignness of the cultures, it can be seen that native societies are extremely complex. Conducting research with proper methodology is key to arriving at valid results.

“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.” 

Malinowski hopes that the reader will gain understanding of the mentality through which the Kula makes sense. He wishes us to get inside the minds of the natives and see for ourselves their humanity. In doing so, we will come to a better understanding of our own natures, and cultures, as well.

“The difference is that, in our society, every institution has its intelligent members, its historians, and its archives and documents, whereas in a native society there are none of these.” 

According to Malinowski, native cultures lack the sense of history that Western society does, and they lack intellectuals who formulate theory, record history, and are self-reflexive about their culture. In researching institutions and cultural practices, the ethnographer cannot ask the natives broad questions on sociological matters and must instead collect objective data, eventually gathering enough to form his own hypotheses and inferences.