Malinowski and The Creation of Functionalism

Bronislaw Malinowski was born in Krakow, Poland on April 7, 1884. He was born into an bluish and cultured family. Due to the wealth of Malinowskis family he was up to(p) to read a vast reproduction that so many of his metre were not able to receive. Using this education, Malinowski worked many years in the airfield doing research and studding his numerous hypotheses. After years of analyze and doing intensive fieldwork, Malinowski became an influential British anthropologist and the founder of the Functional theory.

Putting his education and practical experience from his fieldwork, Malinowski developed the psyche of functionalism, being the notion that exclusively components of a society interlock to from a balanced system dependent on the other components to function justly (Sopot 118). He emphasized characteristics of beliefs, ceremonies, customs, institutions, religion, ritual and sexual taboos.

Mailinowskis first field study came in 1915-18 when he studied the Trobriand Islanders of New dago in the s placehwest Pacific (Fraser viii). He rejected the humor of remaining apart from the daily lives of the Trobrianders, and instead chose to carry out the participant observation method. He closely observed the Trobrianders in there daily lives doing such tasks as listing to anecdotes, topical anesthetic gossip, daily chores etc.



It was his hope that by taking an active single-valued function in the daily lives of the Trobriand peck he would be able to provide a much fuller account of the lives these people led.

Taking the active role that he did, Malinowski observed how the customs, ideas, artifacts and language of the islanders all served their biological and psychological needs, and he soon learned that the on the face of it useless customs and rituals (e.g. boat-building and seafaring) did the same (Sopot 87). Using this knowledge, Malinowski began to build the idea that all aspects of culture are functional...

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