Malinowski: Odyssey of an Anthropologist 18841920

About this book

Bronislaw Malinowski (18841942) was one of the most colorful and charismatic social scientists of the twentieth century. His contributions as a founding father of social anthropology and his complex personality earned him international notoriety and near-mythical status. This landmark book presents a vivid portrait of Malinowskis early life from his birth in Cracow to his departure in 1920 from the Trobriand Islands of the South Pacific. At the age of 36 he had already created the innovative fieldwork methods and techniques that would secure his intellectual legacy. Drawing on an exceptionally rich array of primary documents including Malinowskis letters and unpublished diaries and manuscripts Michael Young provides significant new information about the anthropologists personality private life and career. The author describes Malinowskis restless life of travel connections with intellectuals and artists Nietzschean belief in his own destiny and legendary fieldwork. The singular man who emerges from these pages fascinates on every levelas a volatile friend and lover a provocative colleague a passionate diarist and a brilliant thinker who pioneered radical change in the field of anthropology.